This Act gave the U.S. Courts the power to appoint Federal Probation Officers and authority to sentence defendants to probation instead of a prison sentence.

Under rules drafted by the Pentagon last month, the commissions would be permitted to sentence defendants to imprisonment or even death on the basis of hearsay or coerced testimony.

The three strikes law requires judges to sentence defendants to life in prison without parole when they are found guilty of three violent crimes.

Romney's legislation required the presence of scientific evidence such as DNA to sentence someone to death and a tougher standard of "no doubt" of guilt for juries to sentence defendants.

Instead, judges will have the discretion to sentence defendants in such cases to a two-to-three-month drug-treatment program that will be housed at the former Willard psychiatric hospital in the Finger Lakes region.

The judge also recently announced plans to sentence defendants to apologize to victims in speeches of at least a minute on the courthouse steps at noon, and to give the news media 48 hours notice.

But under New York's sentencing laws, judges have no choice but to sentence defendants to a prescribed range of years for specific crimes.

In 1983 the Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutional to sentence a defendant with six previous nonviolent offenses to life in prison for passing a bad $100 check.

Sawyer was convicted by a unanimous jury, which then proceeded to sentence defendant to death.

The Capital Jury Project at Northeastern University, which has interviewed 1,200 jurors from death penalty trials in 14 states, found that more than half the jurors said they had decided to sentence defendants to death before the sentencing phase.