Owing to external shocks, such as the Booker decision, U.S. Sentencing Guidelines panel data provide a number of research opportunities. In an accessible paper, Post-Booker Judicial Discretion and Sentencing Trends in Criminal Intellectual Property Cases: Empirical Analysis and Societal Implications, Aaron Rabinowitz (Temple) assesses Booker's influence on sentencing for IP convictions. A summary of the paper's findings, from an excerpted abstract, follow.
"... [T]hat sentences imposed on intellectual property offenders deviate from the advisory Guidelines in two out of every three cases; prosecutors seek and judges reduce sentences for intellectual property crimes more frequently than for other comparable crimes; and judge-initiated deviations occur after Booker about twice as frequently for intellectual property offenders than for other offenders, whereas such judge-initiated deviations before Booker occurred less frequently than for crimes in general or for other economic crimes."
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