Sentencing Law and Policy

SCOTUS via 6-3 vote rules Texas yet again misapplied its Eighth Amendment jurisprudence prohibiting the execution of those with intellectual disability

In the middle of this lengthy new SCOTUS order list, which has lots of cert denials and individual opinions about cert denials, is one notable Supreme Court opinion on the merits in Moore v. Texas, No. 18–443 (S. Ct. Feb. 19, 2019). The start and last substantive paragraph of the 10-page per curiam opinion for the Court provides the basics:

In 2015, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held that petitioner, Bobby James Moore, did not have intellectual disability and consequently was eligible for the death penalty.  Ex parte Moore, 470 S.W.3d 481, 527–528 (Ex parte Moore I).  We previously considered the lawfulness of that determination, vacated the appeals court’s decision, and remanded the case for further consideration of the issue.  Moore v. Texas, 581 U. S. ___, ___ (2017) (slip op., at 18).  The appeals court subsequently reconsidered the matter but reached the same conclusion.  Ex parte Moore, 548 S.W.3d 552, 573 (Tex. Crim. App. 2018) (Ex parte Moore II).  We again review its decision, and we reverse its determination....

We conclude that the appeals court’s opinion, when taken as a whole and when read in the light both of our prior opinion and the trial court record, rests upon analysis too much of which too closely resembles what we previously found improper.  And extricating that analysis from the opinion leaves too little that might warrant reaching a different conclusion than did the trial court.  We consequently agree with Moore and the prosecutor that, on the basis of the trial court record, Moore has shown he is a person with intellectual disability.

Chief Justice Roberts has this one-paragraph concurrence in the case:

When this case was before us two years ago, I wrote in dissent that the majority’s articulation of how courts should enforce the requirements of Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), lacked clarity.  Moore v. Texas, 581 U.S. ___, ___–___ (2017) (slip op., at 10–11).  It still does.  But putting aside the difficulties of applying Moore in other cases, it is easy to see that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals misapplied it here.  On remand, the court repeated the same errors that this Court previously condemned — if not quite in haec verba, certainly in substance.  The court repeated its improper reliance on the factors articulated in Ex parte Briseno, 135 S.W.3d 1, 8 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004), and again emphasized Moore’s adaptive strengths rather than his deficits.  That did not pass muster under this Court’s analysis last time.  It still doesn’t.  For those reasons, I join the Court’s opinion reversing the judgment below.

Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, pens a three-page dissent with concludes this way:

The Court’s foray into factfinding is an unsound departure from our usual practice.  The error in this litigation was not the state court’s decision on remand but our own failure to provide a coherent rule of decision in Moore.  I would deny the petition for a writ of certiorari.  I certainly would not summarily reverse and make our own finding of fact without even giving the State the opportunity to brief and argue the question.  I therefore respectfully dissent.

There is a whole lot here to notice, but I think especially important and notable is the fact that the newest Justice, Justice Kavanaugh, is with the majority of the Court and not the dissenters here. Because of the Chief Justice's vote, Justice Kavanaugh is not technically a swing vote in this capital case.  But his vote still reveals that, unlike Justices Alito and Thomas (and even seemingly Justice Gorsuch), Justice Kavanaugh may be more inclined to scrutinize state capital practices than certain of his conservative colleagues.

A detailed accounting of many steps for everyone to follow-up on the FIRST STEP Act

Mark Holden has this new commentary at The Crime Report headlined "The First Step Act: It’s Only a ‘First Step’."  I recommend the piece in full, and here are excerpts:

Signed into law during the closing days of 2018, the bipartisan First Step Act expands rehabilitative programming, modifies some mandatory minimum laws to provide more proportional sentencing, and provides a second chance to people like [Matthew] Charles who’ve worked hard to transform their lives while in prison.... The law is also acting as a catalyst for states that haven’t yet reformed their criminal justice systems.

But as important as the law is, additional steps are needed to improve our criminal justice system.  To bring about transformative change, policymakers at all levels must act.  The private sector, civic organizations and community leaders must also do their part to ensure that the formerly incarcerated can find work, housing and access the tools they need to succeed after being freed....

Congress should apply three of the law’s sentencing changes retroactively, to help people who received overly harsh sentences under outdated policies and pass other front-end reforms that prioritize prison beds for dangerous criminals while addressing low-level, nonviolent offenses through treatment and other programs that better serve this population.

In addition, Congress should codify the Supreme Court ruling that requires prosecutors share all of the information that they have about the alleged crime with the accused at the outset the case.  Lawmakers can also address our over-incarceration epidemic by clarifying criminal intent standards and working to rein in our bloated federal criminal code and regulatory code, under which virtually anyone can be charged with a crime.

The Trump administration can act on its own to reform the executive clemency process to create second chances for people who wouldn’t necessarily qualify for relief under the First Step Act.

States can parallel many of these federal actions by removing barriers for people with criminal records. More “Clean Slate” laws, like the one enacted in Pennsylvania last year, will create second chances for people by unblocking them from jobs, housing, and education.

States could also increase the transparency of their criminal justice systems through more data collection and enhanced due process protections for citizens.  Across the country individuals are incarcerated awaiting trial without considering other factors like the potential for flight risk, or whether the individual poses a threat to public safety, while others are incarcerated due to excessive fees and fines, and technical violations....

Businesses can help transform lives and enable people to contribute to their communities by hiring qualified candidates with criminal records.  I’m proud to work for Koch Industries, which hires people with criminal records and recently signed the Getting Talent Back to Work pledge with the Society for Human Resource Management to end outdated, non-inclusive hiring practices.

Finally, groups like Hudson Link for Higher Education, Safe Streets & Second Chances and The Last Mile can provide incarcerated people with skills and identify obstacles that prevent them from succeeding after their release....

We believe, as Winston Churchill did, in “an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure, if you can only find it, in the heart of every man.” We all share a moral imperative to help find and unlock that treasure, to unleash the potential in everyone.

If we all do our part, we can bridge the partisan divide and build on the great foundation provided by the First Step Act. It’s time to take the next steps on criminal justice reform, this year and beyond.

"A World of Steel-Eyed Death': An Empirical Evaluation of the Failure of the Strickland Standard to Ensure Adequate Counsel to Defendants with Mental Disabilities Facing the Death Penalty"

The title of this post is the title of this new article now available via SSRN authored by Michael Perlin, Talia Roitberg Harmon and Sarah Chatt. Here is its abstract:

Anyone who has been involved with death penalty litigation in the past four decades knows that one of the most scandalous aspects of that process — in many ways, the most scandalous — is the inadequacy of counsel so often provided to defendants facing execution.  By now, virtually anyone with even a passing interest is well versed in the cases and stories about sleeping lawyers, missed deadlines, alcoholic and disoriented lawyers, and, more globally, lawyers who simply failed to vigorously defend their clients.  This is not news.

And, in the same vein, anyone who has been so involved with this area of law and policy for the past 35 years knows that it is impossible to make sense of any of these developments without a deep understanding of the Supreme Court’s decision in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), the case that established a pallid, virtually-impossible-to fail test for adequacy of counsel in such litigation.  Again, this is not news.

We also know that some of the most troubling results in Strickland interpretations have come in cases in which the defendant was mentally disabled — either by serious mental illness or by intellectual disability.  Some of the decisions in these cases — rejecting Strickland-based appeals — have been shocking, making a mockery out of a constitutionally based standard.

