Sentencing Law and Policy

Latest "Relist Watch" flags yet another ACCA issue splitting circuit and likely to get SCOTUS review

In this latest Relist Watch over at SCOTUSblog,John Elwood includes a discussion of yet another issue dividing circuits concerning how to apply the Armer Career Criminal Act's severe 15-year mandatory minimum term for gun possession.  Regular readers know the wide array of technical issues SCOTUS has had to address in the application of ACCA, but this latest issue seems a bit more interesting than most.  Here are John's full descriptions (with links from the original):

[W]e have a group of three relists that raise the same issue. Brown v. United States, Jackson v. United States, and Jones v. United States all concern a single recurring issue involving the Armed Career Criminal Act, a federal sentencing enhancement provision.  The ACCA provides that someone who has been convicted of a felony and possesses a firearm is normally subject to a maximum 10-year sentence.  But if that person already has at least three “serious drug offense” convictions, then the minimum sentence — the minimum — is 15 years.  Courts decide whether a prior state conviction counts as an ACCA “serious drug offense” using a “categorical approach.”  It requires determining whether the elements of a state drug offense are the same as, or narrower than those of its federal counterpart.  If so, the state conviction qualifies as an ACCA predicate offense.  But federal drug law often changes — as here, when Congress decriminalized hemp, narrowing the federal definition of marijuana.  If the state law doesn’t follow suit, sentencing courts face an issue: What if the state and federal offenses matched (and thus the state offense was an ACCA predicate) under an earlier version of federal law, but federal law has since been narrowed? Thus, the court’s choice of which version of federal law to consult dictates the difference between serving a 10-year maximum or a 15-year minimum.

The question presented in these three cases is: Whether the “serious drug offense” definition in the Armed Career Criminal Act incorporates the federal drug schedules that were in effect at the time of the federal firearm offense, or the federal drug schedules that were in effect at the time of the prior state drug offense.  The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 3rd, 4th, 8th, and 10th Circuit have gone with federal law at the time of the firearm offense; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit has gone with federal law at the time of the prior state drug offense.

The government has told the Supreme Court that there is a circuit split on the issue and recommends that the court should grant review in Jackson, and hold Brown and Jones for that case.  I also rate Jackson a likely grant.

We should know more after the court releases its order list next Monday.

In addition to having an eye out for these ACCA cases, I am hopeful (though still not quite optimistic) that Monday's SCOTUS order list might also include some action on the long-pending acquitted conduct cases (background here).

Closing another busy week rounding up some notable commentary

Last month, I used round-up posts here and here to catch up on a number of capital punishment and prison-related stories during busy end-of-the-semester weeks.  This week it is mostly grading and graduation that has kept me from blogging a number of notable commentary pieces that I have seen recently.  So, catching up again with a round up, here goes:

By James Austin & Michael Jacobson, "A Model for Criminal Justice Reform: How New York City Lowered its Jail Population and Crime Rates"

By Emily Beltz, "How an Oklahoma Death Penalty Case Shook Up Evangelical Views on Execution"

By Hillary Blout & Marc Levin, "Give Texas prosecutors the chance to do justice for old cases"

By Kristen Budd, "Expanding voting rights to justice-impacted can improve public safety"

By C.J. Ciaramella, "Newly Released Government Records Reveal Horrible Neglect of Terminally Ill Woman in Federal Prison"

By Whitney Downard, "Probation, parole an overlooked population of the criminal justice system"

By C. Dreams, "How The Prison Litigation Reform Act Blocks Justice For Prisoners: Legislation signed by Bill Clinton makes it nearly impossible for people in prison to have their cases heard in court."

By Eric Reinhart, "How Community Health Workers Can End Mass Incarceration and Rebuild Public Safety"

By Rupa Subramanya, "Is Justice Still Blind in Canada?: Equality under the law is the cornerstone of liberal democracy. But judges across the country are now factoring race into sentencing."

