Sentencing Law and Policy

SCOTUS unanimously reverses habeas win for defendant based on state elimination of "diminished capacity" defense

Only a matter of weeks after it was argued, the Supreme Court this morning unanimously decided that the Sixth Circuit got a habeas issue wrong in Metrish v. Lancaster, No. 12-547 (S. Ct. May 20, 2013) (available here). Here is the start of the SCOTUS opinion, per Justice Ginsburg:

Burt Lancaster was convicted in Michigan state court of first-degree murder and a related firearm offense.  At the time the crime was committed, Michigan’s intermediate appellate court had repeatedly recognized “diminished capacity” as a defense negating the mens rea element of first-degree murder.  By the time of Lancaster’s trial and conviction, however, the Michigan Supreme Court in People v. Carpenter, 464 Mich. 223, 627 N.W. 2d 276 (2001), had rejected the defense.  Lancaster asserts that retroactive application of the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter denied him due process of law.  On habeas review, a federal court must assess a claim for relief under the demanding standard set by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA).   Under that standard, Lancaster may gain relief only if the state-court decision he assails “was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by [this] Court.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).  We hold that Lancaster’s petition does not meet AEDPA’s requirement and that the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit erred in granting him federal habeas relief.

Absent something remarkable in the full opinion, I suspect it may prove to be more interesting (or at least more fun) to try to make jokes about the defendant's name in this case rather than to debate the ruling's enduring significance.

Lancaster is the only criminal justice ruling from the Supreme Court today, and I surmise from SCOTUSblog that the next decision day for the Court will be next Tuesday.  I am hopeful (but not optimistic) that the long holiday weekend will give the Justices a chance to finish off at least some of the notable criminal justices cases that we argued way back in January (Alleyne and Deschamps) and February (King and Peugh).  I am also I am hopeful (and a bit more optimistic) that the long holiday weekend will give me a chance to speculate about who may be authoring these opinions and why the are taking so long.

How quickly can and will (hundreds of) imprisoned crack defendants file "Blewett claims"?

As first discussed in this post and further here, a split panel of the Sixth Circuit on Friday handed down a significant (and questionable) ruling in US v. Blewett declaring that the reduced mandatory minimum crack sentences set out in the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 must be applied even to those offenders sentenced before the Act’s effective date.  This ruling could means still-imprisoned crack defendants sentenced in the two decades before the FSA could now seek a reduction in their mandatory minimum sentences under the FSA's new terms, at least if they were originally sentenced in the Sixth Circuit.

Though this ruling seems very likely to be appealed by the Justice Department, right now it is the law of the (Sixth Circuit) land. Notable, the folks at FAMM have already created this webpage with a basic explanation about what Blewett means and does not mean.  Here is part of what it says:

Blewett can only help federal (not state) prisoners who (1) were convicted in a federal court in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, or Tennessee, AND (2) received a mandatory minimum sentence for a crack cocaine offense, AND (3) were sentenced before August 3, 2010.  The case cannot help people convicted in state courts or federal prisoners whose cases did not involve crack cocaine....

We expect that the government will ask the entire Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to review this opinion.  If it does, and the full appeals court agrees to the review, we expect the Blewett decision to be stayed until the full court hears it.  This means that courts will not be allowed to resentence anyone using the Blewett opinion unless and until it is affirmed. We do not know how long the appeal will take, how soon it will happen, or what the outcome will be.  This opinion could be reversed, in which case it would not help anyone....

If you or a loved one are a federal prisoner serving a pre-FSA crack cocaine mandatory minimum sentence, and you were sentenced in federal court before August 3, 2010, in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, or Tennessee, call your attorney and ask them if Blewett could help you.  FAMM cannot tell you if you might benefit if the Blewett decision stands, and we cannot give you legal help or advice. You and your loved ones should talk to your attorneys.

A little bit of very rough data analysis from a variety of US Sentencing Commission publications indicates that there may still be as many as 20,000 federal prisoners currently in BOP custody serving pre-FSA mandatory minimum crack sentences, and that the Sixth Circuit has historically been responsible for about 10% of nationwide crack sentences.  That means that perhaps two thousand or more imprisoned federal defendants might reasonably file what I will can a "Blewett claim" in the district courts of the Sixth Circuit. 

Even if my data estimates are off somewhat, there are certainly many hundreds now imprisoned federal defendants, persons who were sentenced to mandatory minimum crack terms in the Sixth Circuit before August 2010, who could (and I think should) file claims ASAP that they are now entitled to resentencing under the terms of the FSA due to the Blewett ruling. I suspect that not all that many defendants or lawyers were busy drafting Blewett claims this weekend, but I also suspect that time may be of the essence for defendants eager to take advantage of this ruling while it is still good law.

Related posts on Blewett:

• On (wrong?) constitutional grounds, split Sixth Circuit panel gives full retroactive effect to new FSA crack sentences
• "Crackheaded Ruling by Sixth Circuit"

Is OJ providing a high-profile test case for the application of Lafler and Frye?

I have not been following closely the Nevada state habeas proceedings in which convicted armed robber and kidnapper (and acquitted murderer) OJ Simpson is contesting his convictions and sentences.  But this recent Christian Science Monitor article spotlights how "The Juice" is now, yet again, in court bringing attention to notable lawyering and criminal legal practice issues:

O.J. Simpson’s current appeal for a new trial has the potential to shed light on an issue that affects countless lesser-known defendants in the US court system: bad lawyering. Along the way, he might get a helping hand from the US Supreme Court.

Mr. Simpson is seeking a ruling overturning his conviction of armed robbery and kidnapping of sports memorabilia dealers in 2007. He says his counsel was inadequate and that his lawyer misled co-counsel. "I had never sold any of my personal memorabilia, ever," he testified Wednesday, dressed in prison blues.

Squabbles between lawyers and their clients and co-counsels are not uncommon, says Robert Pugsley, a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles. “Most clients in this situation are so poor or low on the economic scale that their bad lawyering doesn’t get much attention, and so the issue remains largely unnoticed,” he adds. “Whether Simpson prevails or not, this proceeding has a great chance to put the spotlight on this widespread problem.”...

Simpson’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel “will predictably devolve into a ‘he said, he said,’ conflicting, fact-based narrative by Simpson and his former attorney,” says Professor Pugsley. Simpson's counsel in the robbery case that went to trial in 2008, Yale Galanter, has refused to comment publicly but is scheduled to testify Friday.

Potentially working in Simpson’s favor is a US Supreme Court ruling last session (Missouri v. Frye) that held that the guarantee of “effective assistance of counsel” extends to the consideration and negotiation of pleas – Simpson’s key complaint.

