"prior sentence" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It refers to a previous sentence or statement that was made or written before the current one. Example: "The defendant appealed the judge's ruling in the prior sentence, arguing that it was unjust and based on false evidence."
When Judge Amy Berman Jackson today sentenced Paul Manafort to 73 months in prison (30 of which will run concurrent with his prior sentence), one phrase in her lengthy pre-sentencing comments stood out for me above all the rest.
Each had served a prior sentence for theft, and each had done a stretch in solitary confinement for breaking prison rules.
"Just to clarify, my prior sentence for Paul Manafort was not" just for conspiring to violate FARA, but also to violate foreign bank account registration requirements, income tax and money laundering laws, Jackson said.
In fact, he and his colleagues also warn me that although I pulled all examples in the prior sentence from thin air, I will probably get letters from readers saying one of those things actually happened to them.
Its presence seems to depend on (at least) the language being read, visual properties of the text (e.g., initial letter capitalization), the type of relationship between preview and target, and as shown here, semantic constraint generated by the prior sentence context.
"Was" being the operative word in the prior sentence.
The court disagreed, saying the prior sentences, though unenforceable, remained relevant.
Following the decision, the Supreme Court allowed individual states to decide whether to apply the ruling retroactively; the states of Alabama, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania decided to uphold all prior sentences.
He said: "The justice system is failing to deter criminals who remain active for many years and sentences are clearly not working to rehabilitate when most offenders go back to crime regardless of how many prior sentences they have served.
The final (test) sentence of each story differed in whether it continued the grammatical subject (and first-mentioned character) established in prior sentences or shifted to a new one, and whether it had a pronoun or a lexical noun phrase subject.
Being in a state of inspiration also predicts the creativity of writing samples across scientific writing, poetry, and fiction (as judged by a panel of fellow students) independent of SAT verbal scores, Openness to Experience, positive affect, specific behaviors (e.g., deleting prior sentences), and aspects of the product quality (e.g., technical merit).
