Sixth Amendment Cases Podcast: The Federalist Society has this podcast of comments by Tom Gede on two Sixth Amendment cases argued last month: Rothgery v. Gillespie County and Indiana v. Edwards. CJLF's brief in Edwards is here.

Federal Sentencing at SCOTUSblog: On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Irizarry v. United States, No. 06-7517, to decide whether the district court must provide notice to the parties if it is contemplating a departure from the Sentencing Guidelines when the basis for departure was not in the presentence report or the party's prehearing submission. The U.S. admits error, but argues such error is harmless.

Statistics on Federal Crime Convictions: Orin Kerr at Volokh Conspiracy has a post on the 72,000 people convicted for federal crimes in 2007. The post gives the breakdown of the defendants by race in the 95% or so cases where race was recorded.

Incarcerations Impact on Crime: Thanks to Douglas Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy for this post on a new publication from the Pew Public Safety Performance Project. The publication titled, “The Impact of Incarceration on Crime: Two National Experts Weigh In”, gives Dr. Alfred Blumstein's and Dr. James Q. Wilson's views on the degree to which increased incarceration deserves credit for the drop in crime across the nation.

Kennedy v. Louisiana: Corey Rayburg Yung at Sex Crimes reports that Sex Crimes will provide extensive coverage of next weeks arguments in Kennedy. The case that will weigh the constitutionality of the death penalty for child rape. More information can be found at Sex Crimes' Kennedy v. Louisiana Resource Page.