SRC's litigation team supports defenders and CJA-appointed attorneys primarily via:
- Office Hours. We hold "office hours" via Zoom the first and third Thursday of each month at 2-3:30 pm eastern, where we talk through complicated sentencing issues coming up in your cases. At least two SRC attorneys attend each session, and think through questions (submitted through the Google Forms sign-up form) ahead of time, but this is also an opportunity for attorneys in different parts of the country to discuss differing practices and strategies with one another. Federal defenders and CJA-appointed attorneys only: sign up here. You must fill out the form and submit it separately for each date you wish to attend. We send out a unique Zoom link for each office hours session a couple of days ahead of time.
- Shared Folder Access. We maintain cloud-based shared sentencing-litigation-resource folders on (1) sentence reductions under 3582(c)(1)(A) (reduction in sentence, previously referred to as compassionate release), and 3582(c)(2) (retroactive guidelines); (2) BOP litigation; and (3) challenging the use of prior convictions (or 924(c) predicates) to elevate sentencing ranges in federal cases. This is also where resources for those who utilize the defender excel spreadsheet to access Commission sentencing data resides. Instructions on how defenders and CJA-appointed attorneys can access these resources are here.
- Listservs. SRC maintains several listservs for defenders and CJA-appointed attorneys. We have a national announcement listserv where we post information about new federal-sentencing-related caselaw, legislation, and guidelines, as well as other sentencing-related news with national import. We also have discussion listservs for various topics; the most active of these focus on the "categorical approach" and "compassionate release." If you want to get added to one of these, and you are a defender employee or CJA-appointed lawyers, you can email Shelley Fite or any member of the SRC team.
Do not forget about the fantastic resources offered by the Defender Services Office's Training Division! Many of these are available on the DSO's website, fd.org; to access them, any defender employee or CJA-appointed attorney can follow the directions here to get a username/password. You can find the DSO's Sentencing Resources here, and other resources for CJA attorneys here. Also, below are links to some of the many sentencing-related trainings from the past couple of years that are available on fd.org (many of which were presented by SRC attorneys):
- Data for the Defense: What's Going on in JSIN Pilot Districts? (9/28/2023)
- 2023 Guideline Amendments Overview: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (6/29/2023)
- Equal to the Occasion: Apprendi Arguments re ACCA's Occasions Clause post-Wooden (6/27/2023)
- There is no ‘sex offense’ exception to the Fifth and Sixth Amendments: fighting recidivist sentence enhancements in child pornography cases (9/21/2022)
- PATTERN in Practice: Navigating the First Step Act’s Earned Time Credits and Risk and Needs Assessment System (3/3/2022)
- Dancing in the Dark: Fentanyl Analogues (11/3/2021)
- The Force Clause Post-Borden: Going Forward and Backward (8/25/2021)
- Fundamentals of Federal Criminal Defense Week 11 - The Categorical Approach: A Primer (4/28/2021)
- Fundamentals of Federal Criminal Defense Week 8 - Successful Storytelling at Sentencing (4/7/2021)
- Fundamentals of Federal Criminal Defense Week 7 - Sentencing Fundamentals: The Legal Framework (3/31/2021)
- One of These Things is Not Like the Other: Challenging Drug Predicates (11/6/2020)
Note that these links will be live only if you are registered on fd.org. Also please note that these trainings--especially the older ones--should be supplemented with legal research for more recent developments.
If you need help with a case presenting a particularly complex sentencing issue or a case that might have significant impact on the development of the law, and the above tools are not sufficient, please reach out to Shelley Fite for additional support.