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September 5, 2022

Noticing surprisingly low federal guideline range for sexual abuse of prisoners

For a variety of reasons, it can be all too easy to conclude that all of the federal sentencing guidelines are set way too high.  After all, federal judges impose sentences below the guidelines in more than half of all cases (see Table 8), and they do so even more frequently in certain child porn, drug and economic cases (see Table 10).  But this AP report on a notable recent federal sentencing in California highlights that there can be cases in which federal judges conclude the applicable guideline is way too low.  The piece is headlined "Chaplain who sexually abused inmates gets 7 years in prison," and here are just some of the details:

Behind a closed chapel office door inside a federal women’s prison in California, a chaplain forced inmates seeking his spiritual guidance to have sex with him, exploiting their faith and their powerlessness behind bars for his own gratification, prosecutors said.

James Theodore Highhouse was sentenced Wednesday to seven years in prison — more than double the recommended punishment in federal sentencing guidelines.  U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. said the guidelines, which call for a sentence of less than three years, “seriously underestimate the seriousness” of Highhouse’s conduct. “It’s hard to come up with the right words to describe how egregious an abuse of these victims this was,” Gilliam said.

Highhouse is among five workers charged in the last 14 months with sexually abusing inmates at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, and the first to reach the sentencing phase of his case.... Highhouse must register as a sex offender once he’s released from prison, Gilliam said.

Highhouse, who was arrested in January and pleaded guilty in February, would tell women he abused at the Bay Area lockup, that everyone in the Bible had sex and that God wanted them to be together, prosecutors said.  An Army veteran, he pressured one inmate into intercourse on Veterans Day by telling her she needed to serve her country and on Thanksgiving by telling her she needed to show her gratitude for him, prosecutors said.

While Highhouse, 49, was charged only with abusing one inmate and lying to authorities, prosecutors say he engaged in predatory conduct with at least six women from 2014 to 2019 — including one he counseled at a veterans hospital where he worked before joining the federal Bureau of Prisons, where allegations were routinely ignored.  “Highhouse ruined my life — he truly did,” one inmate said in a victim impact statement. “I don’t even go to Church anymore because of him.  I have no trust in the Church and really, I don’t trust anyone because of what he did.”

Highhouse, enabled by a toxic culture of abuse and coverups at the prison, warned victims not to report him, telling one of them “no one will believe you because you’re an inmate, and I’m a chaplain,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. At the same time, prosecutors wrote, a prison counselor would rail about inmates “snitching” on employees, suggesting they instead “tell Trump about it,” referring to then-President Donald Trump.

Prosecutors had sought a 10-year prison sentence.  His lawyers asked for two years, the low end of the federal guidelines, which called for a sentence of 24 to 30 months.  Gilliam’s seven-year sentence matched the recommendation of probation officers who conducted Highhouse’s pre-sentence investigation....

All sexual activity between a prison worker and an inmate is illegal. Correctional employees enjoy substantial power over inmates, controlling every aspect of their lives from mealtime to lights out, and there is no scenario in which an inmate can give consent.... Highhouse pleaded guilty on Feb. 23 to two counts of sexual abuse of a ward, two counts of abusive sexual contact and one count of making false statements to federal agents.

All of the charges stem from allegations Highhouse repeatedly abused a female prisoner over a nine-month span in 2018 and 2019. That woman said in a victim impact statement that she cried herself to sleep after testifying before a grand jury about Highhouse’s abuse....

Other allegations against Highhouse, previously kept quiet by Dublin officials, came to light during the investigation, prosecutors said....  In May, an inmate now incarcerated at another federal prison facility reported that Highhouse raped her multiple times in his chapel office after she sought him out for counseling, prosecutors said.

There are many disconcerting and notable aspects of this story, but I am still struck that a prison official/chaplain can sexually abuse a prisoner repeatedly and yet only face a guideline sentencing range of 24 to 30 months.  That range is, generally speaking, well below the guideline ranges typically facing lower-level drug offenders and lower-level fraudsters.

September 5, 2022 at 05:15 PM | Permalink

Comments

A disgusting criminal using religion-huckstering (cf. Sister Perjean) to get what he wants. Good for the judge and the probation office for doing what normally makes the defense bar go nuts, i.e., an upward departure.

Should I wait for the pro-criminal lobby to applaud an upward departure for the abuse of, say, children rather than criminals in custody? Let me ask that another way: Should I wait for my 200th birthday?

Posted by: Bill Otis | Sep 5, 2022 6:18:00 PM

"While Highhouse, 49, was charged only with abusing one inmate and lying to authorities, prosecutors say he engaged in predatory conduct with at least six women"

Bill, I couldn't agree with you more.
But the most disgusting part of this disgusting story is that so-called prosecutors dropped the majority of the charges for this scumbag likely because he was a "veteran" and a so-called "Christian" (and likely a MAGA member in good standing), which they looked favorably upon, justifying their soft-on-crime approach. This guy's phony pedigree got him years off his sentence. I've seen this happen so many times, with sympathetic and biased prosecutors "throwing" the case for someone "of their own culture". It's infuriating. Thank GOD for this judge who saw through this b.s.

Posted by: SG | Sep 5, 2022 6:30:09 PM

SG --

May God be praised for the relevant conduct rule, which allowed the judge to take account of the horrible behavior addressed in the counts the prosecutor gave away to get to a bargain.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Sep 5, 2022 7:25:18 PM

AMEN, Bill. Amen.

Posted by: SG | Sep 5, 2022 8:02:53 PM

SG,

Sorry, the major item in standard plea negotiations is making charges go away. Nothing different about this case from the ordinary in that respect.

Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Sep 5, 2022 10:44:58 PM

I would add to civil rights offenses as also having relatively low guidelines ranges.

Posted by: tmm | Sep 6, 2022 10:46:10 AM

I have considered where the BOP may make this defendant (himself a former BOP staff member) serve his sentence. Normally, I would think a guy like this would be sent to a Low Security prison; but because he is former BOP staff, I think he is the kind of person that the BOP may swap off to some state Dept. of Corrections, to get him out of the BOP. In the BO{P, he would also be more susceptible to abuse by other inmates because of the nature of his crimes and the fact that he was a BOP chaplain when he committed those crimes. What do others think of the possibility that the BOP will get him out of the BOP and swap him off to some state DOC to serve his time?

Posted by: Jim Gormley | Sep 6, 2022 10:55:13 AM

Soronel,

Why I appreciate the fact that there are "standard plea negotiations" that result in some charges dropped, this case, in my opinion, is not a 'standard case'. These are especially egregious crimes as this Judge has pointed out, and I would not have approached this is a mill run case, as these AUSA's evidently have done. Certainly there are problems in every case. However, I've seen AUSA's put those common issues aside when pursuing especially heinous criminals and especially in egregious sex based offenses. On the other hand, I've seen more than one case in which AUSA's 'go easy' on those who they are sympathetic towards, as I noted in my previous post. The Judge did the right thing. “It’s hard to come up with the right words to describe how egregious an abuse of these victims this was" said the Judge.

Posted by: SG | Sep 6, 2022 1:39:33 PM

First word in my last post should read "While" not "Why". My bad.

Posted by: SG | Sep 6, 2022 3:58:14 PM

SG,

I am not disagreeing with you, merely stating fact. As I have said for many years I believe the expected outcome of any felony conviction should be execution and that it should be up to the offender to demonstrate why they, in particular, are undeserving of that outcome. I would say this guy, in particular, is especially deserving, not less so.

Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Sep 11, 2022 12:19:08 PM

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