Sentencing Law and Policy

Prez Trump grants commutations to five persons given long federal prisons terms (though two were already out of prison)

I was a bit surprised and a lot pleased to see a release today from the White House titled "Statement from the Press Secretary Regarding Executive Grants of Clemency" providing news an details surrounding the decision by Prez Donald Trump to commute five federal sentences.  Here is the full statement:

Today, President Donald J. Trump signed Executive Grants of Clemency to commute the sentences of the following individuals: Lenora Logan, Rashella Reed, Charles Tanner, John Bolen, and Curtis McDonald.

Lenora Logan turned her life around after she was sentenced to 27 years in prison for her role in a cocaine conspiracy.  During her time in prison, she heroically came to the aid of a Bureau of Prisons nurse who was under vicious assault by an unstable inmate.  Without regard for her own safety, Ms. Logan immediately intervened and protected the life of the nurse.  This heroic act is but one example of Ms. Logan’s selfless acts since forging a better path for her life.  While incarcerated, Ms. Logan served as a suicide watch companion, a nursing assistant for those in hospice care, and a leader of the praise and worship team.  After serving approximately 20 years in prison, Ms. Logan, a mother and grandmother, was awarded compassionate release from the Bureau of Prisons.  Ms. Logan expresses regret for her past actions, exemplifies successful rehabilitation, and embodies the spirit of second chances.

Rashella Reed was a former Atlanta Public School teacher before her involvement in a public benefits fraud scheme.  She was sentenced to 14 years in prison after her convictions for wire fraud and money laundering.  While in prison, Ms. Reed used her teaching background to tutor inmates and facilitate children’s programs at the prison.  Ms. Reed is a model inmate, and many attest to her innate ability to encourage and uplift others despite her circumstances.  Ms. Reed accepts full responsibility for her actions and seeks to continue to make a difference in the lives of others.  After serving more than 6 years in prison, Ms. Reed was released on home confinement where she enjoys strong community and family support.

Charles Tanner was a young professional boxer with a promising career who sadly became involved in a drug conspiracy.  At the age of 24, he was arrested, tried, and initially sentenced to life in prison, which was later reduced to 30 years.  It was his first conviction of any kind.  He has served 16 years in prison.  Although Mr. Tanner began incarceration under a life sentence, he immediately worked to better himself by enrolling in educational courses.  To date, Mr. Tanner has completed hundreds of hours of educational programming, including an 18-month re-entry program that requires recommendation from staff and approval from the Warden for participation.  Mr. Tanner accepts responsibility and expresses remorse for his past actions.  Letters from his friends and family describe him as a respectful man of faith who exhibits positivity and works hard.

John Bolen was a small business owner who used his boat to transport cocaine from the Bahamas to Florida.  After a jury trial, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.  It was his first conviction of any kind, and Mr. Bolen has no documented history of violence.  He has served more than 13 years in prison without incident.  He has completed more than 1,300 hours of educational programming and vocational training, multiple re-entry programs, and has served as both a suicide companion and a mental health companion.  Mr. Bolen expresses “deep regret and shame” for his mistakes.  Several Bureau of Prison officials who have supervised Mr. Bolen describe him as a “model inmate,” a “regular hard working blue collar guy who simply stumbled along life’s path and made a mistake,” and someone who “displays dedication” in assisting others.

Curtis McDonald was convicted in 1996 for drug trafficking and money laundering and is now 70 years old.  After a jury trial, he was sentenced to life in prison.  He was a first-time offender who has now served nearly 24 years in prison and has an excellent record of good conduct.  Mr. McDonald has made productive use of his time in prison, maintaining employment with good job evaluations, and has completed numerous education courses.  Mr. McDonald has also served as a mentor in the Mentors for Life program.  He acknowledges that “the law is the law and I broke it” and attests that he is “not the same man I was walking through these doors” decades ago.  Mr. McDonald vows that despite his life sentence, he has been determined to “take advantage of every opportunity to help myself grow . . . so that I may be of use to those who want and need it.”

In light of the decisions these individuals have made following their convictions to improve their lives and the lives of others while incarcerated, the President has determined that each is deserving of an Executive Grant of Clemency.

I am always pleased to see any chief executive use his or her power of clemency wisely, though this handful of grants will not keep me from criticizing Prez Trump for still using his powers too sparingly in general and especially in the times of a pandemic.  I do not know any of the back stories of these cases, but I find it interesting that two of these five recipient were apparently already out of prison.  It is also somewhat notable that four of the five persons here receiving commutations were convicted of drug offenses.

A few of many prior related posts:

• A midsummer reminder of all persons that Prez Trump has granted clemency to during the COVID-19 pandemic 
• Tongues wagging about Prez Trump using his clemency pen to grant compassionate release to Roger Stone 
• Looking for broader relief and reforms for elderly prisoners in wake of Roger Stone clemency
• Broad coalition urges Prez Trump to commute the federal sentences in response to coronavirus crisis
• Hundreds of former DOJ officials and federal judges urge Prez Trump to commute sentences and create emergency advisory group to respond to COVID-19 challenges
• With lives at stake, when will we start to see mass clemency and compassionate release?
• Who in Trump Administration is involved in "actually looking at" using executive action to release "totally nonviolent prisoners"?
• Terrific coverage of clemency in new issue of University of St. Thomas Law Journal

"Decarcerating Correctional Facilities during COVID-19: Advancing Health, Equity, and Safety"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new report released yesterday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.  This press release about the report provides a helpful summary, and here is the start of the press release:

Where needed to adhere to public health guidelines and mitigate the spread of COVID-19, authorities should use their discretion to minimize incarceration in prisons and jails — and facilitate testing, quarantine, social supports, and individualized reentry plans for those released, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.  The report recommends corrections officials and public health authorities work together to determine the optimal population for jails and prisons to adhere to public health guidelines, considering characteristics that facilitate viral transmission, such as overcrowding, population turnover, health care capacity, and the overall health of individuals living in the facility.

Decarcerating Correctional Facilities During COVID-19: Advancing Health, Equity, and Safety says as of August 2020, COVID-19 case rates among incarcerated people were nearly five times higher than in the general population, and three times higher among correctional staff.  Jails and prisons in the U.S. are often overcrowded, dense, poorly ventilated, and disconnected from public health systems, making COVID-19 prevention among incarcerated people and staff exceedingly difficult.

