In June, three judges for the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reviewed an Indiana case in which an Italian-born man who had never become a citizen said he did not realize that a guilty plea in his marijuana-growing case would result in deportation. He asked to withdraw the plea. A district court judge denied the motion, but the Court of Appeals reversed that decision.

Prosecutors argued that the man, Renato DeBartolo, could face a much more severe sentence at trial; thus his push to withdraw the plea was irrational. Judge Richard A. Posner, writing the Seventh Circuit panel’s unanimous opinion, disagreed, citing the changing public opinion on drugs.

“In light of the growing movement to legalize the sale of marijuana,” Judge Posner wrote, “a jury might have thought his offense trivial and either acquitted him or convicted him of some lesser offense.”

The judge then asked the government to reconsider even pursuing the case: “The government should consider whether having served the prison sentence the government originally recommended and having then languished in the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service for a year or more and then deported to a country in which he has never really lived, DeBartolo has been punished sufficiently and should now be allowed to go home to his wife and children without facing a new trial.” Legal proceedings in his case continue.

Mark W. Bennett, a Federal District Court judge in the Northern District of Iowa, also pushed prosecutors, writing in an opinion in which he described prosecutors’ “stunningly arbitrary” decision-making over whether to file information about a drug defendant’s prior convictions, which increases their sentences.

“These decisions are shrouded in such complete secrecy that they make the proceedings of the former English Court of Star Chamber appear to be a model of criminal justice transparency,” Judge Bennett wrote in 2013. “We as judges can and should do more.”

This summer, Judge Jack B. Weinstein of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, long known for his criticism of harsh sentences for the viewing of child pornography and for some drug offenses, questioned whether prison itself was an unfair punishment.