Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski blasts the federal sentencing guidelines.
Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit appeared on a panel of appellate judges at the 2011 Annual Training Seminar of the United States Sentencing Commission in San Diego, California, on May 19, 2011. Judge Kozinski said that the guidelines were enacted for political purposes because Congress did not like those liberal judges giving too lienient sentences. District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa of the Southern District of Texas, who is a huge supporter of the guidelines, and a Commissioner and Form Chair of the United States Sentencing Commission, countered reminding Kozinski had been a judge for two years less than Hinojosa! Hinojosa and other members of the United States Sentencing Commission tend to defend the guidelines often using the exact same rationale from the opposite perspective stating that judges give arbitrarily different sentences often arbitrarily high ones.