Decarceration — reducing the population of prisons and jails by releasing and diverting people away from incarceration as they enter the criminal justice system — can lower the risk of infection for older and other high-risk incarcerated persons, and allow correctional facilities to more easily implement other COVID-19 prevention strategies such as physical distancing.  The report says that while some jurisdictions have taken steps to decarcerate since the onset of the pandemic, these efforts have so far been insufficient to reduce the risk of COVID-19 in jails and prisons.

The report recommends correctional officials identify candidates for release in a fair and equitable manner.  Individuals who are medically vulnerable, nearing the end of their sentence, or who present a low risk of committing serious crime will likely be suitable candidates.  Research on recidivism suggests that decarceration can be done with minimal risk to public safety.  The report points to data from New York City and California that show large reductions in prison populations were followed by crime rates that either fell or remained at low levels.  Research also shows that most returns to a correctional facility are driven by technical violations of parole or release, rather than new crimes.

Additional helpful related resources appear in this Report Highlights and in this Interactive Report Overview.

Louisiana Supreme Court declares state statute requiring persons to carry ID branded with "SEX OFFENDER" violative of First Amendment

I am grateful to a reader for making sure I did not miss the ruling yesterday of the Supreme Court of Louisiana in Louisiana v. Hill, No. 2020-KA-00323 (La. Oct. 20, 2020) (available here). The start of the majority opinion captures its essence:

This case involves the constitutionality of a statutory requirement that persons convicted of sex offenses carry an identification card branded with the words “SEX OFFENDER.” This obligation is included as part of a comprehensive set of registration and notification requirements imposed on sex offenders in Louisiana.  Other states (and the federal government) have enacted similar collections of laws.  However, the specific requirement to carry a branded identification card distinguishes Louisiana from the rest of the country.  Forty-one other states do not require any designation on the identification cards of sex offenders.

For the reasons below, we find that this requirement constitutes compelled speech and does not survive a First Amendment strict scrutiny analysis.  Thus, we uphold the trial court’s ruling striking this specific requirement as unconstitutional and quashing the prosecution of defendant for altering his identification card to conceal the “SEX OFFENDER” designation.

The lone dissenting vote was by Justice Crain, who wrote a short dissenting opinion that starts this way:

The majority finds it unconstitutional to require a convicted sex offender to be identified as such on a government-issued identification card.  Louisiana Revised Statutes 40:1321J requires a registered sex offender to procure a special identification card that includes the words “sex offender” in all capital, orange letters.  That phrase is the speech at issue. It is not First Amendment protected speech.  The speaker is the government: the words are stamped by a governmental agency on a government-issued identification card in accordance with a government-enacted statute.  This is the embodiment of government speech.

Notable ideas and efforts to take on the trial penalty

A helpful reader made sure I did not miss these two recent interesting items related to the pernicious realities of the trial penalty:

Commentary from Shon Hopwood and Brett Tolman, "Amy Coney Barrett Could Help Repair Unconstitutional Aspects of the Criminal Justice System."  An excerpt (links from original):

The Constitution matters.  Yet, in our current criminal justice system, every day a fundamental component of the U.S. Constitution is trampled upon.  When a person accused of a crime chooses to defend themselves and to exercise their Sixth Amendment right to a “speedy and public trial” instead of accepting a plea deal, they should not be punished more severely for exercising this constitutional right.  As the nation watched the confirmation hearing of constitutional scholar and jurist Amy Coney Barrett, it was apparent that her intellect, her adherence to the text of the Constitution, and her discipline in preserving constitutional rights and protections make her a fitting replacement to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a justice poised to help repair a broken and unconstitutional aspect of the criminal justice system: the trial penalty.

The “trial penalty” isn’t just some law school exam hypothetical, but the real-life consequence of choosing to exercise a constitutional right and make the government actually prove their case.  A 2018 report from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers found that “Guilty pleas have replaced trials for a very simple reason: individuals who choose to exercise their Sixth Amendment right to trial face exponentially higher sentences if they invoke the right to trial and lose.”  Former federal judge, John Gleeson, wrote in the introduction to this “trial penalty” report, “[p]utting the government to its proof is a constitutional right, enshrined in the Sixth Amendment; no one should be required to gamble with years and often decades of their liberty to exercise it.”

News Release from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, "NACDL Trial Penalty Clemency Project Submits First Set of Petitions to White House."  An excerpt (links from original): 

On October 2, 2020, NACDL’s Trial Penalty Clemency Project submitted its first set of federal clemency petitions to the Office of the Pardon Attorney and to the White House.  Of the six petitions, three concern individuals serving life sentences and a fourth concerns an individual serving an 835-year sentence.  Taken together, the sentences of these six individuals, as compared to the sentences of their co-defendants or to the plea deals offered to them, represent over 100 years of punishment solely due to the fact that these individuals exercised their Sixth Amendment right to go to trial — a defining feature of the modern American criminal legal system known as the trial penalty.

While society is awakening to the number of wrongs embodied in the trial penalty, there are a number of individuals enduring the trial penalty as they serve excessively long prison sentences as a result of electing to go to trial and holding the government to its burden.  The only remedy for these individuals is executive clemency. The Trial Penalty Clemency Project aims to assist those individuals by pairing applicants with volunteer attorneys who will assist them in preparing a clemency petition. Reform is needed to end the trial penalty.  In the interim, this Project provides an opportunity for a second chance to those individuals who are living it....

In 2018, NACDL released a groundbreaking report – The Trial Penalty: The Sixth Amendment Right to Trial on the Verge of Extinction and How to Save It. Information and a PDF of NACDL’s 2018 Trial Penalty report, as well as video of the entire 90-minute launch event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, and other trial penalty-related videos and materials are available at www.nacdl.org/trialpenaltyreport.

In 2019, The Federal Sentencing Reporter, published by University of California Press, released a double issue covering April and June 2019, edited by NACDL Executive Director Norman L. Reimer and NACDL President-Elect Martín Antonio Sabelli, entitled "The Tyranny of the Trial Penalty: The Consensus that Coercive Plea Practices Must End."