Co-counsel in the 2008 trial, Gabriel Grasso, said on the stand this week that while Mr. Galanter told him he'd talk with Simpson about a proposed plea deal, Galanter never told Mr. Grasso why he rejected it. Grasso said he didn't know if Simpson was even told.

“O.J. might have the good luck to rely on the Supreme Court’s decision last term in Missouri v. Frye. Timing is everything,” says Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles....

Simpson maintains that advice from Galanter not to testify in 2008 is, in fact, part of the reason for this week’s appeal....

The appeal is taking place in Las Vegas, and this is Simpson's last chance under Nevada law to prove that he was wrongly convicted. A federal court appeal is still possible.

However, the standard of proof is so high that Simpson is unlikely to meet it, even if the judge believes everything he says, says Norman Garland, a professor at Southwestern Law School. “Simpson has to prove not only that the advice given to him was deficient, but that he was prejudiced by that deficiency,” says Professor Garland. “The requirements for demonstrating ineffective assistance of counsel are demanding, and the defendant must overcome a strong presumption that counsel’s performance was within the range of competent representation in order to prevail.”

A few recent related posts on Lafler and Frye:

• "Two Rights to Counsel"
• A prosecutor's potent perspective on Lafler, Frye and the future of plea bargaining
• A potent response to a prosecutor's perspective on Lafler, Frye and the future of plea bargaining

Legislative and executive officials revving up Florida's machinery of death

As reported in this lengthy new local article, "Gov. Rick Scott has accelerated the pace of signing death warrants in Florida by lining up three executions over the next few weeks, the most in such a brief period of time in more than two decades."   Here is more about his actions and recent similar activity within his state's legislature:

Scott and his chief legal adviser say they are doing nothing unusual.  But legal experts who oppose the death penalty wonder whether other factors are at work — such as Scott’s desire to improve his standing with voters as he seeks re-election next year.

Not since 1989, when an unpopular Gov. Bob Martinez set a record by signing six death warrants in a single day, has a Florida governor been so eager to use the death penalty. “In the past, governors wouldn’t do multiple warrants at a time. It was a much more orderly process than this,” said Martin McClain, an attorney who has defended many Florida Death Row inmates. “If appears that every 10 days, Gov. Scott is signing a death warrant.”

Scott recently signed three death warrants in succession, for condemned murderers Elmer Leon Carroll, William Van Poyck and Marshall Lee Gore.  All three have been on Death Row for longer than 20 years.  Their executions, set over the next six weeks, will keep the death chamber at Florida State Prison in Starke unusually busy.  Two other recent death warrants have been blocked in federal court.

Scott had signed a total of six death warrants before the recent burst. “I go through them when people have exhausted their appeals and they’re finished with the clemency process,” Scott said. “Then I continue to move the process along.”...

Scott’s spurt of death warrant signings also parallels the Legislature’s recent passage of a bill aimed at speeding up the death penalty appeals process.  Dubbed the Timely Justice Act by legislators, the bill (HB 7083) passed both chambers by wide margins.  It has not yet been sent to Scott for action.  “We’ll review it and see what it does,” Scott said of the bill.  One provision of the bill would require the governor to sign a death warrant within 30 days of a Death Row inmate’s clemency review, a standard step in all death penalty cases.

Some legal experts have raised concerns that the bill could increase the possibility that an innocent person could be put to death.  Former state Supreme Court Justice Raoul Cantero recently co-authored an opinion column in which he said the Timely Justice Act should be viewed in a broader framework of Florida’s death penalty system, “to minimize the risk that Florida might execute innocent people or others who shouldn’t be subject to the death penalty.”....

Florida is one of 33 states that has the death penalty, and it has 405 inmates on Death Row, more than any other state except California.  The state has executed 75 people since 1976, when capital punishment was re-instituted after a long absence.

"Crackheaded Ruling by Sixth Circuit"

The title of this post is the headline of this new commentary by Ed Whelan at the National Review Online concerning yesterday's suprising split panel ruling by the Sixth Circuit in US v. Blewett, No. 12-5226 (6th Cir. May 17, 2013) (opinion here; my commentary here).  Here are excerpts from Whelan's take:

[I]n an opinion that will likely surprise all nine justices, a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit ruled (in United States v. Blewett) that the more lenient sentences of the Fair Sentencing Act apply to all crack-cocaine offenders, including those who were sentenced before the Act’s effective date. The justices will be much less surprised to discover that the opinion was authored by Gilbert S. Merritt Jr. and joined by Boyce F. Martin Jr., two Carter appointees who have plagued the Sixth Circuit for more than three decades. It’s notable that the thorough dissent comes not from a Republican appointee but from Clinton appointee Ronald Lee Gilman....

Under [the panel majority's] illogic, once it becomes known that a law has a (constitutionally permissible) racially disparate impact, the maintenance of that law would suddenly be transformed into intentional discrimination. As Judge Gilman observes, there is no support for such a proposition.

As Judge Gilman spells out, there is much more that is wrong with the majority opinion, from the fact that it rules on an “unbriefed and unargued issue” to its multiple violations of circuit precedent. Let’s see if the en banc Sixth Circuit will repair the damage or will instead leave it to the Supreme Court to do so.

Unsurprisingly, folks at the ACLU and FAMM have a much different perspective on the Sixth Circuit panel majority's work in Blewett.  Here are the titles and links to the press releases coming from these groups:

• from the ACLU here, "Appeals Court Says Fair Sentencing Act Applies Retroactively"
• from the FAMM here, "Don't Appeal Crack Fairness Ruling, FAMM Tells DOJ"

For legal, policy and practical reasons, it should be very intriguing to watch closely just where, when and how the Justice Department and others are going to argue that the majority in Blewett really blew it.

Related post:

• On (wrong?) constitutional grounds, split Sixth Circuit panel gives full retroactive effect to new FSA crack sentences

A (dynamically?) dormant death penalty in Dorothy's domicile

The playfully alliterative headline for this post is spurred by this lengthy and effective local piece headlined "The Kansas death penalty has cobwebs." Here are excerpts:

It may be weeks before Kansans know if prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Kyle Flack, accused of killing four people in Franklin County this spring.   It will take far longer — 10 years or more — before anyone in the state is actually put to death for a crime.

And that time gap, advocates on both sides of the death penalty debate say, suggests the state remains deeply uneasy about the punishment — an ambivalence that muddies its value.  “When a law isn’t applied, it isn’t really a law,” said David Muhlhausen, a death penalty supporter and expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Capital punishment opponents aren’t eager to speed up executions, of course.  But they say the state’s lengthy death penalty procedure is costing taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees and other expenses without significantly improving public safety.  “Constituents have said to me, ‘We have a theoretical death penalty, but we don’t carry it out in practice,’” said Mary Sloan, executive director of the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty.  “So if we’re not going to carry it out in practice, why do we pay all that cost?”