To the best of our knowledge, no one has — prior to this article — undertaken an extensive empirical analysis of how one discrete US federal circuit court of appeals has dealt with a wide array of Strickland-claim cases in cases involving defendants with mental disabilities.  We do this here.  In this article, we reexamine these issues from the perspective of the 198 state cases decided in the Fifth Circuit from 1984 to 2017 involving death penalty verdicts in which, at some stage of the appellate process, a Strickland claim was made (in which there were only 13 cases in which any relief was even preliminarily granted under Strickland).  As we demonstrate subsequently, Strickland is indeed a pallid standard, fostering “tolerance of abysmal lawyering,” and is one that makes a mockery of the most vital of constitutional law protections: the right to adequate counsel.

This article will proceed in this way.  First, we discuss the background of the development of counsel adequacy in death penalty cases.  Next, we look carefully at Strickland, and the subsequent Supreme Court cases that appear — on the surface — to bolster it in this context.  We then consider multiple jurisprudential filters that we believe must be taken seriously if this area of the law is to be given any authentic meaning.  Next, we will examine and interpret the data that we have developed, looking carefully at what happened after the Strickland-ordered remand in the 13 Strickland “victories.”  Finally, we will look at this entire area of law through the filter of therapeutic jurisprudence, and then explain why and how the charade of adequacy of counsel law fails miserably to meet the standards of this important school of thought.

Compassionate release after FIRST STEP: Should many thousands of ill and elderly federal inmates now be seeking reduced imprisonment in court?

In this post on Friday, I mentioned that I consider the statutory changes to the so-called compassionate release provisions in federal law to the "sleeper provisions" of the FIRST STEP Act.  This four-page FAMM document, titled "Compassionate Release and the First Step Act: Then and Now," reviews some basics of the changes made by the FIRST STEP Act, and on page 3 one finds this account of what I think is a very big deal:  "The most significant change to compassionate release is that the Act provides prisoners the power to file a motion for compassionate release if they can demonstrate they have tried and failed to convince the BOP to do so for them.  Before passage of the First Step Act a denial by the BOP was not appealable."  In other words, courts rather than the BOP are now ultimately to decide who may merit a reduced "term of imprisonment" under 18 USC 3582(c)(1)(A)(i).

To focus on the statutory language, prior to the FIRST STEP Act, a federal judge under 3582(c)(1)(A)(i) needed to first receive a "motion of the Director of the Bureau of Prisons" in order to have authority to "reduce the term of imprisonment [based on] extraordinary and compelling reasons [that] warrant such a reduction."  The BOP was notoriously stingy about filing such motions (with only about .01% of inmates benefiting), and the program was, in the words of the Justice Department's Inspector General, "poorly managed and implemented inconsistently."  Now persons in federal prisons still need to request the support of BOP for such a motion, but courts can now consider a sentence reduction "upon motion of the defendant" based on a claim that "extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant such a reduction" if BOP refuses move the court or 30 days after making the request.  Importantly, the US Sentencing Commission has set forth a (reasonably expansive) policy statement concerning criteria for compassionate release via USSG 1B1.13, but it will now be fundamentally the province of the federal courts to develop jurisprudence on what should be deemed "extraordinary and compelling reasons" warranting a sentence reduction under 18 USC 3582(c)(1)(A)(i).

I plan to do a series of posts explaining why I think a number of different criteria ought to meet the (textually vague) requirements of "extraordinary and compelling reasons."  For this first post in this series, I will focus on suggestions by the Justice Department's Inspector General when he testified on this issue back in 2016 before the US Sentencing Commission.  Specifically, in testimony to the USSC, IG Michael Horowitz suggested that BOP make inmates eligible for consideration for compassionate release starting at age 50.  According to the latest BOP data, there are currently nearly 35,000 persons in federal prison aged 51 or older.  Of course, the IG did not call for early release of all post-50 prisoners, but he did urge:  "Within that larger pool of eligible aging inmates, we believe the BOP could further identify more aging inmates whose offenses, criminal histories, conduct in prison, and release plans make them suitable candidates for compassionate release, resulting in reduced overcrowding and cost savings to the Justice Department and the BOP."  As explained above, it would seem that it is now appropriate for the courts, and not just BOP, to take an active and ongoing role in deciding who among the 35,000 are "suitable candidates for compassionate release."

Importantly, ill prisoners as well as elderly prisoners should be ready candidates for compassionate release (and these two groups surely overlap).  The latest BOP data here on medical placement shows that more than 5000 federal prisoners are in "care level" 3 or 4 facilities, and "Care Level 4 facilities are reserved for inmates who require daily nursing care or therapy."  As the IG explained to the USSC in his testimony three years ago, beyond the humanitarian value of allowing ill persons to receive treatment outside of prison facilities, releasing ill prisoners helps "reduce overcrowding in the federal prison system" and can "result in cost savings for the BOP" and in turn the federal taxpayer.

Even if we imagine only 10 percent of elderly and ill federal inmates are "suitable candidates for compassionate release," we still could be looking at a means for releasing many thousands of federal prisoners in relatively short order.  I fear, because these provisions are unfamiliar, that courts may not start making robust use of compassionate release right away.  But I hope they will, and I especially hope that federal prisoners and their advocates will press this important new frontier for federal sentencing improvements. 

A few prior related posts:

• Sad start to what should become happier compassionate release tales after passage of FIRST STEP Act 
• New report assails (lack of) compassionate release in federal system
• DOJ review confirms government waste and mismanagement of BOP's handling of compassionate release
• Inspector General report highlights problems posed by aging federal prison population
• Another sad account of how US Bureau of Prisons administers compassionate release program
• Lamenting latest data on how federal Bureau of Prisons administers its compassionate release program

"Paul Manafort should not be sentenced to 20 years in prison"

The title of this post is the headline of this new Hill commentary authored by David Oscar Markus. Here are excerpts:

A jury has spoken on Paul Manafort. He was found guilty, and he should be punished. But his reported sentencing guideline range of 19.5-24.5 years is a good example of how our criminal justice system has lost its way.

Once, when trials were common, our system was the envy of the world. Now, trials almost never occur. (In the 1980s, over 20 percent of cases went to trial while less than 3 percent proceed to trial today). The reason is simple: defendants who go to trial and lose in today’s system now suffer “the trial penalty,” and receive a much more severe — sometimes decades longer — sentence simply for exercising a fundamental Constitutional right to trial.

Even innocent people plead guilty because of the risk/reward analysis that all defendants consider. The risks of going to trial have become way too high. You can plead guilty and get probation or go to jail for a manageable amount of time. But if you go to trial and lose... well, you’ll be crushed.

A jury found Manafort guilty of tax and related offenses, but suggesting that a 20 year sentence is appropriate in this case is just wrong. Twenty years! Manafort is a 69-year old, first-time offender. If the judge sentences him to anywhere in that range, he will most likely leave prison in a box.

Make no mistake, the sentencing range is that high only because Manafort had the audacity to make the government actually prove its case at a trial. Does going to trial warrant a sentence 15 years longer than his co-defendant, Rick Gates? Rick Gates hasn’t been sentenced yet, but his sentencing range is around 5 years. And he will most likely get a sentence much lower than that because of his cooperation. His lawyers will certainly ask for probation as have numerous other cooperators in the Special Counsel’s cases.

Some will respond that Gates should get less time than Manafort because he is less culpable and decided to cooperate. That’s of course true. But that doesn’t mean that Manafort should get 20 years simply because he had the temerity to go to trial.

The truth is that being less culpable becomes a minor factor when the trial penalty comes into play. There are many examples of the least culpable defendant getting the highest sentence solely because of the trial penalty. One such victim of the trial penalty was James Olis, a securities fraud defendant who worked at Dynegy Corporation in Houston, Texas. Olis was sentenced to 24 years in prison after trial, while his boss who testified against him received about a year.