A few prior related posts:

• "The Trial Penalty: The Sixth Amendment Right To Trial on the Verge of Extinction and How To Save It" 
• Latest (double) issue of FSR covers "The Tyranny of the Trial Penalty": An introduction 
• Two new open access articles from FSR issue on "The Tyranny of the Trial Penalty"
• Two more open access articles from FSR issue on "The Tyranny of the Trial Penalty"  
• Another two more open access articles from FSR issue on "The Tyranny of the Trial Penalty" 
• Big group of US Representatives urges Acting Pardon Attorney to make sure "trial penalty" is part of clemency considerations

"Drug Reforms on the 2020 Ballot"

The title of this post is the title of this great new web resource put together by the folks I have the honor to work with at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law's Drug Enforcement and Policy Center.  The resource collects and organizes information and links about the significant number of drug policy reforms proposals appearing on state ballots this election cycle.  Here is introduction to the detailed state-by-state materials:

A closer look at drug policy reform decisions voters will make during the 2020 election

On election day 2020, voters will decide more than the next United States President. Drug policy and enforcement reforms will appear on numerous state-level ballots. Five states have qualifying initiatives that attempt to legalize marijuana for medical or adult-use consumption, including some states that will ask voters to decide on multiple pathways to a legal market. And marijuana reform is not the only drug-related issue on ballots. Initiatives in a few states and Washington, D.C. will ask voters to modify existing sentencing laws, decriminalize all drugs, or legalize psychedelics for adult-use and therapeutic reasons.

To gain a better understanding of what this election could mean for drug policy across the U.S., the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center (DEPC) has developed a list of key ballot initiatives reaching voters in 2020. Read on for a list of initiatives we will be watching this November in the areas of marijuana legalization, psychedelics, and criminal justice.

Plus, don’t miss our post-election event Drug Policy Implications of the 2020 Elections on November 16, 2020. Our panel of experts will discuss the 2020 election results and what they are likely to mean for drug enforcement and policy at both the state and federal level.

Rounding up yet another important round of recent COVID-19 prison and jail stories

One sign of COVID fatigue for me is my tendency now to just keep scrolling past new press stories about the ugly (new and old) realities of prisons and jails during this persistent pandemic.  But, especially because COVID fear and not just fatigue is a felt reality for many millions of incarcerated persons and corrections staff and their families every day, I still should keep rounding up prison-COVID press pieces on a regular basis.  And, as I have said before, we should be regularly thankful that the press and commentators keep reporting and discussing these stories that keep emerging from prisons and jails:

From the Appleton Post-Crescent, "COVID-19 has infected more than 2,600 people in Wisconsin’s prisons. Should certain inmates be released to stop the spread?"

From BBC News, "Prisoners locked up for 23 hours due to Covid rules is 'dangerous'"

From the (NC) News & Observer, "‘I signed up for a jail sentence, not a death sentence.’ Escapee now seeks leniency."

From the New York Times, "As Coronavirus Cases Soar, One Montana Town Reels: In the Mountain West, an outbreak has revealed the danger that the virus poses to jails and rural communities"

From NJ.com, "Murphy signs bill to release thousands of N.J. prisoners early beginning the day after Election Day"

From PBS News Hour, "Inside the COVID unit at the world’s largest women’s prison"

From Slate, "The Right to Escape From Prison: A 1974 ruling bears revisiting as prisoners flee the COVID-19 pandemic."

From the Washington Post, "Two Baltimore correctional officers died of covid-19 just months apart"

US Sentencing Commission releases its latest updated "First Step Act of 2018 Resentencing Provisions Retroactivity Data Report"

I just noticed that the US Sentencing Commission today released this updated new version of its data report titled "First Step Act of 2018 Resentencing Provisions Retroactivity Data Report." The introduction to the report provides this context and overview:

On December 21, 2018, the President signed into law the First Step Act of 2018.  Section 404 of that act provides that any defendant sentenced before the effective date of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (August 3, 2010) who did not receive the benefit of the statutory penalty changes made by that Act is eligible for a sentence reduction as if Sections 2 and 3 of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 were in effect at the time the offender was sentenced.  The First Step Act authorizes the defendant, the Director of the Bureau of Prisons, the attorney for the Government, or the court to make a motion to reduce an offender’s sentence.

The data in this report represents information concerning motions for a reduced sentence pursuant to Section 404 of the First Step Act which the courts have granted. The data in this report reflects all motions granted through June 30, 2020 and for which court documentation was received, coded, and edited at the Commission by October 15, 2020.

These new updated data from the USSC show that 3,363 prisoners have been granted sentence reductions.  The average sentence reduction was 71 months of imprisonment (roughly a quarter of the original sentence) among those cases in which the the resulting term of imprisonment could be determined.  Though this data is not exact and may not be complete, it still seems sound to now assert that this part of the FIRST STEP Act alone, by shortening nearly 3361 sentences by nearly 6 years, has resulted in nearly 20,000 federal prison years saved! (That is an eliminations of two hundred centuries of scheduled human time in federal cages, if you want to think of it another way.)

Of course, as I have noted before, the FSA retroactivity provision of the FIRST STEP Act was only a small piece of the legislation. But these latest data show yet again how this small piece has had big impact in lots of years of lots of lives. And, of critical importance and note to be overlooked, people of color have been distinctly impacted: the USSC data document that nearly 92% of persons receiving these FSA sentence reductions were Black and more than another 4% were Latinx.

"The Complexities of Conscience: Reconciling Death Penalty Law with Capital Jurors’ Concerns"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new paper available via SSRN and authored by Meredith Rountree and Mary Rose. Here is its abstract:

Jurors exercise unique legal power when they are called upon to decide whether to sentence someone to death.  The Supreme Court emphasizes the central role of the jury’s moral judgment in making this sentencing decision, noting that it is the jurors who are ‘best able to express the conscience of the community on the ultimate question of life or death.’” Many lower courts nevertheless narrow the range of admissible evidence at the mitigation phase of a capital trial, insisting on a standard of legal relevance that interferes with the jury’s ability to exercise the very moral judgment the Supreme Court has deemed essential.

Combining moral theory and original empirical evidence, this Article breaks new ground by linking these to a legal framework that gives full effect to the Supreme Court’s vision of the jury.  Aided by a novel dataset of federal capital jury verdict forms, the Article focuses on three types of evidence frequently excluded in state and federal courts: the impact of the defendant’s execution on loved ones, co-participant sentences, and the government’s negligent facilitation of the murder.

The data show that jurors consistently find all three forms of evidence highly salient in their mitigation deliberations.  Further, two of these — execution impact evidence and co-participant sentences — have a statistically significant correlation with the jurors’ sentencing decision.  This Article’s empirical and moral account of juror behavior strongly supports expanding the admissibility of this evidence to reflect the Supreme Court’s evolution in defining the relevance of mitigating evidence as a moral, rather than legalistic, question, appropriately recognizing the jury’s normative role.

