XXVIII § 5 Remand for Expansion of the Record

If you're challenging a sentence as too harsh, the court sometimes needs more facts before it can decide. When that happens, the court can send the case back to the lower court so both sides can gather more evidence about the sentence.

This usually happens when the record from the original trial doesn't have enough information for the higher court to judge whether the sentence was fair. Instead of making a decision based on incomplete information, the court asks for more details first. This gives everyone involved a chance to present facts that matter to the excessive sentence question before a final ruling is made.