What A Difference Four Months Make For Thomas Coughlin

We reported below on former Wal-Mart Executive Thomas Coughlin’s Friday re-sentencing. Coughlin was originally sentenced by U.S. District Judge Robert T. Dawson to five years probation and 27 months of electronically monitored home confinement; far, far below Coughlin’s advisory U.S. Guidelines range. The Eighth Circuit reversed in August 2007. Between that reversal and Friday’s re-sentencing, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Gall v. U.S. (Dec. 2007), which drastically increased the discretion of federal district courts to render below-Guidelines sentences–provided they adequately articulate their reasons. Prior to Gall, most federal appellate courts routinely reversed the below-Guidelines sentences of district courts, presuming them to be unreasonable, under appellate review standards that effectively gutted the Supreme Court’s Booker opinion. (Booker had first held the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines to be advisory.) On last Friday, Dawson re-sentenced Coughlin, adding only 1,500 hours of community service to the original sentence. To support the new sentence, Judge Dawson submitted his own 30-page Sentencing Memorandum (Coughlin Sentencing) . The U.S. is deciding whether to appeal. The U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals have already started applying Gall, and a new era in district court discretionary sentencing is upon us. If Coughlin’s sentence is appealed and upheld by the Eighth Circuit, it will be an even further indication that of how broad that discretion truly is.