Notable SCOTUS Fourth Amendment activity, but nothing for sentencing fans

I flagged in this post from June my sense that the Supreme Court has become particularly (and problematically) quiet on sentencing matters.  This feeling continues with this morning's new SCOTUS order list in which the Court granted cert on three new cases, but denied cert without comment in the Demma reasonableness review case flagged here.  I suppose the coming oral arguments in Borden v. US, No. 19-5410 (another ACCA application case), and especially Jones v. Mississippi, No. 18-1259 (application of Miller), provide plenty to keep sentencing fans engaged for now.  But I remain disappointed that SCOTUS has now been quiesced on a range of (non-ACCA) federal sentencing issues for quite some time.

But, perhaps unsurprisingly in light of other 2020 events, it does seem like the Justices are getting ever more engaged on Fourth Amendment issues.  Specifically, one of the new cert grants comes in Lange v. California, which SCOTUSblog describes this way: "Whether the pursuit of a person whom a police officer has probable cause to believe has committed a misdemeanor categorically qualifies as an exigent circumstance sufficient to allow the officer to enter a home without a warrant."

In addition, Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, issued a notable five-page statement respecting the denial of certiorari in another Fourth Amendment case, Bovat v. Vermont.  This statement includes a picture so that readers can better visualize the police activity which gets verbally described this way:

Suspecting Clyde Bovat of unlawfully hunting a deer at night (Vermont calls it a “deer jacking”), game wardens decided to pay him a visit to — in their words — “investigate further.”  But the wardens admit that “pretty soon after arriving” they focused on a window in Mr. Bovat’s detached garage.  Heading there and peering inside, the wardens spotted what they thought could be deer hair on the tailgate of a parked truck.

I am never troubled when all sort of police activity, even concerning deer hair and deer jacking, gets subject to appropriate scrutiny.  But I still see so many federal (and state) sentencing activities that could merit so much more SCOTUS scrutiny.

Heartening stories of problematic sentences ameliorated by parole grants

A few years ago, in this article titled "Reflecting on Parole’s Abolition in the Federal Sentencing System," I explained why I thought "parole might serve as an efficient and effective means to at least partially ameliorate long-standing concerns about mandatory minimum statutes and dysfunctional guidelines" and why sentencing reformers "ought to think about talking up the concept of federal parole anew."  My basic thinking is that parole can and sometimes will usefully serve as a kind of second-look sentencing mechanism to indirectly fix the most problematic of sentences. This article and thinking came to mind when I recently saw these two heartening press stories about ugly sentences partially ameliorated by parole grants:

From Alabama, "Disabled Iraqi War vet imprisoned for medical marijuana possession granted parole."  An excerpt:

Disabled Iraqi War veteran Sean Worsley, who was arrested while driving through in Pickens County in 2016 and charged with felony possession of medical marijuana legally prescribed in his home state of Arizona, was granted parole on Wednesday by the Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole after being incarcerated more than eight months.

With marijuana illegal in Alabama, Worsley, a Purple Heart recipient, was sentenced to five years in prison.  On September 23, he was transferred from the Pickens County Jail to the Draper Correctional Facility. Parole was granted with special conditions — that Worsley undergoes a drug test upon release.

From Louisiana, "Black man serving life sentence for stealing hedge clippers granted parole." An excerpt:

A Black man in Louisiana serving life in prison for stealing hedge clippers more than two decades ago was granted parole — months after the state's Supreme Court declined to review his sentence.  The Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole voted Thursday to release Fair Wayne Bryant, 63, records show.  He walked out of prison later that day after serving more than 20 years at the state penitentiary in Angola, his attorney said....

Bryant was 38 when he was arrested in January 1997 for taking a pair of clippers from a carport storeroom at a home in Shreveport. The homeowner was alerted to the theft and chased Bryant off.  That same year, a jury convicted him of attempted simple burglary of an inhabited dwelling, and Bryant, who had previous convictions, was sentenced to life in prison because he was considered a "habitual" offender under state law.

Bryant in previous appeals argued that his sentence was "unconstitutionally harsh."  But in July, the state's Supreme Court declined to review his sentence.

US Department of Justice sets two more execution dates, including for the only woman on federal death row

In this July post I wondered aloud "How many federal death row prisoners does Attorney General William Barr want to see executed in 2020?".  My main point in that post was that, after the completion of an initial three federal executions that month thanks to SCOTUS lifting lower court stays, it seemed to me that AG Barr would likely be able to have completed how ever many executions he decides to set.  Thereafter, the US Justice Department set two more execution dates for August and two more for September, and those executions were completed to bring the 2020 total of federal executions up to seven. 

For anyone who might have thought AG Barr would be content with seven execution in 2020, this DOJ press release from late Friday afternoon might have come as a bit of a surprise.  This release is titled  "Executions Scheduled for Two Federal Inmates Convicted of Heinous Murders" and here are excerpts:

Attorney General William P. Barr today directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of two federal death-row inmates, both of whom were convicted of especially heinous murders at least 13 years ago.

• Lisa Montgomery fatally strangled a pregnant woman, Bobbie Jo Stinnett, cut open her body, and kidnapped her baby.  In December 2004, as part of a premeditated murder-kidnap scheme, Montgomery drove from her home in Kansas to Stinnett’s home in Missouri, purportedly to purchase a puppy.  Once inside the residence, Montgomery attacked and strangled Stinnett—who was eight months pregnant—until the victim lost consciousness.  Using a kitchen knife, Montgomery then cut into Stinnett’s abdomen, causing her to regain consciousness.  A struggle ensued, and Montgomery strangled Stinnett to death.  Montgomery then removed the baby from Stinnett’s body, took the baby with her, and attempted to pass it off as her own.  Montgomery subsequently confessed to murdering Stinnett and abducting her child.  In October 2007, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri found Montgomery guilty of federal kidnapping resulting in death, and unanimously recommended a death sentence, which the court imposed....  Montgomery is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on December 8, 2020, at U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana. 
• Brandon Bernard and his accomplices brutally murdered two youth ministers, Todd and Stacie Bagley, on a military reservation in 1999.  After Todd Bagley agreed to give a ride to several of Bernard’s accomplices, they pointed a gun at him, forced him and Stacie into the trunk of their car, and drove the couple around for hours while attempting to steal their money and pawn Stacie’s wedding ring.  While locked in the trunk, the couple spoke with their abductors about God and pleaded for their lives.  The abductors eventually parked on the Fort Hood military reservation, where Bernard and another accomplice doused the car with lighter fluid as the couple, still locked in the trunk, sang and prayed.  After Stacie said, “Jesus loves you,” and “Jesus, take care of us,” one of the accomplices shot both Todd and Stacie in the head—killing Todd and knocking Stacie unconscious.  Bernard then lit the car on fire, killing Stacie through smoke inhalation.  In June 2000, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas found Bernard guilty of, among other offenses, two counts of murder within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, and unanimously recommended a death sentence....  Bernard is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on December 10, 2020, at U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana.  One of his accomplices, Christopher Vialva, was executed for his role in the Bagleys’ murder on September 22, 2020.