By William Weber, Brooks Walsh, & Steven Zeidman, "New York’s Compassionate Release Laws were Designed to Keep People from Dying Behind Bars; They’re Failing"

By Raymond Williams, "Dear Prison Officials: Stop Searching My Nose for Your Contraband"

SCOTUS unanimously reverses two federal fraud convictions based on novel theories

The Supreme Court this morning handed down two notable wins for federal fraud defendants, rejecting two theories of federal prosecution endorced by lower court in Ciminelli v. US, No. 21-1170 (S. Ct. May 11, 2023) (available here) and Percoco v. US, No. 21-1158 (S. Ct. May 11, 2023) (available here). Here is how the opinion for the Court in Ciminelli authored by Justice Thomas gets started:

In this case, we must decide whether the Second Circuit’s longstanding “right to control” theory of fraud describes a valid basis for liability under the federal wire fraud statute, which criminalizes the use of interstate wires for “any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises.” 18 U.S.C. § 1343.  Under the right-to-control theory, a defendant is guilty of wire fraud if he schemes to deprive the victim of “potentially valuable economic information” “necessary to make discretionary economic decisions.” United States v. Percoco, 13 F.4th 158, 170 (CA2 2021) (internal quotation marks omitted). Petitioner Louis Ciminelli was charged with, tried for, and convicted of wire fraud under this theory. And the Second Circuit affirmed his convictions on that same basis.

We have held, however, that the federal fraud statutes criminalize only schemes to deprive people of traditional property interests. Cleveland v. United States, 531 U.S. 12, 24 (2000). Because “potentially valuable economic in-formation” “necessary to make discretionary economic decisions” is not a traditional property interest, we now hold that the right-to-control theory is not a valid basis for liability under §1343. Accordingly, we reverse the Second Circuit’s judgment.

Here is how the opinion for the Court in Percoco authored by Justice Alito gets started:

In this case, we consider whether a private citizen with influence over government decision-making can be convicted for wire fraud on the theory that he or she deprived the public of its “intangible right of honest services.” 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343, 1346. Petitioner Joseph Percoco was charged with conspiring to commit honest-services wire fraud during a period of time that included an eight-month interval between two stints as a top aide to the Governor of New York. Percoco was convicted of this offense based on instructions that required the jury to determine whether he had a “special relationship” with the government and had “dominated and controlled” government business. 2 App. 511. We conclude that this is not the proper test for determining whether a private person may be convicted of honest-services fraud, and we therefore reverse and remand for further proceedings.

Though federal criminal law and white-collar folks are going to want to review these (relatively shourt) opinions closely, everyone should take the time to check out Justice Gorsuch's concurrence in Percoco. It was joined by Justice Thomas and here are some brief highlights from its start and closing:

The Court holds that the jury instructions in this case were “too vague.” Ante, at 10.  I agree.  But to my mind, the problem runs deeper than that because no set of instructions could have made things any better.  To this day, no one knows what “honest-services fraud” encompasses.  And the Constitution’s promise of due process does not tolerate that kind of uncertainty in our laws—especially when criminal sanctions loom. “Vague laws” impermissibly “hand off the legislature’s responsibility for defining criminal behavior to unelected prosecutors and judges, and they leave people with no sure way to know what consequences will attach to their conduct.”  United States v. Davis, 588 U.S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 1)....

The difficulty here stems from the statute and the lower court decisions that inspired it.  I have no doubt that if all nine Justices put our heads together, we could rewrite § 1346 to provide fair notice and minimize the risk of uneven enforcement.  I have no doubt, too, that we could find a hook for any such rule somewhere in the morass of pre-McNally lower-court case law.  Maybe, too, that is the path we are on, effectively writing this law bit by bit in decisions spanning decades with the help of prosecutors and lower courts who present us with one option after another.  But that is not a path the Constitution tolerates.  Under our system of separated powers, the Legislative Branch must do the hard work of writing federal criminal laws.  Congress cannot give the Judiciary uncut marble with instructions to chip away all that does not resemble David.  See United States v. Reese, 92 U.S. 214, 221 (1876) (“It would certainly be dangerous if the legislature could set a net large enough to catch all possible offenders, and leave it to the courts to step inside and say who could be rightfully detained, and who should be set at large”); United States v. Wiltberger, 5 Wheat. 76, 95 (1820) (Marshall, C. J.) (“It is the legislature, not the Court, which is to define a crime, and ordain its punishment”).