Before trial, Olis had been offered 6 months in exchange for pleading guilty and cooperating. Olis’ lawyer, David Gerger, predicted: “If there’s a 20-year penalty for going to trial, then innocent as well as guilty people will simply decide they have to give up their right to a trial.” He was right. The case was ultimately reversed, and Olis was resentenced to 6 years. Until the reversal, prosecutors in Houston expressly mentioned Olis to any fraud defendant who wouldn’t plead. The line went something like this: “You can plead or risk ending up like Olis.”  Prosecutors in every district have their own “Olis line.”

Some prior related posts:

• Appreciating ugly sentencing realities facing Paul Manafort and Rick Gates after federal indictment 
• Paul Manafort has bail revoked ... and has not (yet) gotten rescued from jail by Prez Trump's clemency pen
• Paul Manafort found guilty of 8 of 18 counts ... and now faces real possibility of spending many years in federal prison
• Reported sentencing details in Paul Manafort's plea deal to wrap up his various federal prosecutions
• Paul Manafort's DC plea agreement has a calculated guideline range of 17.5 to 22 years (though he can only get 10) 
• Paul Manafort seemingly poised to get "senior discount" at upcoming sentencing 
• Special counsel saying Paul Manafort is breaching his plea agreement by lying "on a variety of subject matters"
• Paul Manafort facing potentially longer sentence after judge concludes he failed to comply with plea deal
• Special Counsel's office files sentencing memorandum for Paul Manafort seemingly supporting guideline range of 235 to 293 months' imprisonment

Can judges, legally or functionally, actually refuse to allow a prosecutor to drop or dismiss charges as an exercise of discretion?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by an interesting on-going story out of Norfolk, Virginia which I have blogged about over here at my marijuana blog.  This recent local article reports on these particulars:

The judges on the city’s top court have decided to block Norfolk’s chief prosecutor from essentially decriminalizing marijuana possession, a setback he’s thinking about appealing to the state Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, prosecutors under Commonwealth’s Attorney Greg Underwood went to court for at least the third time to try to drop or dismiss misdemeanor marijuana charges. Prosecuting people for having marijuana disproportionately hurts black people and does little to protect public safety, he’s said.

For the third time, a judge rebuffed them, and told prosecutors she’s not alone, but joined by her seven colleagues. “We are of one mind on this,” Circuit Judge Mary Jane Hall said.

The decisions adds to the confusion about whether it’s OK to have a small amount of weed in the city. Norfolk police have said they will continue to cite people for misdemeanor marijuana possession as they’ve always done. Circuit Court judges appear determined to make sure offenders are tried, even if the commonwealth’s attorney refuses to prosecute them....

Underwood’s change on marijuana possession is part of his larger effort to bring what he calls criminal justice reform to Norfolk. In a Jan. 3 letter to judges, the police chief and other public safety officials, he announced he would support ending cash bail in many cases and seeking more equal sentences between prostitutes and their clients.

In 2016 and 2017, more than 1,560 people have been charged with first- or second-offense marijuana possession, prosecutor Ramin Fatehi told the judge in court Tuesday. Of them, 81 percent were black in a city that’s 47 percent white and 42 percent black. This “breeds a reluctance on the part of African Americans, particular young African American men, to trust or cooperate with the justice system,” according to a Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office memo announcing the policy changes. “Such prosecution also encourages the perception that the justice system is not focusing its attention on the legitimately dangerous crimes that regrettably are concentrated in these same communities.”

On Tuesday, Hall denied Fatehi’s motion to dismiss charges against Zemont Vaughan. The 24-year-old Norfolk man, who is black, had been convicted in a lower court in October, but on Tuesday, he went to the higher Circuit Court to appeal that conviction.

Prosecutors’ motions to dismiss or drop charges are typically formalities. They don’t generally like giving up on cases, so when they make what amounts to an admission of defeat, judges almost always grant them. Not this time.

Hall told Fatehi she and the other seven judges think the Norfolk commonwealth’s attorney is trespassing on the state legislature’s territory: making laws. The judge said Fatehi made an “extremely compelling case” with his statistics on racial disparities, but should pitch it to lawmakers in Richmond. “I believe this is an attempt to usurp the power of the state legislature,” Hall said. “This is a decision that must be made by the General Assembly, not by the commonwealth’s attorney’s office.”

Fatehi countered: Underwood is exercising the executive power voters gave him when they elected him the city’s top prosecutor. Part of the job is prosecutorial discretion, or deciding which laws should be enforced, especially since he has a limited amount of resources. In contrast to the misdemeanor possession charges, Underwood’s lawyers will keep prosecuting people accused of trafficking or dealing marijuana. “This is an exercise of our discretion,” Fatehi said.

Fatehi said Underwood is thinking about asking the state Supreme Court to reverse the judges’ decisions, adding that he’s “very close” to making a decision.

It seems like an indisputable given that a judge cannot legally make a prosecutor bring a charge.  But once a charge has been brought, and perhaps especially once a conviction has been obtained, I can envision plausible bases for wanting to preserve some formal judicial authority to refuse to allow charges to be dropped or dismissed in some extreme circumstance.  For example, refusing dismissal could seem justified if a judge had a reasonable basis to believe that the prosecutor had been bribed to dismiss certain charges or if a judge concluded that dismissals were driven by some kind of unconstitutional motive.  The judges here are arguably asserting that these dismissals are constitutionally suspect, but that seems like a stretch on these facts. (Indeed, I wonder if Commonwealth’s Attorney Underwood might try to defend his dismissals by saying he is worried about constitutional infirmities concerning who gets arrested and charged by police for marijuana offenses.  Surely a prosecutor must have broad authority to seek dismissal of charges that he believes may be infected with constitutional problems.)

Whatever one thinks of the legal basis for judges refusing dismissals here, I also wonder how this will continue to play out practically.  Will judges in this jurisdiction seek to appoint another prosecutor to pursue charges that the local prosecutor seeks dismissed?  Do they have authority to do so and is there any other way for these cases to proceed absent such an appointment? If and when these cases are on appeal, might the defendants seek amicus support from Commonwealth’s Attorney Greg Underwood or at least a formal statement from him saying he believes the cases should no longer proceed?

"On probation until 2053? Sentencing disparities, lack of guidelines get long look at Minnesota Legislature"

The title of this post is the headline of this interesting newspaper article from the North Star State focusing on a part of modern sentencing systems that merit a lot more attention than it usually gets.  Here is how the piece gets started:

Since getting clean, Jennifer Schroeder went on to manage the sober living house that nurtured her after a year in jail.  She became the first in her family to graduate from college and, as an addiction counselor, now helps others struggling with the same demons she had to overcome.

Yet Schroeder’s own past will loom large into her 70s.  The 36-year-old St. Paul resident is on probation until 2053 after being caught with 21 grams of meth during a traffic stop one summer in Wright County.  “It’s hard to transform yourself into a new person when you are still labeled as your old self,” Schroeder said.

The same crime would net a fraction of that sentence in Minneapolis or Duluth, a chasm that underscores the disparate nature of punishment in a state with one of the nation’s highest rates of probation but with no clear guidelines for judges to rely on.

With the backing from top officials at the Department of Corrections, state lawmakers from both parties are now pushing new measures to cap probation sentences in Minnesota at five years.  They are also calling on the state’s Sentencing Guidelines Commission to start issuing recommendations for probation like it has for prison sentencing for nearly 30 years. “We are failing the basic test that those convicted of the same crime should receive similar punishment,” said Rep. Jamie Long, D-Minneapolis, who is sponsoring both bills.

