http://www.reason.com/blog/show/116720.html The opinion itself is refreshingly abrupt and scathing, and seems to have come from the pen of a pretty fed-up judge. It includes a history of the right to a jury trial, and quotes from Dickens. As Cato's Tim Lynch explains , extra jail time for acquitted charges both encourages prosecutors to over-charge defendants, and encourages defendants to accept plea bargains -- knowing that at trial they could well be sentenced for crimes they didn't commit. If you're wondering if all of this is a violation of the Sixth Amendment, well, if the Sixth Amendment means anything at all, it most certainly is. But we're talking mostly about drug crimes, here -- where the Bill of Rights doesn't apply.[/quote:1yjbqgpd]
Well, he was sentenced within the guidelines for the crime for which he was convicted and not based on acquitted conduct The district court, in the case above, commented, "Sentencing a defendant to time in prison for a crime that the jury found he did not commit is a Kafka-esque result." Those who have read The Trial, by Franz Kafka, which I recommend ( Upon declaring his innocence, he is immediately questioned "innocent of what?" Halfway through Franz Kafka's The Trial, Josef K, by now locked irrevocably into a legal process he can neither resist nor understand, expresses his hope that "the Interrogation Commission might have discovered not that I was innocent but that I was not so guilty as they had assumed." ), will realize the reference. The court did point out that this is a common practice in other courts, however.