Sentencing Law and Policy

Florida legislature passes it own first (very baby) step act on criminal justice reform

This local article out of Florida, headlined "Legislature OKs criminal justice reforms but no change to mandatory-minimum sentencing," reports on how the Sunshine State is starting to move forward on reform inspired clearly by the federal FIRST STEP Act. But, as the article explains, political challenges have resulted in Florida's first step being even more limited that what has been achieved at the federal level:

The Florida Legislature passed a 296-page criminal justice reform package bill Friday, the last full day of the session, addressing the issue of a bulging prison population that has long eluded resolution....

Reshaping Florida’s tough-on-crime policies and reducing the state’s nearly 100,000-person prison population is a rare issue that has united Trump populists and progressive civil rights groups, yet often results in open and closed-door fights among Republicans over how far to go.

This year, compromise was reached. The House passed the bill unanimously Friday, following the Senate’s near-unanimous passage on Thursday. The bill now heads to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk. Despite the victory for Republican Sen. Jeff Brandes of St. Petersburg, who’s long been a leading voice in the Legislature for the need for criminal justice reform, the bill’s passage was bittersweet.

“I am incredibly disappointed,” he said Thursday, referring to several big-ticket reform pieces that were taken out of the bill at the behest of the House. “I’m not surprised we didn’t get there, but I think what we did was advance the conversation.”

House Bill 7125 is the result of private negotiations between the two chambers over the past week and contains many changes proposed by those seeking to reshape Florida’s tough-on-crime laws from the 1990s. That includes making it easier for felons to get professional licenses and allowing state attorneys to decide whether juvenile cases should be transferred to adult court. Currently, that happens automatically if the crime is severe or the child has certain prior convictions.

It also would raise the “threshold” dollar amount at which theft charges go from a misdemeanor to a felony, from $300 to $750. That’s not as high as the House’s original proposal, which was to raise it to $1,000, but it brings Florida’s law closer to the national average. It also eliminates or reduces driver’s license suspensions as a criminal penalty, which lawmakers have said unfairly hampered people’s ability to get to their jobs and continue to make an honest living.

The bill has been dubbed the “Florida First Step Act” after the federal reform law with the same name. Shortly after the bill passed the House, Kara Gross, the legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said the bill amounted to “a baby step, at best.”...

What didn’t make the cut of the final bill:

▪ Allowing judges discretion over sentences for certain drug crimes that currently have required amounts of time that defendants must serve, called “mandatory minimum” sentences.

▪ Permitting prison inmates convicted of nonviolent felonies to be released after serving a minimum 65 percent of their sentence if they have good behavior and participate in educational and rehabilitative programs (current law is 85 percent).

▪ Retroactive re-sentencing for people who were convicted of aggravated assault back when the state’s punishment for that crime was harsher than it is now.

Email messages between House and Senate staff obtained by the Herald/Times show that the House had, at one point last week, been “comfortable” with modified language related to giving judges more discretion over sentences for nonviolent drug crimes, reducing the length of some sentences. But that didn’t make it into the final bill....

Despite some lukewarm support for giving judges more sentencing discretion, Gov. Ron DeSantis poured cold water on the idea of letting inmates out after serving 65 percent of their sentence, likely one of the reasons that piece was scrapped....

The bill passed with only one “no” vote in the Senate, which came from Sen. Randolph Bracy, D-Orlando, who praised Brandes’ efforts but said that he, too, was frustrated with the compromise. “Honestly, I’m tired of submitting to the will of the House on these types of issues,” he said.

Still, the willingness of the House, traditionally the more tough-on-crime chamber, to cobble together a criminal justice reform package of this size shows a shift of tone, however subtle, toward reducing Florida’s burgeoning prison population.

Friday’s bill also creates a task force to reevaluate Florida’s entire criminal punishment code, and whether the set punishments fit the crime. House Speaker José Oliva said that this bill is the result of several years of discussion on this issue. Lawmakers in both the House and Senate have said they intend on taking up some of the issues that failed next year. “Sometimes ideas take time for people to understand and to have a chance to really let set in. For a lot of years the idea was being tough on crime,” Oliva said recently. He added, though, that data showing the harms of these policies “started a conversation. I think that conversation is now maturing.”

I am sorry to see that Florida is not moving forward on bolder reforms, but there is still good reason to celebrate reform efforts finding expression in this historically tough state.  Given that it took a full 40 years to ramp up incarceration level to historical levels, nobody should expect changes in the forces and laws developed in the tough era to happen quickly or without lots of fits and starts.