No one has been put to death in Kansas since 1965.  “Kansas is 10 years and $20 million away from its first execution,” predicted lawyer and capital punishment opponent Sean O’Brien of Kansas City.

But death penalty supporters say the state’s ultimate sanction shouldn’t be judged solely by the number of times it’s actually used.  The mere threat of death — or decades locked in isolation, waiting for death — plays an important role, they say, in the state’s justice system.

Kansas lawmakers reinstated the state’s death penalty in 1994.  Since then, 13 men have been condemned to death for murder.  All remain alive.  Only nine sit on the state’s death row, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections’ website.  The others’ sentences were reduced after appeals and plea agreements, or have been vacated pending a new trial.

Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court validated rewritten capital punishment laws, only two states with death penalty statutes — Kansas and New Hampshire — have not executed a single inmate.

The long gap between capital crime and capital punishment in Kansas is the result of several interlocking factors, experts say.  The state’s death penalty law is narrow, providing a way for even the most brutal killers to escape the punishment.  Some prosecutors use the death penalty more as a negotiating tool than a criminal sanction, and some politicians remain ambivalent about executions, as do many residents in the state.

And the courts play a critical role.  All death sentences in Kansas are automatically reviewed by the state’s Supreme Court.  It’s uniquely allowed to “scour the record” for trial and sentencing errors in capital cases, even those not raised by defense lawyers.  That further raises the chances for delays....

This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider Kansas death row inmate Scott Cheever’s case — he claims his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination was violated during his trial and sentencing for killing a sheriff....

In 2003, a legislative audit examined the state’s death penalty expenses in the previous decade.  Kansas, the audit found, had spent or would spend almost $20 million on its 14 death penalty cases, including cases where the death penalty was sought but not granted. By contrast, taxpayers spent $6.3 million on eight cases where the prosecutors did not ask for death in a murder case.

The most expensive death penalty case involved Johnson County’s John E. Robinson Sr., convicted on two capital murder counts.  Ten years ago, the state said Robinson’s case would cost taxpayers $2.4 million, a bill that has continued to grow.  “Nobody in his right mind defends the death penalty because it saves money, anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances,” O’Brien said.  “Because it doesn’t.”...

Gov. Sam Brownback said last week that his view on capital punishment has changed in recent years, putting him to the left of most in his Republican Party.  He now believes it should be reserved for inmates who pose a future threat to society, using Osama bin Laden as an example. “You’re always looking to protect life,” he said.  “That’s a very narrow definition of the use of the death penalty.”

Brownback’s views on capital punishment in Kansas, though, may be less important than they appear.  Even if he is re-elected in 2014, it’s unlikely he would still be in office when any death row clemency requests might be filed.  But they do suggest many Kansans, even some conservatives, remain uncomfortable with the ultimate sanction....

Some prosecutors and supporters, though, say keeping the death penalty on the Kansas books remains important.  Studies show the death penalty is still a deterrent, Heritage’s Muhlhausen said, although the effect drops in states that don’t actually carry it out.

Other experts dispute his conclusion. The Kansas murder rate is 3.5 per 100,000 people, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.  In Missouri, it’s 7 murders per 100,000.  Both have the death penalty, but only Missouri has carried it out in recent years. Iowa has no death penalty.  Its murder rate is 1.3 per 100,000 people.

But even the threat of capital punishment can focus a defendant’s attention on plea agreements that spare victims’ families from long trials, some lawyers say.  In most agreements, almost all future appeals are waived, ending the trauma of court appearances and media stories about the crime.  Additionally, death penalty defendants have more to worry about than death.

Paul Cramm represented Edwin Hall, now serving a sentence of life without parole after pleading guilty to murdering Kelsey Smith. Clients, Cramm said, are often as worried about the conditions of death row as they are about the execution chamber itself, which encourages plea deals. Death row inmates are kept in El Dorado, Kan., in isolation from almost all other prisoners. Most defendants realize “the likelihood of an acquittal or a finding of not guilty is not real high,” Cramm said. “The likelihood of being executed in your lifetime is not real high. So I guess what we’re negotiating for is, what sort of life do you want to have while you’re incarcerated?”...

Asked if the gap between sentence and execution in Kansas is too long, Brownback hesitated for several seconds. “I’ve been at the chambers in Lansing, where the death penalty would have to be administered,” he said. “That’s a very sobering place to see.

“But I think it’s kind of actually worked for the state,” he added. “Most Kansans would look at it as wanting this to be very, very, very sparingly used.”

"Two Rights to Counsel"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new article by Josh Bowers now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This forthcoming essay argues that there is not one constitutionally recognized right to counsel, but two. There is a right to legal counsel and a right to extralegal counsel.  The right to legal counsel applies principally to the formal domain of the criminal trial; the right to extralegal counsel applies exclusively to the informal domains of the plea bargain and guilty plea. 

To understand the distinction, consider the Court’s recent decisions in Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye.  An underappreciated feature of these rulings is the manner by which the Court has encouraged (and perhaps even constitutionally required) counsel to bargain “creatively” around substantive law.  Specifically, the Court has signaled that prosecutors and defense attorneys — not legislators — are the system’s real policy makers, and that, accordingly, effective assistance of counsel ought to be measured against their conception of the “sound administration of criminal justice.”  In the process, the Court has almost re-conceptualized the right to counsel as a constitutional entitlement to skirt legislative command — an entitlement that Justice Scalia derisively has termed a threat to the legality principle.

It does not follow, however, that the Court’s two-track jurisprudential approach is misguided.  Whereas the approach continues a troubling trend away from legislative and lay influence over criminal justice and toward professional executive control, it also may constitute the pragmatic (and even normatively compelled) best course in a second-best system of criminal justice that depends procedurally on horse trading and substantively on mandatory sentencing statutes that ill serve any defensible conception of proportionality or crime control.

On (wrong?) constitutional grounds, split Sixth Circuit panel gives full retroactive effect to new FSA crack sentences

With thanks to all the folks who alerted me while I was dealing with other matters, I am finally back on-line and able to report on a remarkable new split panel ruling by the Sixth Circuit today in US v. Blewett, No. 12-5226 (6th Cir. May 17, 2013) (available here). The start of the majority opinion (per Judge Merritt) will highlight for all federal sentencing fans why this ruling is a very big deal:

This is a crack cocaine case brought by two currently incarcerated defendants seeking retroactive relief from racially discriminatory mandatory minimum sentences imposed on them in 2005.  The Fair Sentencing Act was passed in August 2010 to “restore fairness to Federal cocaine sentencing” laws that had unfairly impacted blacks for almost 25 years.  The Fair Sentencing Act repealed portions of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 that instituted a 100-to-1 ratio between crack and powder cocaine, treating one gram of crack as equivalent to 100 grams of powder cocaine for sentencing purposes.  The 100-to-1 ratio had long been acknowledged by many in the legal system to be unjustified and adopted without empirical support.  The Fair Sentencing Act lowered the ratio to a more lenient 18-to-1 ratio.  However, thousands of inmates, most black, languish in prison under the old, discredited ratio because the Fair Sentencing Act was not made explicitly retroactive by Congress.