Support for changing the state’s probation laws mirrors the national conversation surrounding criminal justice reform, like the recent First Step Act that focused on federal prison sentencing and earned broad bipartisan support. Those testifying at the State Capitol this week included local representatives from both the liberal American Civil Liberties Union and the conservative Americans for Prosperity.

WWJD?: Interesting comments as Wyoming senate rejects effort to repeal the state's dormant death penalty

I mentioned in this post a few weeks ago that the Wyoming House of Representatives had voted to repeal the state's death penalty.  This past week the legislative repeal effort died, as reported in this local article headlined "Wyoming Senate defeats death penalty repeal bill."  And a notable quote from a particular senator concerning her reasons for voting against repeal has garnered some extra attention.  Here are some particulars:

The Wyoming Senate defeated a bill Thursday that would have repealed the state’s death penalty, ending the most successful legislative attempt to do away with capital punishment in recent memory. Having passed the House by a safe margin, the bill was swiftly voted down by the Wyoming Senate on its first reading. The final vote was 12-18.

“The vote was different than I expected to see from talking with people beforehand,” said the bill’s sponsor in the Senate, Brian Boner, R-Converse. “There’s a lot of different factors and, at the end of the day, everyone has to make their best determination based on the information they have.”

The death penalty repeal had passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday by a unanimous vote. Proponents of the bill argued that it would save the state money and create a more humane justice system, an argument that had gained substantial traffic in the House of Representatives....

In the Senate — which has trended more conservative than the House this session — the bill had garnered several unlikely allies. Sen. Bill Landen, a reluctant sponsor of the bill, said that after years of budget cuts and eliminating line item after line item, he could no longer go home and feel good explaining the myriad cuts he’s made to the state budget while defending annual expenses like the death penalty, which costs the state roughly $1 million a year. “Regardless of my personal thoughts — my religion doesn’t believe in the right to kill people — that’s not enough for me,” he said.

Opponents of the bill, meanwhile, argued retaining the death penalty would allow the justice system to offer closure to victims of the most heinous crimes, and could be used as a tool to coerce confessions from the state’s worst perpetrators....

Several senators had other reasons for voting against the bill.  Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Cheyenne, said that while the death penalty could be used as an effective tool, it was also a means to keep the state’s justice system from turning into the type seen in other states. He then noted that states like California — in some cases — have allowed inmates to undergo gender reassignment surgery. “I think we’re becoming a lot like other states, and we have something to defend,” he said.  California, however, has not repealed the death penalty.

Sen. Lynn Hutchings, R-Cheyenne, argued that without the death penalty, Jesus Christ would not have been able to die to absolve the sins of mankind, and therefore capital punishment should be maintained. “The greatest man who ever lived died via the death penalty for you and me,” she said. “I’m grateful to him for our future hope because of this. Governments were instituted to execute justice. If it wasn’t for Jesus dying via the death penalty, we would all have no hope.”

Wyoming has not executed a prisoner since 1992. According to Wyoming Department of Corrections Director Bob Lampert, the average death row inmate costs the agency 30 percent more to incarcerate than a general population prisoner, with an average stay of 17 years.

I find it more than a bit amusing that Senator Bouchard seemed to think that voting to keep an effectively dormant costly capital punishment system on the books in Wyoming would help keep the state from becoming more like California, where voters have repeatedly voted to keep an effectively dormant costly capital punishment system on the books.  But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the comment generating the most attention has been Senator Hutchings' suggestion that we can thank (and should preserve) the death penalty for giving us all hope through Jesus Christ.

I am disinclined to make too many jokes about these comments at the risk of being sacrilegious, but I cannot help imagining a new ad campaign for capital punishment: "The death penalty: hope for you and me."  I also cannot help but note that Senator Hutchings has recently garnered negative attention from some other statements on a distinct issue.

Round three of sentencing in high-profile New Jersey deadly drunk driving case still provides no closure

Last year, I flagged in this post the notable appellate ups and downs surrounding the sentencing and resentencing of actress Amy Locane following her conviction for killing a 60-year-old woman in a 2010 car crash while driving with a blood-alcohol way over the legal limit.  This local media piece reports on the latest sentencing in the case under the headline "‘Melrose Place’ actress sentenced again for fatal drunk driving crash, but free pending another appeal," and the story seems to just get sadder (and less certain) for everyone at each additional legal proceeding.  Here are some details:

For the second time, actress Amy Locane was sentenced to prison for a 2010 drunk driving accident that killed a 60-year-old woman.  How much time she’ll actually serve behind bars, though, is unclear.

The former Hopewell Township resident who once appeared on Melrose Place was sentenced to five years in prison by Somerset County Superior Court Judge Kevin Shanahan Friday afternoon, nearly nine years after the fatal crash.  The judge said if he were imposing the original sentence, he would have sentenced Locane to six years.

Family members of her victim, Helene Seeman, smiled while walking out of court, but left the Somerset County Courthouse in Somerville without giving a statement to media.

James Wronko, Locane’s lawyer, said it was “an extremely thoughtful decision in all respect,” but will appeal on double jeopardy grounds, which was one of his main arguments why the actress shouldn’t return to prison.

Somerset County Assistant Prosecutor Matt Murphy requested a nine-year sentence from Shanahan, who said he was basing it on “the crime, not the criminal.”  Locane was originally convicted of vehicular homicide and assault by auto, which carries up to 15 years in prison, for the death of Helene Seeman and critical injuries to her husband, Fred Seeman.

Fred Seeman and his son, Ford Seeman, both gave emotional testimony, filled with tears, tissues and aggravation. “My mother should still be here, but she’s not because Amy Locane is a horrible human being driven by ego and pride,” he said, reading the notes off his phone while wiping his tears, at times his voice breaking.

Locane whispered “that’s not true” several times under her breath during Ford Seeman’s testimony, which including him saying Locane has made herself a victim and will not accept responsibility. He also lambasted Judge Robert Reed’s initial, lenient sentence, calling it a “mockery of the justice process” and referred to Locane’s request for a short sentence to care for her two young children, who she called collateral damage as “pathetic.”...

Locane stood to speak after the Seemans concluded their testimony. Ford Seeman left the room. “There is not a day that has gone by that I have no thought of the pain that my actions caused the Seeman family and of course Helene Seeman,” the 47-year-old said. “I made a mistake. I have done everything that I can do to not be that person who does what I did nine years ago.”

She also noted she regularly speaks at schools about the dangers of drinking and driving, and is committed to sobriety through Alcoholics Anonymous.

The actress, who appeared in the movie “Cry-Baby” with Johnny Depp, and other Hollywood pictures, was driving home from a party on June 27, 2010 when she crash into the Seemans, who were turning into their driveway. Locane’s blood alcohol content was three times the legal limit.

He first sentence, three years in prison handed down by Judge Robert Reed in February 2013, drew immediate criticism for its apparent lenience. She served two-and-a-half-years at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Clinton Township and was paroled in June 2015. It’s unclear if Locane will receive credit now for the time she was incarcerated.

In 2016, an appeals court ruled the sentence was not harsh enough. Locane returned to court for a second sentencing in January 2017, where Judge Reed said he erred in not sentencing her to six more months. However, he declined to give Locane more prison time.

In March 2018, an appellate court ruled again the sentence was “a hair’s breath away from illegal." The decision criticized Reed’s lack of explanation for the sentence, and asked another judge to decide her Locane’s fate at a third re-sentencing.

Fred Seeman cried and yelled during his testimony. He argued a light sentence would not deter New Jerseyans from drinking and driving, and the trauma still affects his youngest son, who saw his mother dead on their front lawn. “I cry at night, for my son Curtis who is not with us today. It hurts me and pains me,” said the 69-year-old, who suffered broken ribs and a collapsed lung in the crash, and has a hole in his diaphragm as a result of blunt force trauma from the accident....