"When Plea Bargaining Became Normal"

The title of this post is the title of this interesting new article authored by William Ortman and now available on SSRN. Here is its abstract:

Plea bargaining is the criminal justice system, the Supreme Court tells us, but how did it get to be that way?  Existing scholarship tells only part of the story.  It demonstrates that plea bargaining emerged in the nineteenth century as a response to (depending on one’s theory) increasing caseloads, expanding trial procedures, or professionalizing law enforcement.  But in order for plea bargaining to truly become the criminal justice system, the legal profession would have to accept and internalize it.  That was not its first reaction. When legal scholars and reformers in the 1920s discovered that bargaining dominated America’s criminal courts, they quickly denounced it as abusive.  By the 1960s, only four decades later, the legal profession had learned to love it.

This article investigates the process that made plea bargaining the normal way of doing American criminal justice.  The story unfolds in three parts—plea bargaining’s discovery by and frosty reception from the “crime commissions” of the 1920s; its rehabilitation by the Legal Realists in the 1930s; and finally its decisive embrace by scholars and judges in the 1950s and ‘60s.  The Realists’ starring role is surprising, as they are not usually recognized for contributing to criminal law or procedure.  This article shows that they deserve credit (or plausibly blame) for taking the first major steps towards normalization.  The article also pays close attention to an objection to plea bargaining that arrived late — that it depends on coercing defendants to plead guilty.  By the time this objection emerged in the 1950s, plea bargaining’s momentum was too strong; legal elites, and, ultimately, the Supreme Court, saw no option but to rationalize it away. Above all, this article reveals that normalized plea bargaining is newer and more historically contingent than it seems.

Wondering, after 100 judges confirmed, if Trump judiciary has had much impact on sentencing jurisprudence

This Washington Examiner article, headlined "Senate confirms Trump's 100th judicial nominee," has prompted the wondering in the title of this post. Here is the background:

President Trump hit another milestone in his efforts to reshape the federal judiciary, with the Senate clearing his 100th judicial nominee Thursday.

The president and Republican-controlled Senate have made judicial nominations a top priority, and the confirmation of Rodolfo Ruiz to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida brought the number of Trump's judicial appointments into triple digits.

In addition to confirming Ruiz, the Senate is also set to clear two more nominees to federal district courts in Puerto Rico and Pennsylvania. If those two nominations win approval, Trump will have tapped 102 judges to the federal bench.

Trump’s judicial appointments include two Supreme Court justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, 37 federal appeals court judges, and 61 federal district court judges....

While Trump has seen great success in remaking the federal bench, his efforts have been met by resistance from Senate Democrats, who have criticized the president for the lack of diversity among his judicial picks. Trump’s judicial nominees are also young, ensuring they will leave a conservative stamp on the federal courts that will endure for decades....

More than three dozen judicial nominees are still awaiting votes on the Senate floor, including two of the president’s picks for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The San Francisco-based court is often the target of Trump’s frustration, as it has ruled against a number of the administration’s policies, and is considered the country’s most liberal appeals court. But if the Senate approves Trump’s two nominees to the 9th Circuit, it would bring the court closer to parity. Last month, Trump flipped his first appeals court, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which now has a majority of Republican-appointed judges.

On a day-to-day basis, the group of judges that matter most in the federal sentencing world are district judges, and I would love to hear from practitioners if they think any (or many) of the 61 federal district court judges appointed by Prez Trump approach sentencing in distinctive ways. I know I have seen more than a few notable circuit opinions authored by some of the circuit judges appointed by Prez Trump, but I am not able to follow all circuit jurisprudence close enough to see if an ever-growing number of new circuit judges is significantly shifting existing circuit jurisprudence.

Of course, the Supreme Court work of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh (and any future SCOTUS nominees) are sure to have biggest long-term impact on sentencing jurisprudence.  The impact of these new Justices has already been seen in more than a few capital cases, and I am paying close attention to the Haymond case (background here) in part because it should provide another interesting indication of where a new Trump-impact judiciary may be headed on important sentencing issues.

Thoughts or experiences, dear readers, concerning the 100 newest federal judges and sentencing?

Georgia completes execution after courts reject array of final appeals

As reported in this local article, "Scotty Morrow [with a]ppeals exhausted, clemency denied, ... at 9:38 p.m. .. became the first person executed by the state of Georgia this year."  Here is more about his crime and filed appeals: 

The father of two and grandfather of four said in his petition for clemency that he thought every day about what happened on Dec. 29, 1994.  Spurned over the phone by his ex-girlfriend, Barbara Ann Young, Morrow drove to her house and fatally shot her and her friend, Tonya Woods.  He shot a third woman in the face and arm but she survived. The murders were witnessed by Young’s 5-year-old son....