In this case, we hold, inter alia, that the federal judicial perpetuation of the racially discriminatory mandatory minimum crack sentences for those defendants sentenced under the old crack sentencing law, as the government advocates, would violate the Equal Protection Clause, as incorporated into the Fifth Amendment by the doctrine of Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954) (Fifth Amendment forbids federal racial discrimination in the same way as the Fourteenth Amendment forbids state racial discrimination).  As Professor William J. Stuntz, the late Harvard criminal law professor, has observed, “persistent bias occurred with respect to the contemporary enforcement of drug laws where, in the 1990s and early 2000s, blacks constituted a minority of regular users of crack cocaine but more than 80 percent of crack defendants.”  The Collapse of American Criminal Justice 184 (2011).  He recommended that we “redress that discrimination” with “the underused concept of ‘equal protection of the laws.’” Id. at 297.

In this opinion, we will set out both the constitutional and statutory reasons the old, racially discriminatory crack sentencing law must now be set aside in favor of the new sentencing law enacted by Congress as the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010.  The Act should apply to all defendants, including those sentenced prior to its passage.  We therefore reverse the judgment of the district court and remand for resentencing.

The start of the dissent (per Judge Gilman) will highlight for all federal sentencing fans why this ruling seems sure to get en banc and/or Supreme Court review:

I fear that my panel colleagues have sua sponte set sail into the constitutional sea of equal protection without any legal ballast to keep their analysis afloat.  To start with, they “readily acknowledge that no party challenges the constitutionality of denying retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act to people who were sentenced under the old regime.” Maj. Op. 6. Opining on this unbriefed and unargued issue is thus fraught with the likelihood of running aground on the shoals of uncharted territory.

As the title of my post hints, though I really like the effort, I am not sure a Fifth Amendment equal protection theory provides a strong constitutional foundation for giving the new crack sentences retroactive effect.  But I have long thought, in the wake of the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act and the USSC's implementation of its new 18-1 crack guidelines retroactively, that a proper application of the Eighth Amendment could and should provided a reasoned and reasonable basis to give full retroactive effect to all the provisions of the FSA.

If (dare I say, when) this notable Blewett ruling gets subject to further review, I hope to have a chance to fully explicate (perhaps via an amicus brief) my Eighth Amendment approach to reaching the conclusions reached by the majority here on distinct constitutional grounds. In the meantime, we have an interesting Friday ruling to debate through the weekend.

"Capital Prejudice"

The title of this post is the title of this new article on SSRN authored by J. Richard Broughton.  Here is the abstract:

This paper, published as part of a symposium devoted to cultural competency and the death penalty, considers the law of prejudice pursuant to Strickland v. Washington, with a focus on its application in capital cases.  It offers a rarity in the academic literature on Strickland’s prejudice prong: a modest defense of it.  Although this paper concedes the plausibility of an alternative to the existing standard, it argues that some form of harm analysis ought to remain part of basic ineffective assistance jurisprudence and that even the best articulated alternative suffers from some deficiencies that render the existing standard equally desirable.  Indeed, this paper acknowledges that the existing prejudice standard is unlikely to be replaced and therefore must be properly understood and applied. 

The paper gives special attention to the standard as applied in capital cases involving ineffective assistance claims after Strickland, as those cases have tended to dominate the Court’s attention in this area of constitutional criminal procedure.  It then argues that the prejudice standard must account not simply for the strength of the state’s case but also, in the special context of a Strickland challenge arising from the capital sentencing phase, for the unique capital sentencing procedures in place in the relevant jurisdiction and be understood as intersecting with the Eighth Amendment law of aggravation and mitigation law as applied during the jury’s selection decision.

The Court’s opinions in Terry Williams, Wiggins, and Rompilla, in particular, all represented an effort to give greater bite to the Strickland standard and demonstrate that the state need not necessarily prevail on ineffective assistance claims.  But, unlike others in the academic community, I argue that the Court wrongly decided each of those cases. It gave too much attention to the deficiency prong and inadequate attention to proper application of the prejudice prong, particularly in light of the nature of the crimes, the strength of aggravation, and the highly deferential portions of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) that generally govern claims on federal habeas review.  The Court, however, has moved in a corrective direction, especially after its recent decision in Cullen v. Pinholster, which will likely have significant consequences for the litigation of ineffective assistance claims on collateral review.

"Colorado corrections alerting judges of hundreds of sentencing flaws"

The title of this post is the headline of this Denver Post article, which gets started this way:

Corrections officials are alerting judges throughout Colorado that errors appear to have resulted in early, improper release dates from prison for hundreds of prisoners they sentenced.

The judges are reviewing the case files so they can decide which of those already released from incarceration should be returned to prison to serve out the longer sentences required by state law. Other cases involve prisoners who are on the verge of release who may now see their sentences extended.

These are the early results of an audit still underway by the Colorado Department of Corrections.  Gov. John Hickenlooper ordered the department to conduct the audit after it was disclosed that a parolee believed to have murdered corrections chief Tom Clements was released from prison early because of a clerical error.

The audit, so far, has found "serious questions" in the sentences of 349 individuals either already released from prison or scheduled for release, corrections officials said.  Of those, judges have amended sentences in 56 cases.

The errors occurred for a variety of reasons.  In some cases, judicial clerks may have given incorrect sentences to the corrections department.  In others, corrections officials may have interpreted sentences incorrectly.  A full breakdown is not yet available on how the errors occurred.

The audit still is in the preliminary stages and is not expected to be finished until July. The state has identified 8,415 individuals whose sentences need reviews, with at least 2,500 warranting a more intensive look.  About a fifth of the intensive reviews have been completed. If the current error rate continues, "serious" sentencing flaws could be detected in the cases of more than 1,000 individuals.

I guess this story brings new meaning to the label "Department of Corrections."

"Incentivizing Lawfulness Through Post-Sentencing Appellate Waivers"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new paper now up on SSRN by Kevin Bennardo. Here is the abstract:

A sentencing appellate waiver is a promise by a criminal defendant not to appeal her sentence.  These provisions routinely appear in federal defendants’ plea agreements.  With a few narrow exceptions, a knowing and voluntary sentencing appellate waiver bars a defendant from appealing all issues within the scope of the waiver.  Using previous models of judicial behavior and available empirical data, this article argues that the inclusion of sentencing appellate waivers in plea agreements creates bargaining inefficiencies and removes important incentives from the sentencing process.  As a solution, the article proposes that sentencing appellate waivers should take the form of separate post-sentencing agreements.