Doubtless, Congress had high and worthy intentions when it enacted § 1346.  But it must do more than invoke an aspirational phrase and leave it to prosecutors and judges to make things up as they go along.  The Legislature must identify the conduct it wishes to prohibit.  And its prohibition must be knowable in advance — not a lesson to be learned by individuals only when the prosecutor comes calling or the judge debuts a novel charging instruction. Perhaps Congress will someday set things right by revising §1346 to provide the clarity it desperately needs.  Until then, this Court should decline further invitations to invent rather than interpret this law.

"Enforcing Marijuana Prohibitions: Prosecutorial Policy in Four States"

The title of this post is the title of this new paper now available via SSRN and produced jointly by The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law's Drug Enforcement and Policy Center and the University of North Carolina School of Law's Prosecutors and Politics Project. Here is its abstract:

As more states have legalized and decriminalized marijuana, the enforcement of criminal laws prohibiting the personal possession of marijuana has become more controversial in states where cannabis remains illegal.  Yet, very little is understood about how other prosecutors enforce criminal prohibitions on the personal possession of marijuana.  This study aims to fill this gap.  It systematically examines prosecutorial enforcement of laws prohibiting the personal possession of marijuana in four states that have not legalized medical or adult-use marijuana.  The study had four major goals: (1) to determine what enforcement policies had been adopted by incumbent prosecutors, (2) to determine the enforcement platforms of candidates running for the office of local prosecutor, (3) to explore the reasons and reasoning behind those policies and platforms, and (4) to determine what information, if any, was accessible to voters about the issue.

As flagged in this post over at my other blog, this study will be discussed at an onlne event next week titled "Prosecuting Cannabis: Approaches from States without Legalization."  Folks can register for this event here, and this event page provides some background along with the scheduled panelists.

First Circuit panel reverses fraud convictions for two Varsity Blues defendants

As reported in this New York Times piece, "a federal appeals court overturned the fraud and conspiracy convictions on Wednesday of two parents found guilty of participating in a far-reaching bribery scheme, known as Operation Varsity Blues, which ensnared dozens of wealthy parents who falsified their children’s credentials to gain admission to prestigious universities across the country."  Here is more:

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Massachusetts found that the lower court had made crucial missteps in the trial of Gamal Abdelaziz, a former casino executive, and John Wilson, a private equity financier.  The court, however, upheld Mr. Wilson’s conviction on tax fraud.

The appeals court made its decision largely on two technical legal grounds.  First, it ruled that the lower court judge wrongly instructed the jury that admissions slots constituted property.  “We do not say the defendants’ conduct is at all desirable,” the decision said.  But the appellate judges faulted the government for being too broad in its argument, to the point where “embellishments in a kindergarten application could constitute property fraud proscribed by federal law.”

The court also found that the government had failed to prove that the two men agreed to engage in a conspiracy with other parents, who were, like them, the clients of William Singer, known as Rick, a college admissions consultant to the rich, the mastermind of the admissions scheme.  The conspiracy charges allowed the government to introduce evidence related to other parents’ wrongdoing, creating the risk of bias against the defendants, the judges said in a 156-page decision....

The victory in the appellate court was striking because Mr. Wilson and Mr. Abdelaziz were the first to take their chances in front of a jury.  Dozens of other wealthy parents, including some celebrities, pleaded guilty, making it seem as if the prosecutions were ironclad.  The investigation became a symbol of how wealthy, prestige-obsessed parents had turned elite universities into brand-name commodities.

“Almost everybody pleaded guilty, so the government’s legal theories weren’t really tested until this case was decided,” Joshua Sharp, the lawyer who argued the case for Mr. Abdelaziz, said on Wednesday.

While Mr. Abdelaziz and Mr. Wilson found the weak spots in the government’s case, parents who pleaded guilty are unlikely to be able to challenge their convictions on similar grounds, legal experts said.

