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When the court provide a sentence to an adult offender, the judge may request a pre-sentence report which contains verified information regarding the defendant's circumstances, an assessment of the offender's behaviour as well as additional information relevant to sentencing in order to determine appropriate length of probation sentence. [5]
In United States law, an Alford plea, also called a Kennedy plea in West Virginia, [1] an Alford guilty plea, [2] [3] [4] and the Alford doctrine, [5] [6] [7] is a guilty plea in criminal court, [8] [9] [10] whereby a defendant in a criminal case does not admit to the criminal act and asserts innocence, but accepts imposition of a sentence.
The report has an immediate purpose: to help the court determine an appropriate sentence as well as aide in officer sentencing recommendations. The report serves to collect objective, relevant, and factual information on a specific defendant. [7] Since the advent of the sentencing guidelines, the importance of the presentence reports has increased.
The life sentence Graham received meant he had a life sentence without the possibility of parole, "because Florida abolished their parole system in 2003". [29] Graham's case was presented to the Supreme Court of the United States, with the question of whether juveniles should receive life without the possibility of parole in non-homicide cases.
Community sentence [1] [2] or alternative sentencing or non-custodial sentence is a collective name in criminal justice for all the different ways in which courts can punish a defendant who has been convicted of committing an offense, other than through a custodial sentence (serving a jail or prison term) or capital punishment (death).
Under the federal criminal code, however, with respect to offenses committed after December 1, 1987, parole has been abolished for all sentences handed down by the federal system, including life sentences. A life sentence from a federal court will therefore result in imprisonment for the life of the defendant unless a pardon or reprieve is ...
Thus, a trial court must separately analyze each individual statement, "sentence-by-sentence", [4] rather than analyzing the narrative as whole for hearsay content or exceptions. "The truth of the matter asserted" means the statement itself is being used as evidence to prove the substance of that statement.
That may occur if new evidence is discovered to exonerate the convicted person or in attempts to have the sentence commuted to life imprisonment. In the United States, all death sentences are automatically stayed pending a direct review by an appeals court. If the death sentence is found to be legally sound, the stay is lifted.