AnAmericanMother - perhaps you can help on this thread. Dog Gone and I have been trying to figure out how Noriega qualifies for a release in 17 years on a 30 year sentence. It looks like he was sentenced after the reforms, so I would have thought he would have had to do more of his sentence.
Can you shed any light on this?
I haven't had anything to do with federal criminal procedure since I clerked for a federal district court judge from 1980 to 1982. When I was in private practice, I was a civil defense litigator . . . and now I work on the state law side so I hardly ever see any federal law. Last time I can remember even talking to the feds is when a district court judge had one of twelve companion cases on diversity jurisdiction, and called the state court to make sure he was singing from the same page as the judges who had the other 11 . . .