Mr. Abdelaziz was accused of paying $300,000 in 2018 to have his daughter admitted to the University of Southern California as a top-ranked basketball recruit even though she did not make the varsity team in high school.  Mr. Wilson was accused of paying $220,000 in 2014 to have his son admitted as a water polo recruit at U.S.C., even though prosecutors said he was not good enough to compete at the university.

Mr. Wilson was also accused of agreeing to pay $1.5 million in 2018 to have his twin daughters, who were good students, admitted to Harvard and Stanford as recruited athletes.

They were tried together in the fall of 2021; Mr. Wilson was later sentenced to 15 months in prison, and Mr. Abdelaziz to a year and a day. Their lawyers argued that the men thought they were making legitimate donations to the university. They said they trusted Mr. Singer, as their college consultant, to guide them.

The investigation ensnared more than 50 people, including the actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin; Ms. Loughlin’s husband, Mossimo Giannulli, a fashion designer; and coaches and exam administrators, among others. Mr. Singer agreed to cooperate with the government and pleaded guilty in 2019 to conspiracy charges. He was sentenced in January to three and a half years in prison.

The full 156-page opinion of the First Circuit panel is available at this link.

Man convicted of murdering BLM marcher, whom Texas Gov has pledged to pardon, sentenced by judge to 25 years in prison

This new AP article, headlined "Army sergeant who fatally shot BLM protester in Texas sentenced to 25 years," reports on the latest legal development in a high-profile case which first caught my attention when Gov. Greg Abbott announced on social media that he would pardon a just-convicted killer.  Here are some of the details:

A U.S. Army sergeant plans to appeal his 25-year prison sentence for fatally shooting an armed man during a Black Lives Matter protest in Texas, and will cooperate with efforts by the state’s Republican governor to issue a pardon, his attorney said Wednesday.

Daniel Perry, 36, was convicted of murder in April for killing 28-year-old Garrett Foster during the downtown Austin protest in July 2020....  Perry attorney Clinton Broden said in a statement that his client would appeal. He called Perry’s conviction the product of “political prosecution” and said the defense team would “fully cooperate in the pardon process.”

Perry’s conviction prompted outrage from prominent conservatives, and Gov. Greg Abbott, citing Texas’ Stand Your Ground laws, has said he would sign a pardon once a recommendation from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles hits his desk.  The board — which is stacked with Abbott appointees — is reviewing Perry’s case on the governor’s orders, but it is unclear when it will reach a decision.

District Judge Clifford Brown delivered a statement during sentencing that didn’t address the potential pardon directly.  But he insisted that Perry had a “fair and impartial trial” and that the jury’s decision “deserves our honor and it deserves to be respected.” 

Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza said it was Abbott “who decided to insert politics in this case.” Garza said he’s been in touch with the board and has been assured that prosecutors will be allowed to present a case against a pardon, and that it will include a presentation from Foster’s family.

The pardon process is a valuable check on the court system, Broden said. “Those who claim that Governor Abbott’s expressed intent is based on politics simply choose to ignore the fact that it was only the political machinations of a rogue district attorney which led to Sgt. Perry’s prosecution in the first instance,” he said.

Perry was stationed at Fort Hood, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) north of Austin, when the shooting happened. He had just dropped off a ride-share customer and turned onto a street filled with protesters. Perry said he was trying to get past the crowd and fired his pistol when Foster pointed a rifle at him. Witnesses testified that they did not see Foster raise his weapon, and prosecutors argued that Perry could have driven away without shooting.

Perry said he acted in self-defense. His lawyers asked the judge to consider his more than a decadelong military career and hand down a sentence of no more than 10 years. Army spokesman Bryce Dubee has said Perry is classified as in “civilian confinement” pending separation from the military.

On Tuesday, prosecutors submitted into evidence dozens of texts and social media posts Perry wrote, shared or liked, including some shockingly racist images. They had been excluded from Perry’s trial, but were publicly released after his conviction and allowed into the sentencing phase by Brown. “This man is a loaded gun, ready to go off at any perceived threat,” prosecutor Guillermo Gonzalez said, urging Brown to issue a sentence of at least 25 years. “He’s going to do it again.”