Morrow is the 73rd person executed by the state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, and the 50th by lethal injection. “Tonight, justice was carried out for the families of Tonya Woods and Barbara Ann Young and the injured LaToya Horne,” said Hall County District Attorney Lee Darragh, who witnessed the execution.

The U.S. Supreme Court had denied Morrow's final appeal to stay the execution at about 9 p.m. Thursday, two and a half hours after his defense team petitioned the nation's highest court.

Morrow was denied clemency Wednesday by the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. His attorneys argued that unplanned crimes of passion, such as the ones Morrow was convicted of, are rarely punished by death. They also pointed out that jurors in Morrow’s murder trial heard little about his traumatic childhood....

A state court judge overturned Morrow’s sentence in 2011, saying that his lawyers had not afforded him proper representation. A new trial was ordered, but the Georgia Supreme Court later reversed that decision and reinstated the death sentence.

On Tuesday, a Butts County judge dismissed a petition claiming Morrow’s death sentence was unconstitutional because it was improperly imposed. Lawyers for the Gainesville man said the judge in Morrow’s criminal trial decided which of the two murders he committed warranted the death penalty, a decision they said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled must be made by jurors.  The Butts County judge on Wednesday agreed with attorneys for the state that those claims had already been rejected by higher courts. On Thursday, the state Supreme Court agreed in a unanimous decision. The court described Morrow’s appeal “as lacking in arguable merit” and it also denied a request from his lawyers for a stay of execution....

Prison officials testified Morrow was a model inmate who sought redemption for his crimes. His son and namesake said he was a positive influence on his four grandchildren.  Counselors told the parole board he had been fully rehabilitated. But the parole board was unswayed, denying Morrow’s last, best chance at survival.

"Law, Prison, and Double-Double Consciousness: A Phenomenological View of the Black Prisoner’s Experience"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new Yale Law Review Forum piece authored by James Davis III. Here is its abstract:

This Essay introduces double-double consciousness as a new way of conceptualizing the psychological ramifications of being a black prisoner.  It begins by revisiting W.E.B. DuBois’s theory of double consciousness.  It then offers a phenomenological exposition of double-double consciousness — the double consciousness that the black prisoner came to prison with, coupled with the double consciousness that the black prisoner develops in prison.  Thought and feeling, time and space are all different in the prison.  This world relentlessly imposes the prisoner identity on all those who inhabit it, requiring them to reconcile their new status with their conceptions of self.  Based on my own experience as a black prisoner, I conclude that double-double consciousness is a mechanism through which the prisoner can maintain dignity despite living in captivity.

Summer sentencing (with notable particulars) for first college admission scandal parents to enter pleas in court

This Los Angeles Times article, headlined "Bay Area couple first to plead guilty in college admissions scandal," reports on a huge high-profile federal fraud case now getting ever closer to sentencing for one pair of defendants. Here are the details:

A Northern California couple who secured their daughters’ spots at UCLA and USC with bribes and rigged tests pleaded guilty Wednesday to fraud and money laundering offenses, the first parents to admit their guilt before a judge in an investigation that has sent shivers through circles of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Hollywood and some of the country’s most elite universities.

Davina Isackson of Hillsborough, Calif., pleaded guilty to one count of fraud conspiracy. Her husband, real estate developer Bruce Isackson, pleaded guilty to one count of fraud conspiracy, one count of money laundering conspiracy and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States. They will be sentenced July 31. In Davina Isackson’s plea agreement, prosecutors recommended a sentence at the low end of federal guidelines that call for 27 to 33 months in prison. For Bruce Isackson, they suggested a sentence at the low end of 37 to 46 months in prison.

Of the 33 parents charged in the investigation, the Isacksons are the only ones to have signed cooperation deals with prosecutors. If prosecutors decide the couple provided useful and credible information, they can recommend that a judge sentence them below the federal guidelines.

Investigators want to learn from the couple who at UCLA and USC knew of an alleged recruiting scheme they used to slip their two daughters into the universities as sham athletes, The Times has reported. The Isacksons’ older daughter, Lauren, was admitted to UCLA as a recruited soccer player, given a jersey number and listed on the team roster as a midfielder for an entire season, despite never having played the sport competitively, prosecutors alleged.

To ensure she got in, they said, her parents transferred $250,000 in Facebook stock to the foundation of Newport Beach college consultant William “Rick” Singer, which Bruce Isackson later wrote off on the couple’s taxes as a charitable gift....

