Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

upward departure

In the federal sentencing guidelines, a court's imposition of a sentence harsher than the standard guidelines propose, as when the court concludes that a criminal's history did not take into account additional offenses committed while the prisoner was out on bail. 2. A variance between a pleading and a later pleading or proof <the departure between the plaintiffs pleadings and the actual evidence was significant>. 3. A party's desertion of the ground (either legal or factual) taken in the immediately preceding pleading and resort to another ground <the defendant's departure from the asserted alibi necessitated a guilty plea>. - depart, vb.