"Judge calls it quits after 31 years; sentencing too much to bear"

The title of this post is the headline of this lengthy new Washington Post article.  Here are excerpts:

Judges are loathe to discuss the emotional strain or joys of the job, lest they raise questions about their impartiality.  But [U.S. District Judge Ricardo] Urbina, a gray-haired jurist who took up Aikido in his 50s and meditates daily, is known for wearing his heart on his sleeve. And in a series of interviews, the judge spoke candidly about what he and most of his colleagues consider the most difficult and draining aspect of their work: sentencing, a gut-wrenching courtroom moment where a real life intersects with esoteric legal arguments and sentencing guidelines that never truly capture a case’s nuances.

For Urbina, sentencing has always been filled with stress and doubt — of agonizingly weighing the crime against the defendant’s past, of worrying about what message to send to the public and of feeling that he was never given the proper tools to rehabilitate offenders.  So, after 31 years on the local and D.C. federal bench, of sitting in judgment of scam artists, burglars, corrupt government officials and murderers, the judge retired last month, explaining that a prime reason he left a job he loved was that he had simply grown too fatigued of sentencing....

Urbina, who strangely has a reputation among prosecutors, defense lawyers and courthouse employees for being a bit prickly and quick-tempered, said there was no more important time for clarity than in the hours before sentencing.

Appointed to D.C. Superior Court in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan and then to the federal bench in 1994 by President Bill Clinton, the judge had sentenced hundreds of people to punishments ranging from life in prison to community service (he never presided over a death-penalty trial).

Urbina also imposed imaginative punishments — he ordered two men to write lengthy books about their deeds in the hopes it would help them better understand their crimes and allow others to learn from the experiences.  And he ordered most defendants to reappear in his courtroom every six months after their prison terms ended to check on their progress while on supervised release.

“I do not have a passion for punishment,” he said, a statement that helps explain why he is one of the more lenient sentencers on the D.C. federal bench, according to statistics. “If there is a way the court can contribute to the rehabilitation process, it is more likely the person will return to the mainstream.”