The Isacksons tapped Singer’s “side door” the following year to have their younger daughter admitted to USC as a recruited rower, prosecutors alleged. The couple also availed themselves of Singer’s test-rigging scheme, prosecutors said, in which he bribed SAT and ACT administrators to turn a blind eye to his 36-year-old, Harvard-educated accomplice.

With the help of the accomplice, Mark Riddell, the Isacksons’ younger daughter scored a 31 out of 36 on the ACT, prosecutors said. Her father paid Singer’s foundation $100,000 and wrote it off on taxes as a charitable gift.

I find notable that federal prosecutors think that two+ years of imprisonment is necessary for one of these the Isacksons and that three+ years is necessary for the other in accord with guideline calculations. But, because it appears that these defendants may be providing "substantial assistance," the feds may ultimately be recommending lower sentences as a kind of compensation for this kind of cooperation.

Prior related posts:

• Mapping out next possible celebrity sentencings in wake of indictment in college admissions scandal 
• Big batch of federal plea deals (with relatively low sentencing ranges) in college admissions scandal

Virginia Gov explains why he will not sign any mandatory minimum bills for the remainder of his term

A number of folks made sure I did not miss this interesting Washington Post commentary authored by Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia. The piece is headlined "Ralph Northam: I won’t sign another mandatory minimum sentence bill into law. Here’s why." I recommend the full piece, and here are excerpts:

Over the past few decades, there has been a rise in legislation imposing mandatory minimum sentencing.  These kinds of sentences are determined by elected officials who purport to be tough on crime, particularly drug offenses.  Judges are not given the opportunity to arrive at these sentences by weighing the facts on a case-by-case basis.

This session, I signed one such bill into law, regarding the murder of police officers.  It will be the last mandatory minimum bill that I sign for the remainder of my term as Virginia’s governor.

I believe we have more than enough mandatory minimum sentences — more than 200 — in Virginia state code. In recent weeks,  I have visited with community leaders across the state seeking input on how I can best use the power of the governor’s office to make our commonwealth fairer and more equitable for communities of color.  My commitment today will not solve all of the issues with our criminal justice system, but I believe it is a step in the right direction.

I’m starting with vetoes of two mandatory minimum sentencing bills this week.  The bills demonstrate how we have become too quick to impose mandatory minimum sentencing.  One, House Bill 2042, would impose a 60-day mandatory minimum for assault and battery against a family or household member for someone with a prior assault and battery conviction in recent years.  The other, Senate Bill 1675, establishes a six-month mandatory minimum for killing or injuring a law enforcement animal, which is already a felony under Virginia code.

While violence is unacceptable, these are crimes that can be addressed by a judge with full knowledge of the facts and circumstances of each particular case.

Piling on mandatory minimum sentences has contributed to our growing prison population over the past few decades, to the point that the United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

The 1980s and 1990s saw a rise in the popularity of mandatory minimums pegged to drug offenses, no matter the circumstances.  Mandatory minimums for lower-level drug offenses, along with three-strikes laws, helped accelerate the rise in prison populations in the United States.  At the end of 2016, the United States had 655 people in prison for every 100,000 adults, according to World Prison Population List, compared to a world prison population rate of 145 per 100,000 adults. That is the highest incarceration rate out of 222 countries ranked by the World Prison Brief.

Data do not indicate that mandatory minimum sentences keep our communities safer.  Instead, mandatory minimums are disproportionately harming people and communities of color....

Mandatory minimums are focused on punishment, not rehabilitation.  I have declared May to be Second Chance Month in Virginia, to increase the focus on ways we can make our criminal justice system fairer and more equitable.  We must continue to prepare returning citizens to be successful members of the community.  And we must work harder to address the mental health and substance-use disorders that often lead people into our criminal justice system.

We need to focus on evidence-based approaches that ensure equitable treatment under the law.  And we must focus on ways to rehabilitate returning citizens, particularly nonviolent ones.  I want to give our judges, appointed by the Virginia General Assembly, the appropriate discretion over sentencing decisions.  We must remember that punishment and justice are not always the same thing. We are better as a society when we give our judicial system the ability to discern the difference.