First, during the plea bargaining stage, both parties suffer from incomplete information about the true value of the defendant’s appellate rights because neither the procedure nor the outcome of the sentencing hearing is yet known.  With that information deficiency, the parties’ default valuation of the defendant’s sentencing appellate rights are often unaligned — the defendant overvalues her appellate rights out of fear of an unjust sentence and the government undervalues the same rights based on past experiences. This disparity is magnified by the disproportionate significance that a defendant places on an unfavorable sentencing outcome relative to an unfavorable outcome’s significance to the government.  As a result, the parties inefficiently bargain over sentencing appellate waivers at the pre-plea stage.

Second, the foreknowledge that a sentence is virtually unreviewable removes important incentives from the sentencing judge.  Past research and behavioral modeling have demonstrated that the “ordinary” district court judge labors under an aversion to reversal and that this reversal aversion influences sentencing outcomes and procedures.  By signaling to the court that the prospect of appellate review has been removed, the current system of including sentencing appellate waivers in plea agreements reduces the likelihood that district courts will adhere to statutorily-required sentencing practices.

Third, the inclusion of sentencing appellate waivers in plea agreements creates difficulties in imposing meaningful consequences on defendants for breach of the agreement.  Under the current system, a breaching defendant who notes an appeal in violation of her appellate waiver suffers the consequence of having her appeal dismissed.  In general, neither the government nor the court is willing to unravel the entire plea agreement as a result of the breach.  Thus, the defendant’s breach renders her no worse off than if she had adhered to her promise not to appeal.  The government’s impotence to impose meaningful additional sanctions beyond the prospect of dismissal fails to effectively deter defendants from breaching their sentencing appellate waivers.

This article proposes a post-sentencing appellate waiver system whereby the defendant and the government may bargain for a separate sentencing appellate waiver agreement after the completion of the sentencing hearing.  During this post-sentencing bargaining, both parties will be fully informed about the sentencing hearing’s procedure and outcome, and thus will be able to appropriately value the defendant’s appellate rights and bargain efficiently.  Because a sentencing appellate waiver will not be consummated (if at all) until after the sentencing hearing is complete, the sentencing judge will be incentivized to conduct a hearing that complies with all applicable sentencing law.  And, because the government can withdraw the incremental benefit bartered in exchange for the defendant’s promise not to appeal, defendants will be disincentivized from breaching their sentencing appellate waiver agreements.

A potent response to a prosecutor's perspective on Lafler, Frye and the future of plea bargaining

Via this post last month, I noted this interesting commentary appearing in the Houston Law Review’s online edition by Graham Polando, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney in Indiana, concerning the Lafler ruling and the future of plea bargaining. Today I received an e-mail from Darryl Brown telling me that this blog post with Polando's Lafler criticism compelled him "to crank out a four-page response on why he's wrong in every way, including the sentencing angle."  This response is available here at SSRN, and Darryl reports it is forthcoming in the same e-journal.  Darryl also says his piece includes a "key un-scholarly innovation": an offer to donate $100 to prosecutors if any one of them proves Darryl wrong. 

This piece is titled "Lafler's Remedial Uncertainty: Why Prosecutors Can Rest Easy," and here is its abstract:  

Some prosecutors are dismayed by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Lafler v. Cooper. This very brief (2,000 words) comment responds to a recent version of that concern. Lafler held that a defendant who declined a plea bargain offer due to his attorney's incompetent advice, and was later convicted at trial, must be reoffered the original bargain as the first step in a remedy for denial of his right to effective counsel. Some prosecutors worry that defendants will exploit Lafler to take a shot at trial while still keeping the plea bargain in reserve.  In four pages, I explain why they should not worry.

Lafler does not guarantee defendants a sentence based on the bargain, only a chance to present that bargain to a trial court that now knows (from the intervening trial) a great deal more about a defendant's case, and which has clear authority, after Lafler, not to vacate the post-trial conviction and sentence. Further, few defendants will find it as easy as Mr. Cooper did to prove that his lawyer provided ineffective representation. And in any case defendants will have to wait years, in prison, after a trial conviction to win a Lafler claim (usually in habeas litigation) and a chance to convince a judge to resentence on the bargain's terms.

Isn't it stunningly idiotic for GOP Rep. Sensenbrenner to defend mandatory minimums because of "judge-shopping"?

This recent new article in CQ Weekly was especially notable, as I noted in this post, because it highlighted how many Republican members of Congress are now leading serious discussions of review and possible reform of the federal criminal justice system and severe federal sentencing laws.  But I needed to do this separate post to spotlight what seems to be a stunningly stupid comment from Wisconsin Republican Jim Sensenbrenner in his explanation for why he still supports federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Here is the passage from the CQ Weekly article that almost made my head explode:

While the dialogue may be changing, passing legislation, as always, is another story.  Even the idea of studying the criminal justice system proved too controversial in the Senate in 2011, when a national commission proposed by former Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia fell to partisan fighting.

The House task force might agree to weed out relatively minor crimes such as possession of a migratory bird — the kind of regulations Republicans tend to view as government overreach — but it may be less inclined to rethink the mandatory minimum sentences that many Democrats abhor.

Sensenbrenner said as much in an interview, arguing that without such sentences, prosecutors and defense attorneys would “shop” for judges based on their reputations for handing out tough or lenient penalties.  “If there isn’t a better way to stop judge-shopping, then I think we’re stuck with mandatory minimums,” he says.

Perhaps Sensenbrenner knows something magical about the operation of the federal criminal justice system that I do not know, but I am pretty sure there are no existing mechanisms for either prosecutors or defense attorneys to somehow "shop" for judges based on their sentencing reputations.  If there were, I am confident federal prosecutors would do their very darnedest to make sure they never had any sentencing cases before district judges like Jack Weinstein (who has a well-deserved reputation for abhorring any sentencing rules demanding long setences) and defense attorneys would do their very darnedest to make sure they never had any sentencing cases before district judges like Linda Reade (who has a well-deserved reputation for being eager to give long within-guideline sentences).

As regular readers should know, I think there are a few valid — but ultimately unconvincing — arguments to be made in support of some existing federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws.  And I heartily welcome supporters of existing federal mandatory minimum laws to make their very best arguments in support of the status quo, especially as Rand Paul and other notable new congressional voices urge statutory reforms.  But gosh, is it too much to ask that powerful members of Congress at least have the most basic understanding of how our existing sentencing laws and procedures actually work before they assert that we have to be "stuck with mandatory minimums"?

