Hear It From the People Who Influence Your Outcome

Judge Stephen Bough sits on the federal bench in the Western District of Missouri. Some days he handles eight sentencings in Jefferson City, gets in his car at 5:00, and drives to another courthouse for more. In his interview with Michael Santos, he explained what he reads before you stand in front of him, what he skims, and why he walked out of one hearing having added 40 months to the sentence he planned to give. Watch this before you write a word of your statement to the court.

• Your lawyer telling him you're sorry counts for about 1 to 2 percent. Your own words, showing you understand who you hurt, count far more.
• One defendant sent him 67 character letters. He suggests about five, from people who know your history and can describe what you've done since your arrest.
• What you tell your probation officer in the presentence interview becomes evidence. Judge Bough calls a full account of how you got there “good advocacy.”
• Restitution paid before sentencing, even a small amount, shows him you started fixing the damage without waiting for an order.
• Nervous is normal. Reading a written statement can be just as powerful as speaking from memory; when one woman broke down, he read her statement aloud for her.

Chris Maloney spent his career in federal probation, including seven years as chief U.S. probation officer for the District of New Jersey and eight years in the same role for the District of Massachusetts. In his interview with Michael Santos, he explained why your judge may know you only from a few minutes at your change of plea hearing, and why the probation officer's report fills in the rest. Watch this before your presentence interview, and before you decide what documents to bring.

• Your judge relies on the probation officer to show who you are. The guidelines are a grid; the information you provide gives the judge a basis to sentence outside it.
• The presentence report follows you for years. The Bureau of Prisons uses it to set your security classification, choose your prison, and decide your programming. When you come home, your probation officer reads it before meeting you.
• Gather proof of your ties to the community, your work history and employment efforts, and any steps you've taken on substance abuse or mental health. He says you can share this kind of information, even before you plead, without compromising your case.
• Research the prisons you qualify for and the programs each one offers. Explain to your probation officer why a specific facility would help you prepare for release; that reasoning can appear in the report and support your judge's recommendation at sentencing.
• Keep the magistrate judge who released you informed of your progress since your first appearance. He has seen magistrate judges write letters supporting people at sentencing because they watched them follow through.

Paul Bertrand spent 12 years as an FBI agent in Los Angeles, investigating investment fraud and later supervising the mortgage fraud and bank fraud squad from 2007 to 2010. He was also the agent who investigated me. In our webinar, I asked him about a belief I hear every week: that cooperating, or getting along well with the agents, will keep you out of prison. Watch this before you sit down for a proffer.

• In his entire career, across his own cases and his squad's, he remembers one cooperator who received straight probation. That man cooperated on multiple cases for about five years. Every other cooperator he worked with received a shorter sentence and still went to prison.
• Cooperation doesn't set your sentence. It gives the prosecutor a reason to ask for a downward departure, and the judge decides. The prosecutor will often ask the agents what they think of you before making that recommendation.
• A good relationship with the agents is not a path to probation; in most cases, he says, believing that is “absolutely untrue.” They are building a case for a room full of 12 strangers, and at trial the agent tells the story as it happened.
• In a proffer, tell all of it. Leaving something out counts the same as lying. One defendant's false account sent him on a year of chasing leads, and it ended that man's chance to cooperate.
• Cooperation isn't the only way to a lower sentence. He has seen defendants who never cooperated receive large downward departures at sentencing for a range of reasons.