Recent prior related posts:

• Justice Department announces the scheduling of four new federal execution dates
• SCOTUS, by 5-4 vote, vacates new injunction that had been blocking scheduled federal executions ... UPDATE: execution of Daniel Lewis Lee now completed
• Federal execution déjà vu: after SCOTUS votes 5-4 to vacate injunction, feds complete another morning lethal injection 
• Feds, revving up machinery of death, complete third execution of week
• How many federal death row prisoners does Attorney General William Barr want to see executed in 2020?
• Amidst seemingly little attention, federal government seemingly poised to carry out two more executions this week
• Native American death sentence carried out as feds complete record-setting fourth execution of 2020 
• Federal government completes its fifth execution of 2020
• Federal government completes its sixth execution in 2020 
• Federal government completes its seventh (and final?) execution in 2020

UPDATE: I just realized that I failed to note this September 30 DOJ press release concerning another execution date set for November 19:

Attorney General William P. Barr today directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the execution of Orlando Cordia Hall, who was sentenced to death after kidnapping, raping, and murdering a 16-year-old girl in 1994....  In October 1995, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas found Hall guilty of, among other offenses, kidnapping resulting in death, and unanimously recommended a death sentence, which the court imposed.  Hall’s convictions and sentences were affirmed on appeal more than 20 years ago, and his initial round of collateral challenges failed nearly 15 years ago.  In 2006, Hall received a preliminary injunction from a federal district court in Washington, D.C., based on his challenge to the then-existing federal lethal-injection protocol.  That injunction was vacated by the district court on Sept. 20, 2020, making Hall the only child murderer on federal death row who is eligible for execution and not subject to a stay or injunction.  Hall’s execution is scheduled for Nov. 19, 2020, at U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana.

Understanding Proposition 20, the latest chapter of California's experiments with sentencing reform via initiative

I have noticed more than a few recent media pieces about the notable sentencing reform measure on the ballot in California this year, Proposition 20, and here is a sample:

• From the Los Angeles Times, "Prop. 20 sparks debate over effects of criminal justice reform in California"

• From The Mercury News, "Proposition 20: Will California go back to its ‘tough on crime’ past?: Measure will test voters’ commitment to criminal justice reforms"

• From KSBY, "Prop 20 looks to get tough on crime & roll back some criminal justice reforms"

The start of the LA Times piece seems to provide a pretty clear account of the range of complicated state reform realities connected to Prop 20:

As much of the country weighs changes to the criminal justice system, California has had a head start, adopting a series of laws in the last decade that, among other things, helped reduce the state’s prison population by more than one-third, or 50,000 people.

Now a group of prosecutors and law enforcement leaders has placed Proposition 20 on the November statewide ballot, which would expand the list of felonies for which the convicted are ineligible for early parole; increase penalties for repeat shoplifters; and collect DNA samples from adults convicted of some misdemeanors.

Proponents argue that it is needed to fix flaws in past measures that they say are putting the public’s safety at risk, including the early release of potentially violent criminals. But opponents of the measure, who include civil rights leaders, Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Gov. Jerry Brown, say it wrongly rolls back necessary criminal justice reforms as crime has declined in recent years. “California is ahead of the game — we’ve done so many great reforms,” said Assemblyman Jim Cooper (D-Elk Grove), a retired sheriff’s captain and proponent of Proposition 20. “But there have been unintended consequences with these reforms.”

Brown, who led past reform efforts, called the initiative “very inhuman.” He said it takes away hope and incentives for prison inmates to pursue educational opportunities and demonstrate good behavior to improve their chances of getting out early. “Proposition 20 is supported by a very narrow group of people who don’t accept even the modest prison reforms that I was able to achieve,” Brown said. “It’s driven by ideology and, in some cases, by a total lack of understanding of human nature and no sense of redemption or allowing people to put their lives on track. It’s vindictive.”

Brown was governor when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that California’s prisons were overcrowded in violation of constitutional protections.  That year, he signed Assembly Bill 109 into law to reduce the state prison population by requiring that many people convicted of felonies not involving violence or sex offenses serve their sentences in county jails instead of state prison.

In 2014, California voters approved Proposition 47, which reclassified many lower-level drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.  Before then, thefts could be considered a felony if stolen merchandise was valued at $450 or more, but Proposition 47 raised the threshold to $950.

Proposition 57, which Brown developed and was approved by California voters in 2016, increased parole and good behavior opportunities for those convicted of nonviolent felonies.

The new initiative to be voted on Nov. 3 makes key changes in the previous three laws.

The measure would broaden the list of crimes that make inmates ineligible for early release from state prison through the parole program in Proposition 57, adding 22 offenses, including trafficking a child for sex and felony domestic violence.

The measure also would increase penalties for people who commit multiple thefts, including serial shoplifting, to address a spate of such crimes, and would mandate the collection of DNA samples from adults convicted of crimes newly classified as misdemeanors under AB 109, including forging checks and certain domestic violence crimes.

In addition, Proposition 20 would require the state Board of Parole Hearings to weigh an inmate’s entire criminal history when deciding parole, not just the most recent offense, which was the standard set by AB 109.

The nonprofit, nonpartisan group CalMatters has this helpful page about Prop 20 which includes a two-minute video seeking to summarize the initiative.  This Ballotpedia page on Prop 20 reveals a lot of money has been donated to both the proponents and opponents of this reform, but it does not report on any polling on the topic.  I have seen other reports on polling calling this ballot issue a "coin toss" because of so many undecideds.  In other words, as always seems to be the case, California in Nov 2020 is yet again a state to watch for those interested in the state of criminal justice reform efforts.

"Punishment in Prison: Constituting the 'Normal' and the 'Atypical' in Solitary and Other Forms of Confinement"

The title of this post is the title of this new lengthy article by multiple authors now available via SSRN.  Here is its abstract:

What aspects of human liberty does incarceration impinge?  A remarkable group of Black and white prisoners, most of whom had little formal education and no resources, raised that question in the 1960s and 1970s.  Incarcerated individuals asked judges for relief from corporal punishment; radical food deprivations; strip cells; solitary confinement in dark cells; prohibitions on bringing these claims to courts, on religious observance, and on receiving reading materials; and from transfers to long-term isolation and to higher security levels.

