Are there mitigating or aggravating circumstances?
The judge can “depart” from the sentencing guideline under certain circumstances. The most obvious of these are crimes in which people are killed, maimed, or deprived of property when the “normal” circumstances of the crime in question would not result in that effect: in these cases, the judge can “depart upward” and impose a stricter sentence. If the defendant helps law enforcement prosecute someone else, they can get a more lenient sentence than the guidelines dictate. The judge can also “depart downward” if the defendant had no prior criminal history and did not premeditate the crime in question. There are many grounds on which a judge can depart, and these are delineated in fairly specific terms within the Guidelines. Under Rule 32(h) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the judge has to notify both the prosecution and defense before making a departure that wasn’t proposed by either of the parties during sentencing hearings or reports. What happens if a judge departs too far
