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Law360 (April 5, 2021, 6:31 PM EDT ) The U.S. Sentencing Commission on Monday said the number of federal criminal cases dropped by more than 15% in 2020 compared with the prior year, a sign of the COVID-19 pandemic's outsized effect on federal criminal proceedings.
Among the federal criminal cases in which a defendant was sentenced in fiscal year 2020, the Sentencing Commission said the 64,565 individual cases for last year represent a 15.6% decrease from the 76,538 offenders reported in fiscal year 2019.
"The number of cases reported to the commission in fiscal year 2020 reflects the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the work of the courts," the commission said in a report.
As in recent years, immigration offenses dominated the federal criminal caseload last year with 26,561 immigration actions, representing 41.1% of all federal criminal cases that made it to sentencing in 2020. Despite the outsized impact, the number of immigration cases actually declined from 29,354 cases reported to the commission in fiscal year 2019, a 9.5% drop.
The majority of immigration cases, or 82.7%, involved either unlawful reentry into the U.S. or unlawfully remaining in the country, while 14.3% of immigration matters were alien smuggling cases, according to the commission.
After immigration, the most common offenses were drugs and firearms crimes, respectively, both of which saw double-digit decreases in fiscal year 2020 compared with the prior year.
Fraud, theft or embezzlement cases were the fourth most common offense type last year, accounting for 7.5% of the total federal criminal caseload. That economic crime category also experienced the steepest decrease in any of the four major crime types, dwindling to 4,823 cases. That is a 2,793 case decrease in fraud, theft or embezzlement cases from the number reported in fiscal year 2019, a staggering 24.5% decline.
The Sentencing Commission says the four crime categories — immigration; drugs; firearms; and fraud, theft or embezzlement — have comprised the majority of federal felonies and class A misdemeanors for the past 25 years. In fiscal year 2020, those crimes accounted for 86.4% of all cases reported to the commission.
Crimes involving companies also took a nosedive in the last fiscal year compared with 2019, with 94 organizations being sentenced, 24 less than in 2019. The commission says the number of organizational offenders has been trending downward for years, from a peak of 304 such cases in 2000.
According to the commission, 93.6% of organizations pled guilty to one or more charges in the last fiscal year, with the most common crimes of conviction being either fraud or environmental offenses.
Continuing a decadeslong trend, in fiscal year 2020, the commission says 97.8% of defendants pled guilty. The guilty plea rate has remained relatively consistent since fiscal year 2000, when 95.5% of offenders took a plea.
"It has not fallen below that level since," the commission said.
The vast majority of federal offenders — 89.1% — in fiscal year 2020 were sentenced to prison. Only 6% were sentenced to a probation-only term, where no type of confinement was imposed, while a smattering of defendants were sentenced to some combination of probation or prison and some type of alternative confinement, such as house arrest or time in a halfway house.
The average sentence imposed in the last fiscal year was 40 months, slightly down from fiscal year 2019, a decrease that the commission attributes to the large percentage of immigration cases of the total caseload.
A distinctive feature of the pandemic has been the steady drumbeat of motions for compassionate release, which were made possible by the First Step Act of 2018. That law allows incarcerated people to seek compassionate release directly from federal judges in certain circumstances.
The commission says it received documentation on fiscal year 2020 on 5,859 resentencings and other modifications of sentences, which is a 14% jump from fiscal year 2019. The commission attributes that jump to orders granting compassionate release "largely due to concerns over the effect of COVID-19 among inmates in the federal prisons."
--Editing by Stephen Berg.
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