Not the usual response

Lizette Alvarez has an article in The New York Times about a jailed terrorist:

A federal appeals court ruled on that the seventeen-year prison sentence imposed on Jose Padilla, who was convicted of terrorism conspiracy in 2007, was too lenient and sent the case back to the district court for a new hearing. In a two-to-one opinion, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta ruled that the sentence was “substantively unreasonable” and did not take into account Padilla’s violent criminal history as a former gang member in Chicago. It also said the lower court did not take seriously enough Padilla’s time at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, where he was trained to kill. “Padilla poses a heightened risk of future dangerousness due to his al-Qaeda training,” the court said. “He is far more sophisticated than an individual convicted of an ordinary street crime.” The appellate court also affirmed Padilla’s conviction and that of his two co-defendants.
The government had appealed Padilla’s sentence, which was seventeen years and four months, seeing it as too great a departure from federal sentencing guidelines.
After a four-month trial in 2007, Padilla, a Brooklyn-born convert to Islam who grew up in Chicago, and two co-defendants were convicted of conspiring to murder, kidnap and maim people in foreign countries. Prosecutors said the three helped foster jihad as part of a North American cell that provided money, recruits, and supplies to Islamic extremists. The sentences of Padilla’s co-defendants stand.
Padilla, now 40, was first arrested in 2002 at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago on suspicion that he was planning to set off a radioactive 'dirty' bomb. He was held in military detention in South Carolina as an enemy combatant for more than three years. Subsequently, he was transferred to civilian custody and was tried in federal court. His case became a focus of the debate over the Bush administration’s approach to prosecuting terrorism. The dirty-bomb accusation was eventually dropped and not raised in court.
Judge Marcia G. Cooke of Federal District Court, who presided over the trial, said at the sentencing in January of 2008 that, while she understood the gravity of the crimes, no evidence linked Padilla and his co-defendants to specific acts of terrorism. She also took into account his age, the sentences of other people convicted on terrorism-related charges, and his time in the naval brig in South Carolina.
But the federal appeals court said Judge Cooke made several errors in calculating Mr. Padilla’s sentence. For one, she “unreasonably discounted” his troubled past, which included seventeen prior arrests and participation as a juvenile in an armed robbery that ended in the victim’s death. Padilla served four years in juvenile detention.
The trial judge also overestimated Padilla’s potential for turning his life around upon release from prison, the court stated. Padilla’s terrorist training sets him apart from an ordinary street thug, the court argued. And while the appeals court said it was permissible to reduce a sentence on account of harsh conditions during pretrial confinement, Judge Cooke went too far when she shaved off more than nine years.
Padilla’s lawyer presented evidence that Padilla spent long periods in isolation while in military detention and said he was subjected to interrogation, sleep and sensory deprivation, and temperature variations, among other things.
In her dissenting opinion, Judge Rosemary Barkett said Judge Cooke had properly weighed all of these factors, including Padilla’s time in the brig, and did not abuse her discretion. Instead, Judge Barkett said, the appellate court was overstepping its bounds.
Both sides can ask the full appeals court to rehear the case or petition the Supreme Court to review the decision.

Rico says normally the courts say a sentence is too long, but it's nice to see they can play both ways...