Locane will serve 85 percent of her new sentence under the No Early Release Act and was released on her own recognizance pending an appeal.

In 2017, the Seemans were awarded a $4.8 million dollar settlement in a civil lawsuit. Locane paid $1.5 million, while Rachel and Carlos Sagebien — hosts of the party where Locane left drunk — paid $3.3 million.

Prior related post:

• High-profile New Jersey case highlights many challenges of sentencing drunk drivers who kill (and appellate review of sentences) 

Special Counsel's office files sentencing memorandum for Paul Manafort seemingly supporting guideline range of 235 to 293 months' imprisonment

As reported in this Politico article, headlined "Mueller: Manafort deserves 19.5 to 24.5 years in prison for Virginia convictions, Special Counsel Robert Mueller filed this submission "to address the sentencing of defendant Paul J. Manafort, Jr."  The Politico piece, along with lots of other press accounts, report that "Robert Mueller’s office recommended on Friday that Paul Manafort get up to 24-and-a-half years in prison for his conviction last summer for financial malfeasance."  But a careful read of the submission reveals that there is no firm sentencing recommendation in the memo, rather its introduction and conclusion includes these passages hedging a bit:

As an initial matter, the government agrees with the guidelines analysis in the Presentence Investigation Report (PSR) and its calculation of the defendant’s Total Offense Level as 38 with a corresponding range of imprisonment of 235 to 293 months, a fine range of $50,000 to $24,371,497.74, a term of supervised release of up to five years, restitution in the amount of $24,815,108.74, and forfeiture in the amount of $4,412,500.

Second, while the government does not take a position as to the specific sentence to be imposed here, the government sets forth below its assessment of the nature of the offenses and the characteristics of the defendant under Title 18, United States Code, Section 3553(a). The defendant stands convicted of the serious crimes of tax fraud, bank fraud, and failing to file a foreign bank account report.  Manafort was the lead perpetrator and a direct beneficiary of each offense.  And while some of these offenses are commonly prosecuted, there was nothing ordinary about the millions of dollars involved in the defendant’s crimes, the duration of his criminal conduct, or the sophistication of his schemes.  Together with the relevant criminal conduct, Manafort’s misconduct involved more than $16 million in unreported income resulting in more than $6 million in federal taxes owed, more than $55 million hidden in foreign bank accounts, and more than $25 million secured from financial institutions through lies resulting in a fraud loss of more than $6 million.  Manafort committed these crimes over an extended period of time, from at least 2010 to 2016. His criminal decisions were not momentary or limited in time; they were routine.  And Manafort’s repeated misrepresentations to financial institutions were brazen, at least some of which were made at a time when he was the subject of significant national attention.

Neither the Probation Department nor the government is aware of any mitigating factors. Manafort did not commit these crimes out of necessity or hardship.  He was well educated, professionally successful, and financially well off.  He nonetheless cheated the United States Treasury and the public out of more than $6 million in taxes at a time when he had substantial resources. Manafort committed bank fraud to supplement his liquidity because his lavish spending exhausted his substantial cash resources when his overseas income dwindled....

In the end, Manafort acted for more than a decade as if he were above the law, and deprived the federal government and various financial institutions of millions of dollars.  The sentence here should reflect the seriousness of these crimes, and serve to both deter Manafort and others from engaging in such conduct....

For a decade, Manafort repeatedly violated the law.  Considering only the crimes charged in this district, they make plain that Manafort chose to engage in a sophisticated scheme to hide millions of dollars from United States authorities.  And when his foreign income stream dissipated in 2015, he chose to engage in a series of bank frauds in the United States to maintain his extravagant lifestyle, at the expense of various financial institutions.  Manafort chose to do this for no other reason than greed, evidencing his belief that the law does not apply to him.  Manafort solicited numerous professionals and others to reap his ill-gotten gains.  The sentence in this case must take into account the gravity of this conduct, and serve to both specifically deter Manafort and those who would commit a similar series of crimes.

Some prior related posts:

• Appreciating ugly sentencing realities facing Paul Manafort and Rick Gates after federal indictment 
• Paul Manafort has bail revoked ... and has not (yet) gotten rescued from jail by Prez Trump's clemency pen
• Paul Manafort found guilty of 8 of 18 counts ... and now faces real possibility of spending many years in federal prison
• Reported sentencing details in Paul Manafort's plea deal to wrap up his various federal prosecutions
• Paul Manafort's DC plea agreement has a calculated guideline range of 17.5 to 22 years (though he can only get 10) 
• Paul Manafort seemingly poised to get "senior discount" at upcoming sentencing 
• Special counsel saying Paul Manafort is breaching his plea agreement by lying "on a variety of subject matters"
• Paul Manafort facing potentially longer sentence after judge concludes he failed to comply with plea deal

Sad start to what should become happier compassionate release tales after passage of FIRST STEP Act

Though the (clumsy) increase in good-time credits has received considerable attention since the passage of the FIRST STEP Act (see prior posts here and here and here and here), I find the change to the administration of so-called compassionate release rules to be among the most fascinating elements of the new legislation.  If legislative enactments can have "sleeper provisions," I would call the compassionate release changes the sleeper provisions of FIRST STEP.  This four-page FAMM document, titled "Compassionate Release and the First Step Act: Then and Now,"  reviews some basics of the changes made by the FIRST STEP Act for those eager for a short accounting of before and after.

Today's New York Times covers this issue through one particular sad story under the headline "A New Law Made Him a ‘Free Man on Paper,’ but He Died Behind Bars." This article is worth reading in full, and here are excerpts:

At a federal courthouse in Tennessee, a judge signed an order allowing an ailing inmate to go home. But he died in a prison hospice before he heard the news.

At his wife’s home in Indiana, as she was getting a wheelchair, bedpans and other medical equipment ready for his arrival, the phone rang. “It was the chaplain,” said the wife, Marie Dianne Cheatham. “He said, ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you.’ And my heart fell through the floor. I knew what he was going to say.”

For years, terminally ill federal prisoners like Ms. Cheatham’s husband, Steve, have in theory had the option of what is called compassionate release. But in practice, the Bureau of Prisons would often decline to grant it, allowing hundreds of petitioners to die in custody. One of the provisions of the new criminal justice law, signed by President Trump on Dec. 21, sought to change that, giving inmates the ability to appeal directly to the courts.

Mr. Cheatham, 59, did just that, filing a petition last month so that he could leave prison in North Carolina and go home to die. He became one of the first to be granted release under the new law. But then came the harsh truth that made so many families pin their hopes on the law’s passage in the first place: Days and even hours can mean the difference between dying at home or behind bars.

Created in the 1980s, compassionate release allowed the Bureau of Prisons to recommend that certain inmates who no longer posed a threat be sent home, usually when nearing death. But even as more and more Americans grew old and frail in federal penitentiaries, a multilayered bureaucracy meant that relatively few got out.

A 2013 report by a watchdog agency found that the compassionate release system was cumbersome, poorly managed and impossible to fully track. An analysis of federal data by The New York Times and The Marshall Project found that 266 inmates who had applied between 2013 and 2017 had died, either after being denied or while still waiting for a decision. During the same period the bureau approved only 6 percent of applications.  Many state penal systems, which house the majority of American inmates, have their own medical release programs with similar problems.

“It is a system that is sorely needing compassion,” said Mary Price, the general counsel for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which advocates criminal justice reform....  The law’s passage has caused a scramble to use the new appeal process for compassionate release, said Ms. Price, whose organization has worked to arrange lawyers for some of those inmates. “There’s a road map now for this, and a way home for people that we’ve never seen before,” Ms. Price said.