Judges concluded that some facets of prison that were once ordinary features of incarceration, such as racial segregation, rampant violence, and filth, violated the Constitution. Today, even as implementation is erratic and at times abysmal, correctional departments no longer claim they have unfettered authority to do what they want inside prisons walls.  And, even as the courts have continued to tolerate the punishment of solitary confinement in the last decade, a few lower courts have held unconstitutional the profound sensory deprivations such isolation has entailed.

Prisoners have also sought procedural protections to constrain arbitrary decision-making about placements in solitary confinement and transfers to adverse settings.  In response, the Supreme Court has required that, to state a Fourteenth Amendment claim that their liberty had been infringed, prisoners have to demonstrate that a specific practice imposed an “atypical” and “significant hardship.”

What is typical in prisons?  What are the sources of knowledge and the baselines used by Justices to decide?  How did isolation come to be seen as an ordinary incident of prison life?  We answer these questions through analyzing debates in both the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts about what deprivations in prison are “normal.”  After excavating the conflicts within the Court about the kinds of liberty interests prisoners retained, we mined hundreds of lower court opinions to learn how judges determine when constrictions on human movement meet the test of atypicality and hardship.  By documenting the high tolerance many federal judges have for periods of isolation lasting months, years, and decades, we demonstrate the central role judges play in constructing the “normal” of prisons.

Will some (most? all?) federal prisoners transferred to home confinement be returned to prison after the pandemic ends?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by this new Walter Palvo piece at Forbes headlined "US Attorney States Federal Inmates On Home Confinement Will Return To Prison Once 'Pandemic Is Declared Over'."  Here are excerpts:

It is a fact that the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has had a difficult time controlling the spread of COVID-19 within its 122 prison facilities located across the country.  As of October 13, 2020, there are over 1,600 active COVID-19 cases among inmates and another 14,000 who were infected but have recovered .... 126 have died.  Prison staff have also been hurt by the virus with 736 currently infected and over 1,200 who have recovered....

On March 26, 2020, Attorney General William Barr’s memo to Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Director Michael Carvajal stated that even more needed to be done and noted that one of the most effective “tools to manage prison population and keep inmates safe is the ability to grant certain eligible prisoners home confinement in certain circumstances.” Since then, the BOP has transitioned over 7,700 inmates to home confinement from prison to complete their sentence. While many of those had under a year remaining on their sentence, some have years to go with release dates of 2024 and beyond.  The expectation of those placed on home confinement was that their sentence would be served under these same conditions, but a case out of the District of Columbia sheds light on what may lie ahead for some who are on home confinement ... that could include a return to prison....

[In litigation over a compassionate release motion] Michael P. McCarthy of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division Fraud Section [stated in court] ... "the BOP's program [home confinement under the Barr memo], it's a transfer until the end of the pandemic and then a return to prison if the pandemic is declared over."...

While everyone wants an end to the pandemic, those on home confinement may be told that they will be returning to prison ... or they could be asked to be immunized in order to return .... or the inmate could refuse immunization .... or the inmate may have only a few months remaining by the end of the pandemic and might file an appeal.  If people think the courts are bogged down with compassionate release cases now, wait until a return to prison is announced for those on home confinement.

I asked Jack Donson, a retired BOP corrections specialist, about the prospect of such an action.  Donson told me, “Before COVID-19, home confinement was limited to the lesser of 6 months or 10% of the sentence, aside from the Elderly Offender program but the CARES Act removed that cap so we have never had a situation where people were potentially on home confinement for years.  Nobody knows how this will play out but it has been taxing to the BOP to get people out of prison, I can only imagine that it would be even more taxing to get them back in, especially in light of the June 2020, target population reductions in the Low and Minimum security facilities.”

Because of the opaque nature of BOP work and data, it is difficult to tell just how many persons have been transferred into home confinement and what percentage of these persons might have long enough still remain on their original sentences to perhaps prompt DOJ to seek their return to prison whenever the pandemic if over.  Sadly, I fear we are still many, many months away from returning to anything we might call post-pandemic normal prison operations, and so the need to start answering the question in the title of this post may still be a long way off.  But, as this Forbes piece highlights, it is probably not too early to start thinking about some of the legal and practical challenges that will come whenever we are "lucky" enough to return to "normal" in the federal prison section of incarceration nation.

"COVID-19 and the US Criminal Justice System: Evidence for Public Health Measures to Reduce Risk"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new report authored by a bunch of experts at Johns Hopkins.  Here is the report's introduction:

Since its recognition as a pandemic in early 2020, novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has touched nearly every corner of US society.  However, some populations and environments have been affected far more severely than others. Vulnerable populations — especially those subject to structural racism, discrimination due to disability, and financial insecurity — tend also to be particularly susceptible to the economic consequences of and severe disease and death from COVID-19.  In addition, the institutions, industries, and systems that are fundamentally important to our lives and our democracy have, in some cases, become places where severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spreads readily if allowed to gain a foothold.  In these places, it can be difficult to prevent the introduction of the virus or control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 once it is introduced.

The US criminal justice system is highly susceptible to the spread of COVID-19 because of the structure of carceral facilities, which propagates the spread of respiratory infections, and the comorbidities of many incarcerated individuals. The criminal justice system in the United States is not unique in its vulnerability to COVID-19; other systems and industries — like nursing homes and long-term care facilities, manufacturing and meat processing facilities, and dormitories — are similarly affected. However, many factors converge in the criminal justice system that make viral transmission both more possible and, in some cases, more dangerous than in many other environments.

This report, from scholars at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, is intended to summarize the current state and future projections of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, detail the impact that the pandemic has already had on the US criminal justice system, and provide evidence-based recommendations on how to reduce COVID-19 risks to people in the system.  This document was requested by the National Commission on COVID-19 and the Criminal Justice System to inform their discussion and deliberation on this topic.

Spotlighting new research detailing increased post-release deaths for those placed in solitary confinement

I sense that we have known for many decades about the profound harms that solitary confinement can created for mental and physical health, and yet there are still tens of thousands of persons subject to this extreme form of imprisonment. And thanks to this new Prison Policy Initiative piece, titled "New data: Solitary confinement increases risk of premature death after release," I learned of new research documenting how time spent in solitary confinement increases the risk of deaths by suicide, homicide, and opioid overdose.  This research was published in a medical journal late last year under the title "Association of Restrictive Housing During Incarceration With Mortality After Release."  Here is part of a summary of the research by Andrea Fenster of PPI :

A recently published study of people released from North Carolina prisons confirms what many have long suspected: solitary confinement increases the risk of premature death, even after release.  Personal stories, like those of Kalief Browder’s isolation and subsequent suicide, are canaries in the coal mine.  Underneath seemingly isolated events, researchers now find that solitary confinement is linked to more deaths after release from prison.  These preventable deaths aren’t outliers; in the U.S., where the use of solitary confinement is widespread, an estimated 80,000 people are held in some form of isolation on any given day, and in a single year, over 10,000 people were released to the community directly from solitary.

