News just broke that the Acting AG, Monty Wilkinson, has rescinded the infamous Sessions‘s charging policy, and reinstated AG Holder’s charging policy, which directs prosecutors to conduct an individualized assessment of relevant facts in making charging and sentencing decisions. The Wilkinson memo “supersedes any conflicting Justice Manual provisions.”
Today’s guidance ends Sessions’s mandate that prosecutors should, as a “core principle,” “charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense.” Although the 2010 Holder memo also directs prosecutors to “ordinarily charge” the most serious offense, it emphasizes that charging determinations should be made in the context of an “individualized assessment of the extent to which particular charges fit the specific circumstances of the case, are consistent with the purpose of the Federal criminal code, and maximize the impact of Federal resources on crime.”
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