Sentencing Discretion and the Constitution: Due Process of Time (Oxford Monographs on Criminal Law and Justice)

The U.S. Supreme Court maintains that prosecutorial discretion to charge different offenses authorized by the penal code is practically limited only by the penal code itself. Because typical offense conduct violates multiple statutes carrying different maximum - and minimum - sentences, by choosing the charge, the prosecution commonly also chooses the sentence.The Court, however, holds that when judges exercise sentencing discretion, due process requires impeccable neutrality and adversary hearings.Sentencing Discretion and the Constitution: Due Process of Time addresses the fundamental incompatibility of the U.S.Supreme Court's approach to the sentencing power of judges as compared to prosecutors.The Court says that when prosecutors induce a guilty plea by filing lesser charges than the code allows, the defendant is getting a break rather than being strong-armed.This doctrinal fiction persists because neither dissenting justices nor academic critics have yet justified a baseline by wh