The new study shows that the effects of solitary confinement go well beyond the immediate psychological consequences identified by previous research, like anxiety, depression, and hallucinations.  The authors, from the University of North Carolina, Emory University, and the North Carolina Departments of Public Safety and Public Health, find that any amount of time spent in solitary confinement increases the risk of death in the first year after individuals return to the community, including deaths by suicide, homicide, and opioid overdose....

The study identifies two additional factors correlated with a heightened risk of death after release: race and the amount (length and frequency) of solitary confinement.  All incarcerated people of color are more likely to die within a year of release, and the experience of solitary confinement only amplifies this racial disparity.  A previous study found that, compared to their share of the total prison population, Black men and women are overrepresented in solitary confinement, exposing them disproportionately to its harms. And unsurprisingly, more frequent placements in solitary confinement — as well as longer stays — are associated with worse outcomes across both white and nonwhite populations.

Another notable cert petition providing the new Justices (and older ones) another chance to look at reasonableness review of federal sentences

In this post a few years ago, I flagged an interesting cert petition while asking in my post title "Now a full decade after Rita, Gall and Kimbrough, do any Justices still care about reasonableness review?".  That post from April 2018 stemmed from my frustration with the US Supreme Court's seeming disinterest in examining how reasonableness review of federal sentences was functioning in the circuits.  For years and years, judges, scholars and commentators have suggested that the appellate review of sentences — and all of federal sentencing under advisory Guidelines — would benefit significantly from the Court's further guidance on the contours of reasonableness review. 

As long-time readers likely know, I have long been particularly troubled by the so-called "presumption" of reasonableness permitted by Rita v. US, 551 U.S. 338 (2007), which has largely functioned as a problematic, un-rebuttable, safe-harbor for within-guideline sentences even in settings where the US Sentencing Commission's data and analysis demonstrate the obvious unreasonableness of certain guideline provisions.  But, over these oh-so-many-years of excessive federal sentences, my grumpiness over the failure of SCOTUS to take up reasonableness review anew has largely turned to resignation and acceptance of the fact that the Justices were just not that into the issue.

But perhaps hope should spring eternal, especially with Carissa Hessick flagging a new cert petition in this extended PrawfsBlawg post titled "Supreme Court Weighs Whether to Hear Possible Sentencing Law Blockbuster."  Here are excerpts (and links) from Carissa's post:

This Friday, the Supreme Court will decide whether to grant certiorari in Demma v. United States.  Demma raises two questions under the Supreme Court’s Sixth Amendment sentencing doctrine: (1) the extent to which judges can sentence outside of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines based only on a policy disagreement with the Guidelines, and (2) how much appellate courts must defer to the substantive sentencing decisions of district court judges....

Both of the legal questions raised by the Demma petition are important.  And frankly, I am surprised that the Supreme Court has yet to resolve them in favor of district court discretion to sentence outside of the Guidelines.  I suspect that the Court hasn’t clarified these issues because it wants judges to impose Guidelines sentences in most cases.  And while the Court’s Sixth Amendment sentencing doctrine doesn’t allow the Court to accomplish that directly, it has tried to do so indirectly through allowing the courts of appeals to take different approaches on these questions.

But I find that decision — the decision to allow different legal standards for sentencing — troubling.  The Supreme Court ordinarily prides itself on resolving legal disagreements between the circuits.  And it seems especially ironic to allow different courts of appeals to have different legal standards when it comes to sentencing.  After all, the remedial majority in Booker said that it was creating an advisory Guidelines system because it wanted to promote uniformity in sentencing.  Different legal standards in different circuits is hardly likely to lead to uniformity.

And we don’t have sentencing uniformity right now.  Instead we have sentencing practices that vary wildly depending on the circuit.  Because different circuits have different sentencing case law, judges in some circuits are far more likely to sentence outside of the Guidelines than judges in other circuits.... 

The chances that the Court will grant cert in Demma look pretty good.  The Court called for a response from the Solicitor General (who had initially waived response).  The Court also relisted the petition after an earlier conference.

I really hope that the Justice vote to grant cert in this case.  And I hope that they resolve these questions in a way that vindicates the Sixth Amendment right that they first acknowledged in Apprendi.

Give the Supreme Court's long history of dodging many reasonableness review issues for now more than a dozen years, I am a bit fearful of the statement that the "chances that the Court will grant cert in Demma look pretty good."  But as the title of this post hints, I am hopeful that the newer members of the Court, Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, who had to grapple with reasonableness review issues during long tenures as circuit judges, might now be eager to help further define the contours of reasonableness review. 

In the end, though, I suspect Justice Breyer is always a critical Justice on this front, as he both created reasonableness review with his remedial opinion in Booker and defined its essential form in Rita.  If Justice Breyer's voice and vote on these matters carry some extra weight, those of us eager to see the full Court take up reasonableness review might need to root for him to be eager to tackle these issues yet again. 

Some (of many, many) older related posts about reasonableness review:

• Another reminder that substantive reasonableness review has very little bite (from Feb 2019)
• As Booker enters its adolescence, do we really know much of substance about substantive reasonableness review? (from Sept 2018)
• Now a full decade after Rita, Gall and Kimbrough, do any Justices still care about reasonableness review? (from April 2018)
• Is there much to — or much to say about — reasonableness review a decade after Rita, Gall, and Kimbrough? (from July 2017)
• Has anyone formally calculated exactly how very few federal sentences are found unreasonable? (from March 2014)
• "More than a Formality: The Case for Meaningful Substantive Reasonableness Review" (from Jan 2014)
• "Doing Kimbrough Justice: Implementing Policy Disagreements with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines" (from Feb 2013)
• Making a full-throated pitch for SCOTUS to again address reasonableness review (from May 2012)
• New scholarship complaining that reasonableness review is now quite unreasonable (from March 2010)

The Sentencing Project releases new disenfranchisement report, "Locked Out 2020: Estimates of People Denied Voting Rights Due to a Felony Conviction"

Via email this afternoon I received news of this notable new Sentencing Project report titled "Locked Out 2020: Estimates of People Denied Voting Rights Due to a Felony Conviction." Here is part of its "overview":

In the past 25 years, half the states have changed their laws and practices to expand voting access to people with felony convictions.  Despite these important reforms, 5.2 million Americans remain disenfranchised, 2.3 percent of the voting age population.