Terrific vision and plans in "Beyond Guilt," a new project of the Ohio Justice & Policy Center

I am so very pleased to see the announcement of a great new project by a leading criminal justice reform group in the Buckeye State. Specifically, the Ohio Justice & Policy Center (OJPC) has just launched "Beyond Guilt," which its website says "aims to do for over-punished prisoners who admit guilt what innocence projects have for wrongfully convicted persons who claim actual innocence."  I am especially drawn to the "Strategies" discussion set out in the new project's "Our Mission" statement, which I will quote here:

Beyond Guilt will seek to do for over-punished prisoners who admit guilt what innocence projects have done for wrongfully convicted persons who claim actual innocence.  Beyond Guilt is OJPC’s answer to criminal legal system reform efforts that focus narrowly on a more palatable side of the reform movement — freeing innocent prisoners and people convicted of low-level, non-violent offenses.  Unfortunately, current reform efforts leave many behind, particularly individuals convicted of more serious offenses, including violent crimes. Beyond Guilt will advance reform initiatives to include people who have paid their debt to society for serious crimes and can safely be released.  The project will do so in four ways:

First, Beyond Guilt will identify unfairly sentenced Ohio prisoners who illustrate widespread problems in our criminal legal system (e.g. imposition of life sentences for felony-murder; life without parole sentences for youthful offenders; broken parole systems that refuse to provide a second chance) and then fight for their release.  The project will represent individuals who have served significant portions of their sentences and can demonstrate rehabilitation within the prison walls and who have the skills and support systems on the outside to continue the process of rehabilitation once they are released.  Whenever possible, Beyond Guilt will partner with prosecutors, law enforcement officers and crime survivors who can help convince courts to release prisoners through various avenues.

Second, Beyond Guilt will lift up the stories of the people it represents to humanize these individuals and other prisoners like them whom society writes off for committing violent crimes.  The project will tell their stories through a variety of means, including traditional media, social media, film and a blog hosted on a dedicated Beyond Guilt website.  The project will also facilitate in-person meetings between its incarcerated clients and legislators who can benefit from seeing, face to face, the impact of overly punitive sentencing laws.  The goal is to enable our clients to tell their own stories, to be living breathing testaments to the power of people to change, and to become disciples, who through their stories, can inspire others to care about those that they left behind in prison.

Third, Beyond Guilt will partner with its clients — both those who are freed and those who remain incarcerated — to push for reform of Ohio sentencing laws that overly punish people who have committed serious crimes and parole systems that keep offenders locked up for longer than they need to be.

Fourth, Beyond Guilt will seek to build a national network of similar projects that work to reform sentencing practices for people convicted of violent crimes and to promote evidence-based ways to reduce lengthy sentences without compromising public safety.  Beyond Guilt will partner with law schools and public defender offices to build this network and with community and faith-based groups who work with returning citizens who need assistance once released.

Noting the encouraging story of reduced rates of incarceration for African Americans

Charles Lane and Keith Humphreys have this nice new Washington Post commentary spotlighting one notable part of the last BJS numbers on prison populations (discussed here).  The piece is headlined "Black imprisonment rates are down.  It’s important to know why."  Here are excerpts:

The imprisonment rate for African Americans is falling, has been falling since 2001 and now stands at its lowest level in more than a quarter-century.  These remarkable data are hidden in plain sight, in the latest annual statistical survey of prisoners issued last week by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Comparing 2017 survey results with prior years shows that the African American male imprisonment rate has dropped by a third since its peak and is now at a level not seen since 1991.  African American women’s rate of imprisonment has dropped 57 percent from its peak and is now at a 30-year low.

How big a change does this represent? Had African American imprisonment held steady at its highest point (2001 for men, 1999 for women) instead of declining, about 300,000 more African Americans would be in prison right now.  Instead they are free to live in the community, to raise families, to hold jobs, to be healthy and happy.

Dramatic failures command attention and therefore often drive efforts at policy reform and innovation. Yet success can be just as informative. It’s just as vital to understand why black imprisonment rates have fallen as it was to understand why they rose.  Yet, so far, there is still more discussion about the latter than the former.

It’s time for the debate to catch up with the data.  Collapsing crime rates in black neighborhoods surely reduced imprisonment rates, but how did that increase in public safety come about?  Did programs to make policing and sentencing more equitable also contribute?  Do prisoner reentry programs deserve any credit for reducing incarceration, and if so, which ones?  What is being done right that should be expanded to accelerate the positive trends?

Obviously, there is a risk of feeding complacency in taking note of — and celebrating — the decrease in black imprisonment. Yet to do otherwise risks feeding defeatism in the face of clear evidence that progress is possible. It also would miss an opportunity to break down racist myths: The declining imprisonment rate for African Americans definitively rebuts any notion of intractable black criminality....

