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Federal Bench — Northern District of Iowa

Judge Donald O'Brien

Northern District of Iowa — Sentencing Profile

Aggregate sentencing patterns and caseload data for Donald O'Brien compiled from verified federal court records. Statistical frequencies only — never a prediction about a specific case or defendant.

Generated June 22, 2026

Name-match note: Records were linked across USSC and CourtListener with a name-similarity score of 0.50. Below 0.80 the link is weaker — verify the cl_person_id matches the judge before relying on this profile.

Sentencing & Caseload Snapshot

USSC Sentences

262

FY14-23 indexed

Median Sentence

30.5 mo

across indexed cases

Total Dockets

306

indexed in corpus

Criminal Fraction

37.9%

of indexed dockets

Aggregate frequencies from public USSC sentencing datafiles and CourtListener docket records. Not a prediction about any specific case.

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Sentencing Distribution

Distribution metrics from 262 indexed USSC sentences. Departure rates indicate how often sentences fell outside the calculated guideline range.

Sentencing distribution from USSC FY14-23 datafiles
MetricValue
Median sentence30.5 mo
Mean sentence56.2 mo
Interquartile range (P25 — P75)10.5 mo — 84.0 mo
Downward departure rate46.0%
Upward departure rate0.0%
Substantial-assistance rate—
Government-sponsored below-range rate—

Offense Mix

Top offense categories among indexed sentences. A judge's offense mix reflects the docket they were assigned, not their personal selection.

  • prison114 (43.5%)
  • drug trafficking105 (40.1%)
  • extortion racketeering26 (9.9%)
  • gambling7 (2.7%)
  • assault2 (0.8%)
  • robbery2 (0.8%)

Other Judges to Research

Looking up more than one judge? These are other judges with published sentencing data in the same state.

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This is legal information, not legal advice. Aggregate data from verified public court records. Nothing here predicts a specific outcome.