The Unintended Consequences of Congressional Action: Judicial Conviction Rates after Congressional Sentencing Reform

The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 created the United States Sentencing Commission, which had the responsibility to promulgate sentencing guidelines. These guidelines created a range of determinate sentences for all categories of federal offenses and were binding on all federal judges. In a curious aftermath of legislation designed to toughen the response of courts to crime, scholars have noticed that federal judges’ conviction rates have fallen since the 1980s (Leipold 2004). This unexpected trend raises the possibility that the outcome of the Sentencing Act is opposite of what Congress intended. When faced with mandatory sentencing guidelines, judges sometimes try cases in which they believe the defendant to be guilty, but the legally mandated sentence is too harsh given the circumstances. In these cases, judges may choose to acquit. Since these defendants would have been convicted in the absence of guidelines, aggregate conviction rates should be lower when guidelines are in effect than otherwise. We test these hypotheses with data on federal bench trials from 1970 to 2005. We find that federal judges’ conviction rates have fallen substantially and that the trend is attributable, at least in part, to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 and the resulting binding sentencing guidelines. We conclude that although the act allowed Congress to appear “tough on crime” to voters, the substantive result of the legislation was decidedly not tough on crime.