Undeniably, today’s still-high and still-disproportionate rate of black imprisonment represents the appalling legacy of institutional racism.  Equally undeniably, the continuing presence of about 1.5 million people in state and federal prisons poses a challenge to public policy and the nation’s conscience.  But in important respects, the situation is getting better.  We need to say so: The nation’s reformers could use the recognition and the inspiration.

"The case for education in prison"

The title of this post is the title of this new Hill commentary authored by Arthur Rizer and Jesse Kelley.  Here is an excerpt:

As a nation, we are in desperate need of qualified workers and running out of places to look for them.  Yet we also have millions of individuals sitting idle in prisons, 95 percent of whom will eventually be released.  Sadly, our justice system has an abysmal record of preparing these individuals for life beyond concrete walls — especially when it comes to helping them enter the job market.  In fact, one year after their release, almost 60 percent of all formerly incarcerated individuals are still unemployed.

For the lucky few who do find employment, they are paid an average of 40 percent less than those with no criminal record.  These individuals represent a potential pool of untapped resources for employers looking to hire new workers. B ut in order to ensure that the formerly incarcerated are suited for the modern workforce, we need to increase opportunities for them to receive an education while behind bars.  Offering inmates postsecondary correctional education would provide a new world of opportunities for both these individuals and business owners....

Businesses thrive when they hire educated employees.  When employers have the option to hire from a larger pool of well-educated candidates, they can strengthen their productivity and competitiveness.  Investing in potential employees’ educational futures can add to the supply.  By investing in postsecondary correctional education in particular, employers can help meet their own demand for highly skilled employees....

For those formerly incarcerated who are re-entering the workforce, both the routine and the responsibility of employment offer financial support and the ability to build a life removed from past habits that might otherwise lead to reoffending. This is critical, especially considering that although recidivism rates have improved somewhat, they are still alarmingly high: An estimated three-fifths of those released from prison are convicted of a new offense within five years of their release....

By expanding the pool of hirable candidates to include more formerly incarcerated individuals with a postsecondary education, businesses can increase their market competitiveness and support returning citizens.  It is therefore in the business community’s best interest to support post-secondary education in prisons.

Spotlighting that, within top incarceration nation, it is not quite clear which state tops the per capital incarceration list

A helpful reader sent me this notable little local article headlined "Is Louisiana still the incarceration capital of the U.S.?". The piece serves as a useful reminder that data on incarceration (like data on just about everything in criminal justice systems) is subject to some interpretation. Here are excerpts:

For close to a year, Gov. John Bel Edwards has championed that Louisiana has lost its title as the incarceration capital of the United States after law changes he backed got through the Louisiana Legislature in 2017.  “I made a promise that, by the end of my first term, Louisiana would not have the highest incarceration rate in the nation,” Edwards said last June at a press conference.  “We have fulfilled that promise to Louisiana.”

Yet a report released by the Vera Institute of Justice last week [blogged here] called that victory into question.  The nonprofit, a leader in criminal justice research, concluded that Louisiana still had the top of incarceration rate in the country at the end of 2018, five months after the governor announced the state had lost that title to Oklahoma.

The discrepancy appears to be not so much about Louisiana’s prison population, but how prisoners in Oklahoma are counted.  Those who believe Oklahoma has the highest incarceration rate count hundreds of people who have been sentenced to prison time -- but are still in county jails and haven’t become part of the prison system officially yet -- as part of that state’s prison population. Without those inmates included in the prison population count, Louisiana still has the highest incarceration rate.

As of the end of December 2018, the number of people waiting to enter the Oklahoma prison system at county jails totaled 753.  If they’re included in the state count, Oklahoma’s incarceration rate is 702 people per 100,000 residents, higher than Louisiana’s rate of 695. If they aren’t included, Oklahoma’s incarceration rate is 683.

Pew Charitable Trusts and the Edwards administration use the higher Oklahoma count, therefore concluding that Louisiana has fallen to second place. Vera Institute used the lower count. “It seems like right now, the two states are really close . If a statistician was handling this question, they would say something like they are tied,” Jacob Kang-Brown, one of the authors of the Vera Institute report, said in an interview Thursday (April 25)....

Another nonprofit organization, the Prison Policy Initiative, concluded that Oklahoma passed Louisiana as the state with the highest incarceration rate back in 2016, before Louisiana approved its package of criminal justice changes in 2017.  That analysis took a wider view of incarceration. It counted not just state prisoners but also juveniles in custody, people in local jails and people from Louisiana in federal custody.  That report came out last year, prompting the Tulsa World newspaper to declare Oklahoma the prison capital of the country.

