Many states, led by Republicans as well as by Democrats, have acted to reduce sentences for low-level and nonviolent crimes and to improve drug and other treatment services, while still bringing down crime rates.
via the New York Times
Author: Christopher Jennison
Syracuse.com: Court system using intensive program to turn Central New York criminals into good citizens
Interesting writeup on Syracuse.com on a new program that encourages those leaving prison to make steady progress toward re-entry through goals:
The participants get assigned three or four goals every month that might not seem so difficult to most people: getting a driver’s license, getting an ID card, opening a bank account, getting more education and landing a job.
But most of these guys have never had a job.
“Some of them have never received praise, never had a role model,” [Assistant U.S. Attorney Tamara] Thomson said. “They don’t know what a goal is.”
Judge Richard Kopf (D. Neb.) on Mandatory Minimums in Criminal Sentencing
Federal Judge Richard Kopf, senior status judge of the District of Nebraska, posted a short Q&A yesterday on his blog on the topic of mandatory minimums. Interesting thoughts from a 20+ year jurist:
1) In your decades of courtroom experience, how have the mandatory minimum sentence laws changed the power dynamic between prosecutors and judges? In your view, are these laws an encroachment upon the judicial branch and the prerogative of the individual judge by the executive and legislative branches?
Yes, mandatory minimum sentences give must more power to prosecutors since they get to determine what charges to file and thereby decide whether to trigger a statutory minimum. Attorney General Holder has done some things to encourage prosecutors to avoid mandatory minimums where they are inappropriate and that is a good thing.
As to the second part of your question, there is nothing inherently wrong with Congress enacting mandatory minimums. After all, Congress has the power to pick specific and definite sentences for any crime on the books. That said, if you believe in the Sentencing Guidelines, as I do, mandatory minimum sentences distort them because they require the Sentencing Commission to implement those minimums and then peg the rest of the sentences around those benchmarks. In order to maintain proportionality between offenders mandatory minimums tend to drive up sentences under the Guidelines when there is frequently no good theoretical reason to do so.
2) While mandatory minimum sentences have been accused of creating one-size-fits-all sentencing, what about the possibility that eliminating them would create a nebulous system wherein the judge’s ideological beliefs would influence sentencing to the point of creating a roulette-like situation for defendants? Considering this possibility seems especially salient in the wake of United States v Booker, which made the federal sentencing guidelines advisory rather than mandatory.
This question reflects a very sophisticated understanding of the problem. The reason for the Sentencing Guidelines was primarily to avoid unwarranted sentencing disparity among like offenders. Now, judges are much more free to impose their personal preferences when they sentence people. That is becoming a big problem with judges across the nation, and even in the same district, imposing vastly different sentences for similar offenders. A good example may be found in child pornography sentences that seem to vary widely despite the similarity of offense and offenders. Thus, selective mandatory minimums are a way of imposing a minimum level of equality, albeit it at a great cost.
3) Prosecutors argue that the threat of minimum sentencing is a useful tool in extracting information that can lead to capturing bigger fish in exchange for a plea bargain, but do you feel this way of doing things can lead to a defendant being implicitly punished for exercising their Sixth Amendment rights?
Yes, but only sorta. There is no doubt that people facing a stiff mandatory minimum sentence take on more risk by deciding to go to trial when facing a mandatory minimum. But it is also true that mandatory minimum sentences provide an incentive for criminals to cooperate with the government. Whether the cost–a “tax” on the right to trial–is worth the benefit–cooperation–is a policy question that is hard to answer. On balance, I would do away with mandatory minimums not because of the trial “tax” but because they skew the Guidelines and detract from the Sentencing Commission’s ability to do the job it was designed to do by imposing external minimums that may have little or nothing to do with the proper sentence.
4) Is there a poignant case that you presided over which illustrates the ineffectiveness or insensibility of these laws? Or conversely, their necessity.
I sentenced a young black man (around 30) to a mandatory life sentence because of two relatively minor prior drug felonies after he rolled the dice and went to trial on a third drug charge. The evidence against this fellow was overwhelming and he was an idiot for going to trial. He had a good lawyer who he ignored. He fully knew the risks. He was involved with crack and powder cocaine. He was not a drug king pin, but he did harm to his community by making crack and selling the drug. No guns were involved, and he was not otherwise violent. I leave it you to judge whether sending a 30-year-old drug dealer to prison for the rest of his life because of two relatively minor prior drug felonies is good or bad policy.
Representation in Capital Cases
“But the quality of representation in capital cases is often so low that it’s difficult to shock the courts.”
– John H. Blume, a professor and director of the death penalty project at the Cornell Law School.
On Drunk Lawyers, Intellectual Disability, and Lethal Injection in Georgia
A parole panel in Georgia refused on Monday to grant clemency to a man who is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday evening, apparently unpersuaded by evidence that he was ineptly represented at trial by a drunken lawyer, had an exceptionally harsh childhood and has a severe intellectual deficit.
But in what could be a legal decision with wider effects, lawyers for the man, Robert Wayne Holsey, were still waiting for the Georgia Supreme Court to respond to a last-minute appeal. They argued that the state’s standard for determining intellectual disability in capital cases — the country’s most stringent — runs afoul of a recent decision by the United States Supreme Court.
Mr. Holsey was convicted of armed robbery and murder in 1997 and sentenced to death. He had robbed a convenience store and shot and killed a pursuing officer.
His trial lawyer later admitted that at the time he was drinking up to a quart of vodka daily and facing theft charges that would land him in prison. He said he should not have been representing a client.
On appeal, a Superior Court judge ruled that during the penalty phase of Mr. Holsey’s trial, his lawyer had failed to effectively present evidence that might have forestalled a death penalty, including facts about Mr. Holsey’s history and his intellectual deficit. That judge called for a new sentencing trial.
But the Georgia Supreme Court reversed the decision, ruling that the jury had heard enough evidence about mitigating factors during the initial trial…
The state requires defendants to prove that they are intellectually disabled “beyond a reasonable doubt…”
In other states, either a “preponderance of evidence” or “clear and convincing evidence” is necessary to establish disability, said Eric M. Freedman, a law professor and death penalty expert at Hofstra University. Both are less stringent standards than the one used in Georgia.
Robert Wayne Holsey Faces Lethal Injection in Georgia, NYTimes.com, 12/8/2015