Perry, who is white, was working as a ride-share driver in downtown Austin on July 25, 2020, when he shot and killed Foster, an Air Force veteran. Foster, who was also white, was legally carrying an AK-47 rifle as he participated in the demonstration against police killings and racial injustice, following the death of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer.

Prior related post:

• Texas Gov pledges to swiftly pardon man convicted of murder of BLM marcher day after jury conviction

Prison Policy Initiative details "Punishment Beyond Prisons 2023: Incarceration and supervision by state"

Prison Policy Initiative has produced this intricate new report detailing how many folks are under correctional control in every state and throughout the entire US.  The report is titled "Punishment Beyond Prisons 2023: Incarceration and supervision by state," and here is how it gets started:

The U.S. has a staggering 1.9 million people behind bars, but even this number doesn’t capture the true reach of the criminal legal system.  It’s more accurate to look at the 5.5 million people under all of the nation’s mass punishment systems, which include not only incarceration but also probation and parole.

Altogether, an estimated 3.7 million adults are under community supervision (sometimes called community corrections) — nearly twice the number of people who are incarcerated in jails and prisons combined.  The vast majority of people under supervision are on probation (2.9 million people), and over 800,000 people are on parole.  Yet despite the massive number of people under supervision, parole and probation do not receive nearly as much attention as incarceration.  Policymakers and the public must understand how deeply linked these systems are to mass incarceration to ensure that these “alternatives” to incarceration aren’t simply expanding it.

We’ve designed this report specifically to allow state policymakers and residents to assess the scale and scope of their entire correctional systems.  Our findings raise the question of whether community supervision systems are working as intended or whether they simply funnel people into prisons and jails — or are even replicating prison conditions in the community.  The report encourages policymakers and advocates to consider how many people under correctional control don’t need to be locked up or monitored at all, and whether high-need individuals are receiving necessary services or only sanctions.

In this update to our 2018 report, we compile data for all 50 states and D.C. on federal and state prisons, local jails, jails in Indian Country, probation, and parole.  We also include data on punishment systems that are adjacent to the criminal legal system: youth confinement and involuntary commitment.  Because these systems often mirror and even work in tandem with the criminal legal system, we include them in this broader view of mass punishment. We make the data accessible in one nationwide chart, 100+ state-specific pie charts and a data appendix, and discuss how the scale and harms of these systems can be minimized.

New Human Rights for Kids report documents those imprisoned for crimes committed as children

The group Human Rights for Kids has released this big new report titled "Crimes Against Humanity: The Mass Incarceration of Children in the US." Here is part of the report's executive summary:

The extensive negative impact on children from our practice of transferring them into the adult criminal justice system and treating them as if they were adults has been well-documented by state and federal government agencies, researchers, advocates and the press. What has not been documented to date, is the extent of the impact of these policies. This report provides the first ever snapshot and national estimate of the number of people in our prisons who have been there since they were children.

We gathered data from 45 states on every individual currently incarcerated who was under the age of 18 at the time of their offense. Our findings revealed that U.S. prisons are filled with at least 32,359 individuals whose crimes were committed as children....

Beginning in the summer of 2021, we requested data from departments of corrections in all 50 states and the District of Columbia on individuals who are currently incarcerated in adult prisons who committed their offense when they were under the age of 18. We received data from 45 states. Our analysis surfaced trends and findings across sentence length, decade of incarceration, gender, race and ethnicity. In addition to aggregating the data, we also conducted a comparative analysis to highlight which state practices constituted the worst human rights violations across categories.

We are currently incarcerating approximately 32,359 individuals in ourprisons for crimes they committed as children.  Some were so young they were still subject to truancy laws, and an astonishing number weren’t even teenagers.  They comprise a full 3.1% of the United States’ overall state prison population –- the equivalent of an entire prison full of children in every state in the country.  Notably, this is close to the total number of children in youth prisons of 36,469.  We incarcerate more children as adults in our prison system than the total combined prison populations of Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Scotland.  In fact,there are more people in our prisons for crimes they committed as children than people in prison who committed their crimes as adults in 76.68% of the countries and independent territories in the world.