In sparring opinion surrounding en banc denial, Eleventh Circuit judges debate the metaphysics of Booker and Johnson

The full Eleventh Circuit needed only one sentence in this order in Lester v. US to deny en banc review in a case in which a pre-Booker career offender sought collateral review based on the void-for-vagueness doctrine of Johnson.  But a number of judges on that court, including the former Acting Chair of the US Sentencing Commission, Judge William Pryor, needed more than 60 pages to explain their views on the soundness of this denial.  While hard-core fans of habeas doctrines will likely enjoy all the back-and-forth within all the separate opinions, many sentencing fans might get a kick out of how Judge Rosenbaum characterizes Judge Pryor's account of the the past and present of sentencing law:

According to the Pryor Statement, the Booker Court did not make the Guidelines advisory because they were always advisory, since the Sixth Amendment never allowed them to be mandatory.  Id. at 19.  That is certainly interesting on a metaphysical level.

But it ignores reality.  Back here on Earth, the laws of physics still apply.  And the Supreme Court’s invalidation of a law does not alter the space-time continuum.  Indeed, there can be no dispute that from when the Guidelines were adopted in 1984 to when the Supreme Court handed down Booker in 2005, courts mandatorily applied them, as § 3553(b) required, to scores of criminal defendants — including many who still sit in prison because of them.

I am tempted to joke that I still kind of feel like it was Justice Scalia's opinion in Blakely that did, in some sense, "alter the space-time continuum."  But rather than further joke or philosophize on these matters, I will just encourage readers to check out all the sound and fury to be found in Lester.

"Booker Circumvention? Adjudication Strategies in the Advisory Sentencing Guidelines Era"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new paper authored by Mona Lynch and now available via SSRN.  Here is its abstract:

This article addresses the question of policy circumvention in federal courts by examining how legal actors have differentially adapted their adjudicatory practices after U.S. v. Booker (2005) rendered the federal sentencing guidelines advisory rather than mandatory.  By linking two distinct bodies of scholarship — the courts-as-communities scholarship that assesses and explains locale-based variations in criminal court operations and the socio-legal “law and organizations” scholarship that addresses how organizational actors translate and implement top-down legal policy reforms — this article argues that law-as-practiced is always temporally and spatially contingent.

Expanding on prior quantitative research that addresses district-specific adaptations to Booker, this article reports on findings from a qualitative study recently conducted by the author of four federal districts.  Based on these findings, this article examines within-district changes and between-district variations in: (1) legal actors’ perceptions of whether the Booker policy change impacted local practices and outcomes, and if so, the extent of its impact; (2) how legal strategies and practices have changed at three stages of the criminal process: charging, pre-conviction plea negotiations, and formal sentencing; and (3) interviewees’ perceptions about whether Booker contributed to greater racial or other disparities in case out-comes.

Findings indicate that a dynamic, proactive adaptation process is taking place, conditioned by local norms but not fully dictated by those norms.  They also make clear that changes in sentencing outcomes in the post-Booker period are not simply the result of liberated judges exercising their discretion, but rather are jointly produced by courtroom workgroup members through both contestation and cooperation.  This inquiry is especially timely given both ongoing and proposed changes in federal sentencing policy that aim to maintain severity in punishment, re-impose constraints on legal actors, and threaten to exacerbate racial and ethnic inequalities in the federal criminal system.

More concerns expressed about Hudson Institute's place in developing key piece of FIRST STEP Act reforms

In this post a few weeks ago, I flagged this Mother Jones article discussing criticisms of the Justice Department's pick of the Hudson Institute to host the Independent Review Committee required by the FIRST STEP Act to help DOJ develop and implement the Act's risk and needs assessment tools and recidivism reduction programs.  This new Salon article, headlined "Is the Trump Justice Department trying to sabotage the First Step Act?," follows up with a focus on a this joint statement released last week by Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Karen Bass.  Here are excerpts:

House Judiciary Committee Democrats are raising the alarm over a move by the Justice Department that would give a conservative think tank opposed to criminal justice reforms a key role in implementing the First Step Act.  That bill, signed into law by President Trump in December, combines limited sentencing reforms with measures designed to allow current inmates to shorten their sentences by participating in evidence-based training programs.

But despite the president’s support for the measure, the Trump Justice Department has taken a step that appears aimed at undercutting the act. Earlier this month, the DOJ’s National Institute of Justice announced that it had selected the Hudson Institute to host the Independent Review Committee (IRC) mandated under the act.

In a joint statement released Tuesday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-NY., and Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Chairwoman Karen Bass, D-CA., sharply questioned the decision. “Our concerns about this decision remain” even after staff was briefed by DOJ, the pair said.

