Joseph L. Thomas v. United States

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that sentence may not be augmented based on defendant’s refusal to confess
• vacating a sentence “because prior to imposing sentence the judge advised the defendant that the judge had no doubt whatsoever as to his guilt, and that if he then confessed his guilt the court would take that into account in the length of sentence to be imposed”
• district court abused its discretion in threatening the defendant with a longer sentence if he did not “come clean and make a clean breast of this thing for once and for all”
• harsher sentence imposed because defendant refused to admit his guilt of crime for which he was convicted
• sentence constituted penalty upon exercise of defendant’s Fifth Amendment rights

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).