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Home > Journals > Michigan Law Review > MLR > Volume 36 > Issue 1 (1937)

 

Abstract

It is generally conceded that when a sentence is illegal in the sense that it exceeds the maximum prescribed by statute, it may be modified by a reviewing court, although it is not clear that common-law courts were always regarded as having such power. Power to modify in such cases is now recognized in federal courts as well as in state courts. Quite another question arises when the sentence appealed from is within the limits allowed by law but is urged to be unduly severe. The decision in the recent case of Beckett v. United States that the federal circuit court of appeals is without authority to reduce sentences which it may regard as excessive but which are within the statutory limits is in accord with modern federal precedents. It is noteworthy that before the creation of the circuit courts of appeals, under the older organization of the federal judiciary, the federal circuit courts assumed the power on appeal to alter too lenient or too severe sentences in criminal cases. This assumption was based on a statute which gave those courts appellate jurisdiction in certain criminal cases in which the sentence included imprisonment or a fine of at least three hundred dollars. The language on which the decisions relied was, "And in case of an affirmance of the judgment of the district court, the circuit court shall proceed to pronounce final sentence and to award execution thereon." That a court within the federal system may be given power to review sentences is illustrated by the practice of the Supreme Court of the Philippine Islands. That court customarily exercises its authority to reduce or increase sentences on appeal.

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