Before the First Step Act passed, Ms. Cheatham followed its fortunes closely, hoping it could lead to a shortened sentence for her husband, whose health was deteriorating. Last fall, he was diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer and told he had only a few months to live. In mid-December, he applied for compassionate release, Ms. Cheatham said.

The new law requires that prisoners be told within 72 hours of a terminal diagnosis that they may apply for compassionate release, and that the Bureau of Prisons aid those who wish to apply but cannot do so on their own.  After a few weeks, Ms. Cheatham had heard nothing back.  The Bureau of Prisons declined to answer most questions about Mr. Cheatham’s case, but did say that it had not received his application for compassionate release until Jan. 11.  According to the judge’s order, the request was filed on Dec. 13.

A senator’s office said the government shutdown would make it difficult for them to provide immediate help.  Finally, she called a federal public defender in Tennessee, where her husband had been sentenced, who told her about the new process allowing an appeal after 30 days.  Within a few days, on Jan. 25, they filed a preliminary motion for immediate release.

It was to be a homecoming to a home Steve Cheatham had never seen.  The Cheathams had met and married after he was already in prison, serving a nearly 16-year sentence for a series of bank robberies in 2006.  According to an F.B.I. agent’s account, Mr. Cheatham passed notes to tellers at three banks in Tennessee, making off with about $13,000. The agent made no mention of any weapon....

On Jan. 30, the formal request for compassionate release was filed, and the next day, a judge signed the order to send Mr. Cheatham home.  Ms. Cheatham got the news shortly after 1 p.m.  “My heart just was so full of joy,” she said.  “I called everybody I could think of to tell them,” including the prison chaplain, whom she asked to deliver the good news to her husband.

Later that afternoon, the chaplain called back. Mr. Cheatham had died before he could tell him about the judge’s order.  Ms. Cheatham was devastated, but expressed her hope that on some level, Mr. Cheatham may have sensed the news.  “At least,” she wrote to a supporter, “he died a free man on paper.”

Some of many prior related posts:

• New report assails (lack of) compassionate release in federal system
• Effective commentary urges greater us of "compassionate release"
• DOJ review confirms government waste and mismanagement of BOP's handling of compassionate release
• Inspector General report highlights problems posed by aging federal prison population
• Spotlighting BOP's continued curious failure to make serious use of "compassionate release"
• Another sad account of how US Bureau of Prisons administers compassionate release program
• Notable new push to push for expanded use of compassionate release programs
• Lamenting latest data on how federal Bureau of Prisons administers its compassionate release program
• Recommending FAMM's great new report "Everywhere and Nowhere: Compassionate Release in the States"
• Effective (and depressing) report on compassionate release (or lack thereof) in Wisconsin and nationwide

Federal judge rejects Sayfullo Saipov's efforts to block capital prosecution based on Prez Trump's tweets

As reported in this New York Times piece, headlined "Trump’s Tweets Do Not Bar Prosecutors From Seeking Death in Terror Case, Judge Rules," a federal judge yesterday issued a notable ruling in a high-profile capital case. Here are the details:

When President Trump said on Twitter that an Uzbek man charged with using a pickup truck to kill eight people “SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY,” the man’s lawyers asked a judge to bar prosecutors from seeking execution, saying the decision had become too politicized.  But a federal judge in Manhattan ruled on Thursday that prosecutors could seek capital punishment despite the president’s comments.

Defense lawyers had argued the president’s tweet and other statements he made on Twitter had put political pressure on the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, to seek a death sentence.  The lawyers pointed to public reports that Mr. Trump was considering firing the attorney general for not following his wishes, and said Mr. Sessions would not be able to make an impartial decision.

In his ruling, Judge Vernon S. Broderick wrote that Mr. Trump’s statements advocating for the death penalty “were perhaps ill-advised given the pendency of this case.”  Still, the judge said the argument that Mr. Sessions was improperly motivated to seek execution was “pure speculation made without a scintilla of direct factual support.”  The judge said that without more evidence he could not interfere with “the attorney general’s presumptive authority to make charging decisions.”

In September, Mr. Sessions went ahead and directed prosecutors to seek the death penalty for the defendant, Sayfullo Saipov, 31, if he is convicted at trial, even though Judge Broderick had not yet ruled on the motion concerning the president’s tweets.  Six weeks later, Mr. Trump fired Mr. Sessions. 

Mr. Saipov is accused of driving the truck down a crowded bike path along the Hudson River on Oct. 31, 2017, and, after smashing into a school bus, jumping out and running down the highway, shouting “God is great” in Arabic.  He was taken into custody after being shot by a police officer.  He has pleaded not guilty to eight capital counts of murder and other charges, and is scheduled for trial in October.

Judge Broderick wrote that Mr. Saipov had “offered no evidence that the president’s remarks impacted the attorney general’s decision-making process in any way.”  To the contrary, the judge said, Mr. Sessions had “categorically renounced other provocative remarks made by the president” and had vowed that the Justice Department would “not be improperly influenced by political considerations.”

Prior related posts:

• Will NYC terror attack become the first big federal capital case for Trump's Department of Justice?
• "Trump labels US justice system 'laughing stock' "

"Justice Scalia's Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence: The Failure of Sake-of-Argument Originalism"

The title of this post is the title of this new paper by Craig Lerner now available via SSRN. Here is its abstract:

How is an originalist judge in the common law tradition to reconcile the competing demands of the Constitution’s original meaning and an accumulating body of nonoriginalist precedents?  This Article explores the dilemma of constitutional originalism through a comprehensive review of Justice Scalia’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence.  In this legal context the dilemma is infused with a moral dimension.  Many punishment practices common in 1791 are widely considered barbaric today.  When confronted with the choice between the Eighth Amendment’s original meaning and a clearly erroneous precedent that better aligns the Constitution with the moral tenor of the times, which is an originalist judge to choose?

In an essay published soon after joining the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia outlined an answer to this question.  He anticipated that his Eighth Amendment opinions would be framed as arguments in the alternative — first, the Constitution, properly understood, did not foreclose a punishment; and, in the alternative, even if nonorginalist precedents were followed for the sake of argument, the result would be the same, because there was “inadequate indication that any evolution in social attitudes has occurred.”  Almost all of his Eighth Amendment opinions proved to be of this character. 

As demonstrated in this Article, Justice Scalia’s hopeful expectation that he could achieve orginalist results through such a strategy was disappointed.  One problem is that the strategy presumes that there has been no meaningful “evolution in social attitudes” with respect to punishment since 1791.  The deeper problem is that it is not enough for the community’s “social attitudes” to remain durable.  The relevant question is whether the moral sentiments of the legal elites who ascertain these “social attitudes” remain durable.  In one of his final Eighth Amendment opinions, Justice Scalia conceded the defeat of sake-of-argument originalism.  He intimated a willingness to pursue a more heroic originalist agenda, potentially displacing mountains of nonoriginalist precedent.  This Article highlights the tension an originalist judge faces, more than two centuries after the Constitution’s ratification, between a principled adherence to original meaning, which can appear revolutionary, and a humbler originalism, which can appear opportunistic.

US Senate confirms William Barr to be US Attorney General (again)

As reported in this NBC News piece, "President Donald Trump's attorney general nominee William Barr was confirmed in the Senate on Thursday to take over the Justice Department as attorney general, where he will oversee special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe." Here is more:

Barr, 68, was confirmed in a 54-45 vote that largely fell along party lines. He will be sworn in Thursday afternoon in the Oval Office by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, the White House told NBC News.

