Sentencing Guidelines

MIAMI -- Alleged "dirty bomb" plotter Jose Padilla and two co-defendants were engaged in terrorism when they conspired to fight in foreign holy wars and should spend 30 years to life in prison, a federal judge ruled yesterday. The sentencing guidelines imposed by U.S. District Judge Marcia G. Cooke seemed to indicate that, at least in the case of Padilla, she would heed prosecutors' call for life without parole. A jury convicted Padilla, 37, and his co-defendants in August of conspiracy to murder, maim or kidnap persons abroad and material support to terrorism.

Nearly eight years in prison apparently did little to change David McDowell Robinson. Robinson, an Ivy League graduate whose sterling academic resume belied his penchant for financial schemes, pleaded guilty in federal court in Baltimore yesterday to devising a large Ponzi scheme that lured more than 850 investors, including victims of Hurricane Katrina. Prosecutors said Robinson's scheme attracted get-rich-quick investors who lost more than $1.2 million. It was almost identical to the operation Robinson was convicted of running more than a decade ago, government lawyers said.

WASHINGTON -- A day after the Supreme Court restored substantial power to federal judges to hand down sentences below recommended guidelines, the U.S. Sentencing Commission gave them additional authority to reduce prison terms for those already locked up for crack cocaine- related crimes. The commission's unanimous vote yesterday was viewed by many legal experts as a belated turning point in the often fractious, two-decade-old debate over how best to deal with defendants who violate federal drug laws.

In an effort to avoid prison time, the wife of former state Sen. Thomas L. Bromwell Sr. is adopting a time-honored legal strategy with a new twist. Blame your lawyer. Or in this case, blame your three former attorneys. Mary Patricia Bromwell, who has been represented by four separate lawyers, argued in court papers that the federal judge at her sentencing today should not penalize her for waiting more than 1 1/2 years after her indictment to plead guilty. She pleaded in July to accepting a salary for a no-show job at a contractor controlled by Baltimore-based Poole and Kent construction company in return for her husband's intervention in contract talks.

From office secretaries to elected officeholders, nearly 60 people sympathetic to former state Sen. Thomas L. Bromwell submitted letters in court papers yesterday ahead of his sentencing on bribery charges in federal court in Baltimore. In more than 70 pages of passionate and personal letters about the convicted Baltimore County Democrat, Bromwell's friends - from his dry cleaner to his congressman, Democratic Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger - wax nostalgic about his accomplishments during 23 years in the General Assembly and plead for mercy in the wake of the former politician's admission of guilt.

WASHINGTON -- Hearing arguments in a pair of drug cases, the Supreme Court justices said yesterday that they were inclined to give sentencing judges more leeway - but not total freedom - to impose shorter prison terms. In the 1980s, Congress adopted sentencing guidelines that set the range of prison terms for all federal crimes. The stiff guidelines and the mandatory minimum sentencing laws have swelled the prison population. Last year, 181,622 inmates were in federal prisons, up from 24,363 in 1980.

His former boss testified in support of him yesterday. His jailhouse psychologist and social worker, too. Backed by what his public defender called "an unusual show of support," an Annapolis man pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six years in prison yesterday for crashing a sports car while drunk and then carjacking a pickup truck in Edgewater, wielding a screwdriver as a weapon. Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Paul A. Hackner acknowledged witnesses' accounts that Ronald L. Harden Jr., 37, had struggled with depression and substance abuse and deserved a chance for rehabilitation.

In federal court in Baltimore yesterday, Thomas L. Bromwell Sr. leaned back in his chair, the practiced pose of a confident committee chairman used to receiving witnesses. But when the judge entered the room, it was Bromwell who sat up straight in the defendant's seat and answered a series of questions that ended with his guilty plea to racketeering conspiracy and tax evasion. The man who once called himself "a rainmaker" admitted that as a Democratic state senator from Baltimore County, he had accepted bribes from a construction company executive in return for help in securing publicly funded contracts.

WASHINGTON -- In commuting the jail sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr., President Bush said the former vice presidential aide had suffered enough and the 30-month prison term ordered by a federal judge was "excessive." But records show the Justice Department under the Bush administration frequently has sought sentences as long, or longer, in cases similar to Libby's. Three-fourths of the 198 defendants sentenced in federal court last year for obstruction of justice - one of four crimes for which Libby was found guilty by a jury last March - got some jail time.

WASHINGTON -- A former Bush administration official, once described by Jack Abramoff as "our guy" at the Interior Department, pleaded guilty yesterday to lying to Senate investigators probing the scandal surrounding the convicted Republican lobbyist. J. Steven Griles, a coal mining official who was deputy to Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton between 2001 and 2005, became the ninth figure to be convicted of a crime as a result of the Justice Department investigation into Abramoff - and the second to have held a high-ranking position in the Bush administration.