In my perfect sentencing law and policy world, a comment this idoitic from someone who has long played a central role in passage and reform of federal sentencing laws would be grounds for impeachment.  But, as my work on this blog so often highlights, we are very far — and, I fear, will always be very far — from my perfect sentencing law and policy world.

Some recent and older related posts:

• Noting some new GOP sentencing reform voices inside the Beltway
• Wall Street Journal pitch for the Prez to get behind the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013
• "Bipartisan Legislation To Give Judges More Flexibility For Federal Sentences Introduced"
• Justice Safety Valve Act gets bipartisan introduction in House of Representatives
• Rand Paul begins forceful pitch in campaign against federal mandatory minimums
• Potent new quote from AG Eric Holder: "Too many people go to too many prisons for far too long for no good law enforcement reason"
• Could Romney appeal to independents and minorities with bold crime and punishment vision?
• "Right on Crime: The Conservative Case for Reform" officially launches
• "NAACP, right-wing foes get friendly" when it comes to prison costs
• "Conservatives latch onto prison reform"
• NAACP head recognizes Tea Party favors some progressive criminal justice reforms (and sometimes more than Democrats)

Noting some new GOP sentencing reform voices inside the Beltway

This notable new article, amusingly headlined "An End to the Jailhouse Blues?", authored by By John Gramlich and appearing in CQ Weekly discusses what I am inclined to call the "new right on criminal justice reform" on the Hill.  Here are excerpts:

Congressional Democrats have argued for years that too many low-level drug offenders are locked away in federal prisons and that mandatory-sentencing laws disproportionately harm minorities and tie judges’ hands.  Lately, they have been joined in those criticisms by Sen. Rand Paul, a tea-party-backed Republican with White House aspirations.  “I think the Republican Party could grow more if we had a little bit more of a compassionate outlook,” the Kentuckian says.

Paul is emblematic of a quiet but unmistakable shift among conservatives in Congress when it comes to criminal justice.  Not only are Republicans engaging in a serious debate about relaxing federal criminal penalties — an idea that was once anathema to lawmakers who worried that their next campaign opponent would label them “soft on crime” — they are leading the discussion.

The House Judiciary Committee, which has poured cold water on Democratic priorities since Republicans regained control of the chamber in 2010, last week created a bipartisan, 10-member task force that will conduct a six-month analysis of the estimated 4,500 crimes on the federal books.

The task force will examine “overcriminalization” in the federal justice system and evaluate what Judiciary Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte calls an “ever-increasing labyrinth” of criminal penalties, some of them for relatively minor crimes in which perpetrators may not have realized they were breaking the law. The Virginia Republican cited the example of an 11-year-old girl who “saved a baby woodpecker from the family cat” but received a $535 fine because of a federal law banning the possession of a migratory bird.

The panel will be led by law-and-order Wisconsin Republican Jim Sensenbrenner and Virginia Democrat Robert C. Scott, an outspoken critic of more-contentious criminal policies such as mandatory minimum sentencing, which the task force will also evaluate. A diverse range of groups endorses the effort, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Heritage Foundation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

At the same time, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees federal prison spending, Frank R. Wolf of Virginia, plans to work with his Democratic ranking member, Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania, to create a separate task force to review all aspects of the rapidly growing federal correctional system. Wolf is outraged that federal prisoners are not provided more opportunities to gain work experience and believes the Bureau of Prisons is holding too many people, including ill older inmates who no longer pose a threat to society. A report by the Justice Department’s inspector general recently came to the same conclusion.

“If you’re 68 years old and you’re dying of cancer and your life expectancy is seven months, why do we want to keep you in prison?” Wolf says.

Then there is Paul, who perhaps more than any other Senate Republican aligns with Democrats on sentencing issues. Paul is co-sponsoring a bill with Democratic Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont that would allow federal judges to depart from mandatory minimum sentences under certain conditions — a so-called “safety valve” that effectively would do away with congressionally mandated punishments in many cases. Similar House legislation is co-sponsored by Scott and another Kentucky Republican, Thomas Massie. “Some of the sentencing has been disproportionately unfair to African-Americans, and so I am for getting rid of the mandatory minimums or letting judges override them,” Paul says.

He argues that young drug offenders, in particular, are vulnerable to overly harsh punishments and points out that each of the past three presidents — Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — was “accused of doing drugs as a kid.... Had they been caught, none of them would have ever been president,” he says. “Just by luck of not being caught, they did fine. But a lot of kids don’t.”...

If Republicans sound kinder and gentler on criminal justice today than they did two decades ago, their perspective has been guided by cold, hard numbers.

Goodlatte last week cited statistics showing that Congress has added an average of 500 new crimes to the law books in each of the past three decades. Those federal crimes overlap with scores of existing penalties for the same crimes enacted by the states, which handle the vast majority of the nation’s criminal trials.

The creation of hundreds of new federal crimes, combined with mandatory minimum sentencing laws and the 1984 elimination of parole for federal offenders, has resulted in a steady and costly uptick in the federal prison population. The federal corrections system is now the largest in the country, much larger than state systems in Texas and California.

In fiscal 2006, the Bureau of Prisons had 192,584 inmates. Five years later, the number had grown 14 percent to 218,936, according to a November report by the Justice Department inspector general.

Massie, formerly the top elected official in Lewis County, Ky., says his perspective has been shaped by his experience managing a local budget, where he says his “biggest line item” was incarceration. The first-term lawmaker backs a bipartisan corrections overhaul that Kentucky enacted in 2011 and said Republicans on the federal level should embrace similar changes because mass incarceration runs counter to established GOP principles on government spending. “I call it socialism with constrained mobility,” Massie says. “You’re paying for all their medical costs. You’re paying for all their food, all their housing. You’ve got to have air conditioning. Jails are not cheap.”

While the dialogue may be changing, passing legislation, as always, is another story. Even the idea of studying the criminal justice system proved too controversial in the Senate in 2011, when a national commission proposed by former Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia fell to partisan fighting.

The House task force might agree to weed out relatively minor crimes such as possession of a migratory bird — the kind of regulations Republicans tend to view as government overreach — but it may be less inclined to rethink the mandatory minimum sentences that many Democrats abhor....