Barr was widely expected to be confirmed by the Republican-majority Senate on Thursday. He had served in the same role more than two decades earlier in President George H.W. Bush's administration, and had passed procedural hurdles in the Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate in recent votes.

A few senators broke with their party in the vote, however. Among Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Doug Jones of Alabama — both of whom represent deep-red states — voted for Barr, as did first-term Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was the only Republican to vote against Barr's nomination.

Though various folks will continue to speculate what new leadership at DOJ might mean for the Mueller investigation, I am unsurprisingly most interested to see how new AG Barr approaches the implementation of the FIRST STEP Act and how he deals with state marijuana reforms.

Prior related posts:

• Talk of William Barr for Attorney General (and his "Case for More Incarceration") 
• So what does Bill Barr now think about federal criminal justice reforms or state marijuana reforms?
• Rounding up negative reactions to William Barr's nomination to be next US Attorney General
• Attorney General Nominee Bill Barr reportedly to support FIRST STEP Act at coming hearing (and should be pressed on particulars)
• Reviewing criminal justice highlights (or low-lights) from AG nominee Barr's confirmation hearing

Ninth Circuit going en banc to reconsider intersection of Eighth Amendment juve jurisprudence and federal sentencing guidelines

In this post back in July, I noted work on an amicus brief in support of a Ninth Circuit en banc petition in US v. Riley Briones.  The panel opinion in Briones is available at this link, where you will find a split decision in which the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's adoption of the federal sentencing guidelines as the key factor in the course imposing a life without parole federal sentence on a juvenile offender.  The amicus brief, which is available here, argued "It is unreasonable — and unconstitutional — for a court to routinely apply the Sentencing Guidelines when a defendant is subject to a Guideline sentencing range of life without parole for a crime committed as a juvenile."

I am now pleased to be able to report that, as of yesterday, the panel opinion in Briones is technically no longer good law thanks to this Feb 13, 2019 order by the Ninth Circuit:

Upon the vote of a majority of nonrecused active judges, it is ordered that this case be reheard en banc pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 35(a) and Circuit Rule 35-3. The three-judge panel disposition in this case shall not be cited as precedent by or to any court of the Ninth Circuit.

Though I am not exactly sure of the timelines for en banc review in the Ninth Circuit, I presume briefing and argument will take a number of months though we might still get a new decision before the end of this year.  Meanwhile, folks who follow this area of jurisprudence closely may recall that the Third Circuit is also in the midst of en banc review of related post-Miller Eighth Amendment application issues US v. Corey Grant, No. 16-3820, as discussed in this post from a few months ago.  A helpful reader reported to me that oral argument in Grant is scheduled for next week.

I have been a bit surprised that we have not yet seen the Supreme Court take up any follow-up Eighth Amendment cases since it decided Graham and Miller in short succession in 2010 and 2012.  It is interesting to speculate if either the Briones or Grant cases might interest the Justices after (inevitable?) big split en banc circuit rulings in these cases.

"The Dark Figure of Sexual Recidivism"

The title of this post is the title of this new paper authored by Nicholas Scurich and Richard John now available via SSRN.  Here is its abstract:

Empirical studies of sexual offender recidivism have proliferated in recent decades. Virtually all of the studies define recidivism as a new legal charge or conviction for a sexual crime, and these studies tend to find recidivism rates on the order of 5-15% after 5 years and 10-25% after 10+ years.  It is uncontroversial that such a definition of recidivism underestimates the true rate of sexual recidivism because most sexual crime is not reported to legal authorities, the so-called “dark figure of crime.”

To estimate the magnitude of the dark figure of sexual recidivism, this paper uses a probabilistic simulation approach in conjunction with a.) victim self-report survey data about the rate of reporting sexual crime to legal authorities, b.) offender self-report data about the number of victims per offender, and c.) different assumptions about the chances of being convicted of a new sexual offense once it is reported.  Under any configuration of assumptions, the dark figure is substantial, and as a consequence, the disparity between recidivism defined as a new legal charge or conviction for a sex crime and recidivism defined as actually committing a new sexual crime is large.  These findings call into question the utility of recidivism studies that rely exclusively on official crime statistics to define sexual recidivism, and highlight the need for additional, long-term studies that use a variety of different measures to assess whether or not sexual recidivism has occurred.

Paul Manafort facing potentially longer sentence after judge concludes he failed to comply with plea deal

As reported in this new Politco piece, a "federal judge ruled partly in favor of special counsel Robert Mueller on Wednesday that Paul Manafort violated the terms of his guilty plea by lying to federal prosecutors and a grand jury." Here is more and why this is ultimately a sentencing story:

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson confirms some of Mueller’s latest set of charges against the former Donald Trump campaign chairman that he lied during guilty-plea-stipulated cooperation sessions about his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime aide alleged to have ties to Russian intelligence.  Jackson, however, ruled that Mueller had “failed to establish by a preponderance of the evidence” that Manafort intentionally made a false statement about his contacts with the Trump administration.

The judge’s four-page ruling against Manafort [which is available here] means the 69-year old political operative will likely get an even stiffer penalty at his March 13 sentencing hearing in Washington, D.C., federal court.  She said Mueller was “no longer bound by its obligations under the plea agreement” terms he’d reached with Manafort in September, including the special counsel’s pledge to support a less-stringent sentence.

Manafort had previously been on track to get a 10-year cap on his prison sentence in his D.C. case under the terms of the original plea deal he struck with Mueller, which limited the charges he faced to conspiracy against the U.S. and conspiracy to obstruct justice while dropping foreign-lobbying and money-laundering charges.

The plea agreement had also called for Manafort to serve time concurrently from his D.C. case with any sentence he gets from his convictions in Alexandria, Va., on charges of bank and tax fraud.  But with Jackson’s order on Wednesday, Mueller is now free to recommend that Manafort serve his sentences consecutively.

Both Jackson and U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III, who presided in Manafort’s trial in Virginia and had postponed sentencing until the dispute over the lying charges was resolved, will have the final say in the decision on whether he serves back-to-back or simultaneous sentences.

Some prior related posts:

• Appreciating ugly sentencing realities facing Paul Manafort and Rick Gates after federal indictment 
• Paul Manafort has bail revoked ... and has not (yet) gotten rescued from jail by Prez Trump's clemency pen
• Paul Manafort found guilty of 8 of 18 counts ... and now faces real possibility of spending many years in federal prison
• Reported sentencing details in Paul Manafort's plea deal to wrap up his various federal prosecutions
• Paul Manafort's DC plea agreement has a calculated guideline range of 17.5 to 22 years (though he can only get 10) 
• Paul Manafort seemingly poised to get "senior discount" at upcoming sentencing 
• Special counsel saying Paul Manafort is breaching his plea agreement by lying "on a variety of subject matters"

Detailed memo maps out arguments and urges litigation for immediate good-time credit under FIRST STEP Act

A helpful reader alerted me to this notable new memorandum from the office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of Oregon titled "Delayed Implementation Of The First Step Act’s Good Time Credit Fix Violates The Rules Of Statutory Construction And Due Process Of Law." The memo is authored by Stephen Sady and Elizabeth Daily, and here is how it gets started:

With a single exception to date, thousands of federal prisoners who expected immediate release based on the First Step Act’s congressional clarification of the good time credit statute have been required to remain in custody beyond completion of their sentences, with many more scheduled to similarly serve unnecessary incarceration over the next six months.  The good time fix requires that prisoners showing exemplary compliance with institutional rules receive the full statutory 54 days of good time credits, rather than the 47 days presently provided, for each year of their term of imprisonment.  The Bureau of Prisons has continued to provide only 47 days of credit, claiming that a delayed effective date prevents it from implementing the good time fix until it develops an unrelated risk and needs assessment system. The Bureau should be following the rules of statutory construction, as guided by the Constitution, to immediately put into effect the only congressionally-approved manner of calculating good time credits.  The Executive Branch has the power -- and in good conscience the obligation -- to correct the wasteful and inhumane over-incarceration of prisoners who have reached their lawful sentence expiration date.

