Sentencing

The goal of sentencing is to produce a reasonable but not greater than necessary sentence. To that end, there are primarily four sentencing factors driving a federal criminal defendant’s ultimate sentence:

1. The advisory federal sentencing guidelines
2. A government-sponsored 5K1.1 substantial assistance motion (if one is filed)
3. Any applicable, congressionally mandated statutory mandatory minimum and statutory maximum sentences
4. All Title 18 U.S.C. Section 3553(a) factors

A sentence may include prison, a fine, restitution and supervised release among other punishments. If prison is imposed a defendant should expect to serve 85 percent of his sentence less credit for time already served. Approximately six to 12 months of a defendant’s sentence may be served in a halfway house. Supervised release, a form of probation after a prison sentence, is nearly always imposed. There may be special terms and conditions associated with supervised release similar