Sentencing Equality for Deportable Aliens: Departures from the Sentencing Guidelines on the Basis of Alienage

The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 established under the United States Sentencing Commission in order to compose and administer the United States Sentencing Guidelines. The Guidelines are a complex punishment formula based on a number of factors relating to the crime and the criminal involved. The Act represents an attempt by Congress to introduce a more uniform sentencing system for defendants convicted of federal crimes. Congress, however, anticipated that despite the need to punish criminals in a proportional and just fashion, it would be impossible to predict all of the relevant factors and circumstances that attend each individual case. This Note shows that appellate courts should refuse to proscribe categorically, as a basis for downward departure from the US Sentencing guidelines, the fact that a defendant will face objectively harsher conditions of confinement based solely on the fortuity that the defendant is a deportable alien.