While the challenges are clear, those who support the GOP-led discussion surrounding criminal justice say it is encouraging that the debate is happening at all. It’s a significant step forward that a bipartisan group of legislators is really for the first time looking in a very serious way at ways to try to get their arms around this behemoth,” says John G. Malcolm, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Some recent and older related posts:

• Wall Street Journal pitch for the Prez to get behind the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013
• "Bipartisan Legislation To Give Judges More Flexibility For Federal Sentences Introduced"
• Justice Safety Valve Act gets bipartisan introduction in House of Representatives
• Rand Paul begins forceful pitch in campaign against federal mandatory minimums
• Potent new quote from AG Eric Holder: "Too many people go to too many prisons for far too long for no good law enforcement reason"
• Could Romney appeal to independents and minorities with bold crime and punishment vision?
• "Right on Crime: The Conservative Case for Reform" officially launches
• "NAACP, right-wing foes get friendly" when it comes to prison costs
• "Conservatives latch onto prison reform"
• NAACP head recognizes Tea Party favors some progressive criminal justice reforms (and sometimes more than Democrats)

Notable new Oregon bill to allow some young sex offenders to get off registry

In this recent post about the Second Amendment rights of registered sex offenders prompted a lengthy comment thread about who does and does not end up on sex offender registries.  With that discussion fresh in mind, I found this AP story about a bill making its way through the Oregon legislature interesting:

Some young offenders convicted of having sex with underage partners would be able to request the crime be removed from their records under a bill narrowly passed by the Oregon House on Wednesday. Voting 31 to 27, the House sent the bill to the Senate with little discussion.

Under the bill, in order for adult offenders to apply to have their records erased, coercion or force could not have been used in the sex act. Other conditions include completion of all required court-ordered programs and treatments.

Proponents say the current punishment for such sex offenders does not fit the crime. Opponents say people convicted of sex crimes often reoffend and should not be able to have their records expunged. "Individuals who commit sex offenses ... this isn't their first time and it won't be their last," said Crook County District Attorney Daina Vitolins, who opposes the bill on behalf of the Oregon District Attorneys Association. To say an act is consensual when it involves a person who is too young to give consent is indefensible and minimizes the law, Vitolins said.

For offenders to have their records cleared under the proposed law, they could be no more than five years older than the victim, and the victim must be at least 14. For sex crimes committed by a minor, the victim must be at least 12 and the age difference can be no more than three years.

House Speaker Tina Kotek, a sponsor, brought the legislation forward after hearing from a constituent who was 14 when his friend's parents reported him to the authorities for engaging in inappropriate behavior — which did not involve intercourse — with their young daughter.  "This is the difference between a life of hopelessness and a future for this individual," the Portland Democrat told lawmakers last month.

Among those testifying for the bill was Matthew Shettles, who served three years' probation on a charge of sex abuse for having sex with his girlfriend in 2004 on the night of his high school graduation. In written testimony, Shettles said he had just turned 18 at the time and she was five weeks shy of 15.  A counselor learned of the encounter and was required by a mandatory reporting law to inform authorities, he said.

He said having a sex crime on his record has made it difficult to get hired and rent an apartment. Employers and housing agencies often run criminal background checks.  "It doesn't seem reasonable that a guy who had sex with his girlfriend should have to pay for the rest of his life," Shettles said in the written testimony.

Under the bill, only sex crimes that meet a specific set of requirements could be erased from an offender's record.  Among other things, the person must have successfully applied to be removed from the state's sex offender registry and cannot have been convicted of other serious crimes.

Wall Street Journal pitch for the Prez to get behind the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013

Thanks to the suggestions, and insights and energy of Harlan Protass, a criminal-defense lawyer in New York and an adjunct professor at the Cardozo School of Law, some of the ideas first expressed in this recent post concerning the proposed Justice Safetly Valve Act of 2013 now find expression in this Wall Street Journal opinion piece we co-authored.  Here is are snippets from the the piece:

There are few topics on which leading Democratic and Republican voices agree these days. But the recently introduced Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013 — which would authorize federal judges to impose prison terms below statutory mandatory minimums in some cases — represents a new bipartisan effort at addressing America's overcrowded prisons and bloated budget.  Passage of the act, though, will depend on President Obama and his Justice Department getting behind it....

The Justice Safety Valve Act, recently introduced by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) and Rand Paul (R., Ky.), and to the House by Reps. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (D., Va.) and Thomas Massie (R., Ky.), could help reduce the millions of taxpayer dollars wasted keeping thousands of people sentenced under mandatory minimum laws locked up.  The bill would enable federal judges to consider when or whether a mandatory-minimum sentence serves legitimate law-enforcement purposes given the particular circumstances of the crime and defendant.  Judges could impose prison terms below the statutory minimums only when they explain, through an on-the-record, reviewable opinion, that a shorter term is sufficient to serve the express goals of the criminal justice system set out by Congress....

[B]ipartisan support and sponsorship of the Justice Safety Valve Act highlights that prominent lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agree — at this time of lean budgets, sequester cuts and overcrowded prison facilities — that the current federal sentencing scheme is neither fair nor effective, and that mandatory-minimum sentencing laws lie at the heart of the problem.

President Obama's vocal support of this bill would signal a real commitment to using his bully pulpit to advocate on behalf of significant reform proposals.  If he does not, the president's failure to champion sentencing reform may become his most lasting federal criminal-justice legacy.

Some recent and older related posts:

• Justice Safety Valve Act gets bipartisan introduction in House of Representatives
• "Bipartisan Legislation To Give Judges More Flexibility For Federal Sentences Introduced"
• Rand Paul begins forceful pitch in campaign against federal mandatory minimums
• Potent new quote from AG Eric Holder: "Too many people go to too many prisons for far too long for no good law enforcement reason"

"Florida tries to speed up executions as Maryland, other states repeal death penalty"

The title of this post is the headline of this recent FoxNews story, which actually does provide a relatively fair and balanced perspective on some recent capital punishment legislative developments:

While other states move to abolish capital punishment, Florida lawmakers are taking an entirely different approach -- trying to speed up executions for death row inmates.

The Republican-controlled legislature has sent a bill to Gov. Rick Scott that, if signed, would require the governor to sign execution warrants 30 days after the state Supreme Court reviews cases. It would require the state to execute a prisoner within 180 days of a warrant being signed. The legislation also sets new deadlines for death row appeals.

The bill arrives on Scott’s desk just days after Maryland became the sixth state in as many years -- and the 18th state overall -- to abolish the death penalty. Democratic Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley signed the bill Thursday, ending what supporters said was decades of racial and socio-economic disparity in death penalty sentencing.

Supporters of the Florida legislation claimed their bill was aimed at improving -- rather than abolishing -- a broken system. They argue it puts an end to condemned prisoners sitting for years on death row -- often through what they consider unnecessary delays in the so-called “post conviction” process.

Republican state Sen. Joe Negron, the bill's sponsor, on Monday called that situation a “mockery” of the criminal justice system. “We believe in due process,” Negron told FoxNews.com. “But this is about cases in which there is no allegation of innocence and a succession of motion after motion.”

He and fellow state Sen. Rob Bradley also argue the bill ends the long waits that surviving families and others must endure between a murder and the justice they seek. “This bill is about closure,” Bradley told The Florida Courier.