In this presidential election year, the question of voting restrictions, and their disproportionate impact on Black and Brown communities, should receive greater public attention....

For the first time, we present estimates of the percentage of the Latinx population disenfranchised due to felony convictions.  Although these and other estimates must be interpreted with caution, the numbers presented here represent our best assessment of the state of felony disenfranchisement as of the November 2020 election.  Our key findings include the following:

• As of 2020, an estimated 5.17 million people are disenfranchised due to a felony conviction, a figure that has declined by almost 15 percent since 2016, as states enacted new policies to curtail this practice.  There were an estimated 1.17 million people disenfranchised in 1976, 3.34 million in 1996, 5.85 million in 2010, and 6.11 million in 2016.

• One out of 44 adults — 2.27 percent of the total U.S. voting eligible population — is disenfranchised due to a current or previous felony conviction.

• Individuals who have completed their sentences in the eleven states that disenfranchise at least some people post-sentence make up most (43 percent) of the entire disenfranchised population, totaling 2.23 million people.

• Rates of disenfranchisement vary dramatically by state due to broad variations in voting prohibitions.  In three states — Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee more than 8 percent of the adult population, one of every thirteen people, is disenfranchised.

• We estimate that nearly 900,000 Floridians who have completed their sentences remain disenfranchised, despite a 2018 ballot referendum that promised to restore their voting rights.  Florida thus remains the nation’s disenfranchisement leader in absolute numbers, with over 1.1 million people currently banned from voting — often because they cannot afford to pay court-ordered monetary sanctions or because the state is not obligated to tell them the amount of their sanction.

• One in 16 African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate 3.7 times greater than that of non-African Americans.  Over 6.2 percent of the adult African American population is disenfranchised compared to 1.7 percent of the non-African American population.

• African American disenfranchisement rates vary significantly by state.  In seven states — Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wyoming — more than one in seven African Americans is disenfranchised, twice the national average for African Americans.

• Although data on ethnicity in correctional populations are still unevenly reported, we can conservatively estimate that over 560,000 Latinx Americans or over 2 percent of the voting eligible population are disenfranchised.

• Approximately 1.2 million women are disenfranchised, comprising over one-fifth of the total disenfranchised population.

REMINDER Call for Papers: "Understanding Drug Sentencing and its Contributions to Mass Punishment"

I said before that I was going to regularly remind folks of this recent call for papers relating to an exciting event I am excited to be involved in helping to plan, "Understanding Drug Sentencing and its Contributions to Mass Punishment."  So, here again is the full call, which is also available as a full pdf document at this link:

INTRODUCTION
Discussion of the “war on drugs” frequently fails to examine precisely how drug offenders are sentenced — and how they should be.  Drug sentencing practices are implicated in many fundamental criminal justice issues and concerns.  Research suggests incarcerating people for drug offenses has little impact on substance use rates or on crime rates more generally.  And, despite reports of comparable use rates, people of color are far more likely to be arrested and incarcerated for drug-related offenses than white counterparts.  Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes are applied commonly, but inconsistently, in drug cases and for persons with a criminal history that involves drug offenses. And while states have created specialty courts to handle the cases of low-level drug offenders, the efficacy and appropriateness of the “drug court movement” has long been subject to debate.

Distinct state and federal realities complicate our understanding of the relationship between the drug war and punishment. Nearly all federal drug defendants get sent to prison and nearly 50% of the federal prison population is comprised of drug offenders; relatively few state drug offenders are sent to prison and less than 20% of state prisoners are serving time on drug charges.  But data on arrests, jail populations, and community supervision highlight the continued, significant impact drug cases still have on state and local justice systems.  The role of drug criminalization and sentencing contributes to mass incarceration, yet mass punishment can look quite different depending on the criminal justice system(s) and the drugs.

ABOUT THE CALL
These issues and others related to drug sentencing will be part of a symposium jointly sponsored by the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and the Academy for Justice at the Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.  "Drug Sentencing and its Contributions to Mass Punishment," will take place on June 10–12, 2021, at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law in Columbus, Ohio. As part of this symposium, we invite scholars to submit papers for inclusion in the workshop scheduled for June 12.  Accepted submissions will be paired with a discussant who will review and provide feedback on the paper during the workshop.  Each paper should reflect on some aspect of drug prosecutions and sentencing in the United States.  Participants should have a draft to discuss and circulate by May 17, 2021.  The papers will be gathered and published in a Spring 2022 symposium edition of the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, a peer-reviewed publication.  Participants should have a completed version to begin the publication process by August 15, 2021.  Final papers may range in length from 5,000 – 20,000 words.

Deadline for submission is November 1, 2020. Please submit a title and an abstract of no more than 300 words to Jana Hrdinová at hrdinova.1@osu.edu. Accepted scholars will be notified by December 1, 2020

Criminal justice issues again on the SCOTUS oral argument docket today (though again attention is on confirmation hearings)

The criminal justice cases on the SCOTUS docket that are likely of the greatest interest to sentencing fans are scheduled for oral argument on Nov 3 (aka Election Day): Jones v. Mississippi, No. 18-1259, will address the Eighth Amendment rules for imposing LWOP sentences on juvenile murders, and Borden v. US, No. 19-5410, will explore another variation on the application of the severe mandatory minimum term in the Armed Career Criminal Act.  Based on what I am hearing about the pace and content of the on-going confirmation hearing for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, it sounds as though the Supreme Court might be back to nine Justices by that time.

Today, though, the Supreme Court is operating with only eight Justices, and those eight are scheduled to hear oral arguments in these two criminal cases (previewed via SCOTUSblog):

Torres v. Madrid, No. 19-292 [Arg: 10.14.2020]

Issue(s): Whether an unsuccessful attempt to detain a suspect by use of physical force is a “seizure” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, as the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 8th, 9th and 11th Circuits and the New Mexico Supreme Court hold, or whether physical force must be successful in detaining a suspect to constitute a “seizure,” as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and the District of Columbia Court of Appeals hold.

Case preview: When is a fleeing suspect “seized”? (authored by Jeffrey Bellin)

 

Pereida v. Barr, No. 19-438 [Arg: 10.14.2020]

Issue(s): Whether a criminal conviction bars a noncitizen from applying for relief from removal when the record of conviction is merely ambiguous as to whether it corresponds to an offense listed in the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Case preview: Harsh immigration consequences from ambiguous state criminal convictions (authored by Kate Evans)