Rather than wait for the Executive Branch to do the right thing, prisoners’ representatives should litigate for immediate relief on their clients’ behalf from the Judicial Branch.  This article provides the legal grounds for relief in several parts. In Section A, we describe the history of the Bureau’s denial of the full good time credits intended by Congress and the First Step Act’s fix, which clarifies the correct 54-day calculation.  In Section B, we review the rules of statutory construction that call for immediate implementation of provisions, like the good time fix, that clarify congressional intent.  The second half of Section B specifically addresses the serious due process and equal protection problems avoided by immediate implementation of the good time fix.  In Section C, we outline the paths to expedited relief for the current federal prisoners suffering irreparable harm with each passing day.  The last sections address the need for counsel and include a description of the release of Mark Walker 60 days prior to his projected release date, as the first federal prisoner to receive the full 54 days of good time credit he earned under the statute.

Prior related posts:

• Spotlighting how FIRST STEP Act implementation challenges and uncertainty has already begun
• Spotlighting problems with immediate application of expanded good time credit in the FIRST STEP Act 
• Another review of the bad mess surrounding the "good time" fix in the FIRST STEP Act

Federal district judge finds Alabama sex offender license plate and internet provisions violate First Amendment

Thanks to this post by Jacob Sullum at Reason, I see some notable constitutional reasoning has brought down two extreme sex offender provisions in Alabama law.  The full title of this reason posting provides the basics: "'Sex Offenders Are Not Second-Class Citizens,' Says Judge While Nixing Alabama Rules on First Amendment Grounds: The decision rejects driver's licenses labeled "CRIMINAL SEX OFFENDER" and a broad demand for reports on internet use." Here paragraphs from the posting (with a link to the opinion):

"Sex offenders are not second-class citizens," writes U.S. District Judge W. Keith Watkins in a recent decision overturning two provisions of the Alabama Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Act (ASORCNA) on First Amendment grounds. "The Constitution protects their liberty and dignity just as it protects everyone else's."

Those points, which should be obvious, are a sadly necessary corrective to the hysteria that has driven legislators in one state after another to enact indiscriminate, mindlessly restrictive, and covertly punitive laws aimed at sex offenders. ASORCNA, which Watkins calls "the most comprehensive and debilitating sex-offender scheme in the nation," is a prime example....

On Monday, Judge Watkins ruled that Alabama's branding of registered sex offenders' identification cards is a form of compelled speech prohibited by the First Amendment. "The branded-ID requirement compels speech," he writes, "and it is not the least restrictive means of advancing a compelling state interest."  The state conceded that its ostensible purpose of alerting police officers to a sex offender's status could be served by a much less conspicuous mark, such as a letter, that the general public would not readily recognize as a badge of shame.  "Using one letter would keep officers informed while reducing the unnecessary disclosure of information to others," Watkins notes.

Another aspect of Alabama's "debilitating sex-offender scheme" is a requirement that people in the registry report "email addresses or instant message addresses or identifiers used, including any designations or monikers used for self-identification in Internet communications or postings other than those used exclusively in connection with a lawful commercial transaction."  Registrants also have to keep the authorities apprised of "any and all Internet service providers" they use.  The information, which includes mundane activities such as logging into a Wi-Fi network outside the home or registering with a website to comment on news articles, must be reported within three business days, and local law enforcement agencies have the discretion to demand that it be done in person.

Illinois prosecutors appealing 81-month sentence given to former Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke for murder of Laquan McDonald

In the federal system, sentencing appeals brought by prosecutors are relatively rare but not always exceptional.  My sense is that prosecutorial appeals of sentences are even rarer in most state systems, and a state sentencing appeal brought this week by Illinois prosecutors comes in a case that is exceptional for all sort of reasons.  This extended Chicago Tribune article, headlined "Attorney general, special prosecutor challenge Jason Van Dyke’s sentence in petition to state Supreme Court," provides lots of background details and here are excerpts:

Special prosecutors and the Illinois attorney general’s office want the state’s highest court to order a resentencing for Jason Van Dyke, a move that if granted could result in a much harsher prison term for the former Chicago police officer convicted in the slaying of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

Their petition, filed Monday, does not explicitly target the length of the 6¾-year sentence, which many activists criticized as lenient.  But Kane County State’s Attorney Joseph McMahon, appointed to handle the Van Dyke case, and Attorney General Kwame Raoul argue that Judge Vincent Gaughan sentenced Van Dyke under improper legal guidelines, and note that a significantly longer sentence would be justifiable under state law.

“I recognize that a trial judge’s discretion in sentencing is to be given great deference,” Raoul said at a news conference Monday. “However, it is in the interest of justice that we do all within our power to make sure that such exercise in discretion be applied consistent with the mandates of law, no matter who the defendant and no matter who the victim.”

In response, Van Dyke’s attorneys said the prosecutors’ motivations were plainly political. “This case has come to represent all the wrongs, perceived wrongs, of the Chicago Police Department, and it’s fallen upon Jason Van Dyke as a person,” attorney Jennifer Blagg said. “So what he represents politically is why this is happening.”...

Van Dyke, 40, was convicted last year of one count of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery in the 2014 on-duty shooting of McDonald.  He was sentenced last month to 6¾ years in prison.  Gaughan sentenced Van Dyke only on the second-degree murder conviction, ruling that it was the more serious offense and that the aggravated battery counts should “merge” into it for purposes of sentencing....

But the prosecutors’ petition argues that Illinois law actually makes aggravated battery with a firearm the more serious offense, and therefore the state Supreme Court should order Gaughan to resentence the ex-patrol officer on those convictions instead.  The court should also direct Gaughan to determine which of the 16 gunshot wounds caused “severe bodily injury” and sentence him to consecutive prison terms for those counts, they state.

Prosecutors have argued that at least two of the wounds caused that kind of injury, which, the petition contends, would mean Van Dyke would face a minimum sentence of 18 years: six years for each of those two wounds, plus six more years for the other 14 counts.  An aggravated battery with a firearm conviction carries a sentence of six to 30 years in prison.  The range for second-degree murder is four to 20 years, but a judge can impose probation instead.

If the state Supreme Court chooses to consider the petition, there are a few potential outcomes, said longtime criminal defense attorney Mark Lyon.  “They will either have to say, ‘Judge Gaughan, you have to resentence this person,’ or they have to say (they) were wrong in the case where they said second-degree murder was always less serious than aggravated battery with a firearm,” Lyon said, referring to a previous ruling.

The court potentially could also order Gaughan to resentence Van Dyke on the aggravated battery but not make him rule on which of the 16 shots caused “severe bodily injury,” Lyon said, which would open the door for Gaughan to impose a prison term the same as the previous sentence, or slightly shorter.

But even in that scenario, Van Dyke would serve slightly more prison time.  Inmates convicted of aggravated battery with a firearm must serve at least 85 percent of their sentences — far higher than the 50 percent required by a second-degree murder conviction.  “It’s quite unlikely that Mr. Van Dyke comes out of this without some kind of upward modification of his sentence,” Lyon said. “How much, who knows.”

Van Dyke’s attorneys plan to file an objection to the prosecutors’ motion. The Supreme Court is not obligated to accept the prosecutors’ petition at all, and there is no time frame in which it must make a decision.

Prior related post:

• « Former Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke sentenced in state court to only 81 months for murder of Laquan McDonald