The average stay on Florida’s death row before being executed is roughly 13 years, according to state records.

Critics of the legislation, however, question why legislators would want to, in effect, accelerate the appeals process, considering 24 people on death row have been exonerated since Florida resumed executions in the 1970s, which is more exonerations than in any other state. “It is both tragic and ironic that the state that sends the highest number of wrongfully convicted people to death row is considering speeding up executions,” said Mark Elliott, of the group Innocent on Death Row. “Speeding up executions virtually guarantees that innocent people will be executed.”

The legislation attempts to fix the problem of the accused getting shoddy legal services by suspending lawyers for five years from handling death appeals if they are found twice to have provided deficient representation.

"Plea Bargains that Waive Claims of Ineffective Assistance -- Waiving Padilla and Frye"

The title of this post is the headline of this notable and timely new article by Nancy King now available via SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

This essay addresses the growing use and enforcement of terms in plea agreements by which a defendant waives his right to attack his plea agreement on the basis of constitutionally deficient representation during negotiations leading to the agreement. Contrary to other commentators and some courts, I argue that the Constitution does not forbid the enforcement of such a waiver, and review steps a judge may have to take in order to ensure that a defendant’s express waiver of the right to effective representation during plea bargaining is knowing and voluntary.  I also argue that although the Constitution does not prohibit judges from enforcing broad waivers of the right to attack a plea-based conviction on the basis of poor representation during bargaining, routine adoption and enforcement of such terms would be unwise, and suggest several strategies to avoid this result.

I am looking forward to finding time to read this article, in part because I have seen a number of federal plea agreements than include express waivers of the right to effective representation during plea bargaining.  I have not given much thought to the constitutional status of these plea terms, but I have long thought it ethically questionable for prosecutors to demand such terms in plea agreements and for defense attorney's to urge defendants to accept such a waiver without also advising the defendant to consider seeking outside advice as to whether he can and should accept such a term in any proposed plea deals.

This view is informed by professional conduct rules (such as this one) which often require a lawyer to recommend a client seek another independent lawyer's advice before waiving potential malpractice claims. Waiving a viable IAC claim seems comparable to waiving a malpractice claim; I think similar professional rules ought to apply to lawyers in this kind of setting, especially since it is the client's liberty and future, rather than just his money, at stake in any dealmaking in any serious criminal cases.

"Retroactivity and Crack Sentencing Reform"

The title of this post is the title of this new paper by Harold Krent now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This article argues that the strong presumption against retroactive application of reduced punishments articulated in the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Dorsey v. United States is neither historically grounded nor constitutionally compelled. Although not dispositive in Dorsey, the presumption may prove pernicious in future cases, whether in dealing with marijuana decriminalization or lessened punishment for file sharing, and in no way should signal to Congress that future changes should apply prospectively only.

Although the Court reached the right result in applying the reduction in punishment for crack offenses to offenders whose sentences had not been finalized, the Court inordinately relied on the general savings statute enacted in 1871. Congress enacted that statute not to prevent retroactive decriminalization or diminution in punishment, but to avoid the consequence of abatement of pending prosecutions and penalties that, at common law, followed from alteration of a criminal statute. Congress wished to avoid the bizarre consequence of offenders walking free merely because Congress recodified a law or even increased the punishment for an offense without specifying that prosecutions could continue under the former enactment. In today’s world, the savings statute should be understood more as a default in the face of congressional silence – once it is clear that Congress considered the temporal scope of its action, the presumption disappears.

I next consider whether alternative justifications support a strong presumption for prospective application of any legislative change. I initially turn to the well entrenched norm against retroactive lawmaking. I reject the premise that the conventional reasons against retroactive measures have salience in the context of legislative amelioration of punishment. I then assess two separation of powers concerns that might justify a clear statement rule against retroactive application of congressional leniency. First, I ask whether Congress’s reduction of sentences would interfere with the President’s pardon authority under Article II, and second, whether Congress lacks the power to undo a final decision of the judiciary. The constitutional arguments raise no serious barrier to retroactive application of congressional leniency.

On the other hand, I reject the notion that Congress, in light of equal protection principles, must benefit those who previously committed the offense. To be sure, ignoring the plight of prior offenders at times seems grossly unfair, and Congress from a deterrence perspective lacks any justifiable reason to treat similarly situated offenders so disparately. Nonetheless, I argue that Congress under a retribution rationale can justify the differential punishment scheme and survive equal protection scrutiny.

In short, because there are no compelling policy or constitutional grounds to presume that congressional leniency should apply prospectively only, Congress should be accorded the discretion to determine where to draw the line in determining the proper amount of retribution for those who committed offenses prior to the decriminalization or diminution in punishment. The Court’s decision in Dorsey should have been straightforward – given the directive in the sentencing act to rectify the disparity in sentencing between crack and powdered cocaine offenses as quickly as possible, Congress intended the shortened sentences to apply to all pending cases.

Nebraska legislature sends "Miller fix" bill to governor

As reported in this local article, headlined "Lawmakers pass new sentencing limits for juveniles," a bill responsive to new Eighth Amendment doctrine which modifies the sentencing options for young killers has been passed by Nebraska's legislature.  Here are the details:

With the bill (LB44), juveniles could be sentenced to a minimum 40 years to life, with eligibility for parole after 20 years. Judges could continue to use discretion on life sentences for young people who commit first-degree murder.  And they could sentence a youth to more than the minimum.

The bill grew out of the state's need to act on a June U.S. Supreme Court ruling that indicated states must provide some meaningful opportunity for release based upon demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation.  The courts would have to consider mitigating factors in sentencing, such as age, maturity and home environment, including previous abuse of the juvenile.

LB44 passed final reading Thursday on a 38-1 vote.  Lincoln Sen. Danielle Conrad was the lone vote against it. "I just felt like the mandatory minimums were too extensive, particularly when we are talking about juveniles," she said.

But there are good aspects of the bill, Conrad said.  "And I appreciate the hard work and compromise that the committee and the sponsors and other members diligently worked on."...

The bill doesn't address retroactive action for those inmates who committed their crimes as juveniles and are serving life sentences.  Judiciary Committee Chairman Brad Ashford has said the courts would have to address that.  If signed by the governor, those men and women serving mandatory life sentences could file requests to have their sentences reviewed.

I have plans this summer to write an article explaining why I think, both as a matter of law and as a matter of policy, all significant changes to sentencing rules and procedures ought to be presumptively retroactive rather than presumptively non-retroactive (subject to constitutional limits/problems). Consequently, I think court should presume retroactivity in a setting like this one when it appears a legislature has opted not to address whether a new sentencing statute should be retroactive and has punted the issue to the courts to fill in this legislative gap.