Under the act, the IRC’s function is to create independent, unbiased oversight of the law’s implementation and to ensure that reforms are carried out in a bipartisan and evidence-based manner.  The act calls on the National Institute of Justice to “select a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization with expertise in the study and development of risk and needs assessment tools.”

The Hudson Institute doesn’t fit that description.  A bastion of neo-conservative thought, the institute was founded in 1961 by uber-Cold Warrior Herman Kahn, whose quest for “winnable” nuclear war strategies inspired Stanly Kubrick’s "Dr. Strangelove."  Its primary interests are advancing militaristic security policies and a pro-Israel and Islamophobic agenda in the Middle East, although it offers up neo-conservative critiques of domestic social and economic issues as well.

“The Hudson Institute appears to have little or no expertise in the study and development of risk and needs assessment tools,” Nadler and Bass wrote. 

That opinion was seconded by Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit dedicated to working for a fair and effective U.S. criminal justice system. “The Hudson Institute has no interest or expertise in criminal justice policy, and to the extent they do have any opinion about policy, they’re very hostile to the kinds of provisions that are in the First Step Act,” Mauer said. “It’s a strange choice when there are so many other reputable think tanks and organizations that do have experience in these issues.”

Hudson’s chief operating officer is George W. Bush-era drug czar John Walters, which raised another red flag for Mauer: “Walters is one of the premier drug warriors of the past 20 years,” he said. “He’s the co-author, with John Dilulio, of Body Count, that book from the 1990s that spread the thoroughly discredited ‘superpredators’ myth.”

In their statement, Nadler and Bass noted that DOJ was not forthcoming when queried about why Hudson was chosen and suggested that perhaps the decision has come through other-than-conventional channels. “Committee staff questioned DOJ representatives charged with overseeing First Step Act implementation as to why the Hudson Institute was selected and were told that DOJ representatives did not know,” they explained. “Staff asked whether the Hudson Institute has ever studied or developed a risk and needs assessment tool and were told that DOJ representatives did not know. Staff asked on what date the Hudson Institute was selected and were told that DOJ representatives did not know. Staff asked what process was used to select the Hudson Institute, and again were told that DOJ representatives did not know.”...

“DOJ is either paying short shrift to implementing critical elements of the First Step Act or substituting its own perspective over the will of Congress,” they added. “We ask that NIJ immediately rescind this selection and appoint an organization that comports with the mandates under the First Step Act. Congress will remain vigilant and demands that DOJ carry out the letter and spirit of the First Step Act.”

Does President Trump know that somewhere in the Justice Department his minions are working to undercut the bill he signed?  Does he care?

A few of many prior related posts on FIRST STEP Act implementation:

• Might the US Sentencing Commission provide some real-time updates on the implementation of the FIRST STEP Act? 
• FAMM sends letter to BOP and DOJ to urge full implementation of key provisions of the FIRST STEP Act
• "Trump Celebrates Criminal Justice Overhaul, but His Budget Barely Funds It" 
• "Department of Justice Announces First Step Act Implementation Progress"
• Spotlighting concerns about organization tasked with helping Justice Department develop and implement risk and needs assessment tools under FIRST STEP Act 
• Extended letter from criminal justice groups calling for robust implementation of the FIRST STEP Act's prison reforms

NYU Center reviewing historical state clemency grants ... starting with Pennsylvania

As detailed at this link, the NYU School of Law's Center on the Administration of Criminal Law has long been engaged with clemency reform, and its latest project is focused on important state stories:

The Center has launched a project studying historical state clemency grants and the role that local prosecutors played in the grant process.  As part of the project, Center Fellow Ben Notterman '14 has undertaken a review of historical state clemency grants in a number of states, both to understand the types of crimes for which clemency used to be granted, as well as the role that prosecutors played in recommending or opposing specific grants and advising government decision-makers.  We anticipate publishing reports on individual state practices as we complete them.

The first of these reports is titled "The Demise of Clemency for Lifers in Pennsylvania," and it is available at this link.  Here is hoe it gets started:

Pennsylvania law automatically imposes life imprisonment for first- and second-degree murder, including felony murder, which requires no intent to kill.  It is also one of only five states that categorically excludes lifers from parole consideration; the only way for a lifer to be released is by clemency.  For a time, the State’s harsh sentencing policies were tempered by a practice of commuting several dozen life sentences each year.  That changed around 1980, when commutations in Pennsylvania fell off dramatically.  With few exceptions, clemency in the Keystone State remains in a state of a disuse.