OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES: A RECONSIDERATION OF INFORMING JURORS ABOUT PUNISHMENT IN DETERMINATE- AND MANDATORYSENTENCING CASES

“This is without question the worst case of my judicial career…” So observed United States District Court Judge Gerard Lynch in 2002 in a case before him involving a defendant facing a mandatory-minimum ten-year sentence on a charge of advertising the distribution of child pornography. That case and Judge Lynch’s actions and observations, about which more will be said later, brought dramatic if brief attention to an issue that we first wrote about more than twenty years ago: whether and under what circumstances jurors should be told about the punishment faced by defendants in cases before them. View More