"The Eighth Amendment's Time to Shine; Previewing Florida's Imminent Constitutional Crisis in Capital Punishment"

The title of ths post is the tile of this new piece authored by Melanie Kalmanson now available via SSRN.  Here is its abstract:

In April 2023, Florida Governor DeSantis enacted legislation that lowers the jury vote necessary to impose a sentence of death in the state to 8-4.  The new statute removes the procedural safeguards that were implemented after the U.S. Supreme Court held in 2016 that Florida's capital sentencing scheme violated defendants' right to jury trial under the Sixth Amendment.

Litigation about the constitutionality and application of the new statute has already started and will likely continue for a while until the full effect of the statute is determined.  This Essay previews some of the issues that will be litigated and forecasts that the Eighth Amendment will be the star of the show in this Act of the play on Florida’s constitutional crises in capital punishment. 

Big spread in sentencing recommendations for Oath Keepers founder convicted of seditious conspiracy

As reported in this Washington Post piece, lawyers for "Stewart Rhodes urged a judge to sentence him to far less than the 25-year prison term sought by federal prosecutors for seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack — asking for a penalty of time served or roughly 16 months behind bars — citing his military service and his founding and leadership of the right-wing extremist group Oath Keepers." Here is more:

In a Monday morning court filing, the attorneys emphasized that Rhodes volunteered for the Army in June 1983, completed Airborne school and was honorably discharged after suffering a spinal fracture in a low-altitude night jump in 1986.  They emphasized his formation of the Oath Keepers in 2009, saying the group provided hurricane and other emergency relief, security in cities experiencing rioting, and protective details for VIPs during President Donald Trump’s rallies after the 2020 presidential election....

The defense filing came after a Friday evening memo by prosecutors asking a federal judge to sentence Rhodes to 25 years in prison and eight followers to at least 10 years behind bars, in the first punishments to be handed down to defendants convicted of seditious conspiracy in the Capitol riot.

Rhodes and the others face sentencing starting later this month. Rhodes was arrested in January 2022 and will have served roughly 16 months at that point....

Rhodes, a top deputy and four others were found guilty at trials in November and January of plotting to unleash political violence to prevent the Biden presidency, stashing a small arsenal of firearms at hotels in Northern Virginia before converging that afternoon at the East Capitol steps in military-style tactical gear.  Three other co-defendants were convicted of obstructing Congress as it met to confirm the results of the 2020 election, among other crimes. Both top offenses are punishable by up to 20 years in prison, but prosecutors asked the court to stack sentences for Rhodes, citing among other things an enhanced terrorism penalty for actions intended to intimidate or coerce the government.

Prosecutors called for “swift and severe” punishment for Rhodes, saying his group’s actions went far beyond the scope and magnitude of any other Jan. 6 defendants sentenced so far.  They said Rhodes exploited his public influence in the anti-government extremist movement and mobilized people for political violence after “spreading doubt about the presidential election and turning others against the government” because their preferred candidate did not win....

Mehta, Rhodes’s sentencing judge, has handed down the two longest punishments to Jan. 6 defendants so far, both for assaulting police: 14 years for Peter Schwartz of Kentucky, who attacked multiple officers and who has a long criminal history of 38 convictions, including multiple domestic and police assaults; and 10 years for Timothy Webster, a former New York City police officer who attacked a Capitol Police officer with a metal flagpole.

Rhodes’s attorneys said only those two men have been sentenced to more than eight years in Jan. 6 cases, attaching a 54-page government chart of sentences to a 16-page defense filing.  About 200 of roughly 450 people sentenced have received no jail time, and more than half of the roughly 250 people who have been sentenced to prison received terms of less than two months.

Of 110 people sentenced for felonies, about 76 who pleaded guilty have been sentenced to an average of 33 months, and about 34 who were convicted at trial have been sentenced to an average of 44 months in prison, according to a separate Washington Post analysis.

The defense's 70-page sentencing filing is available at this link; the government's 183-page sentencing filing is available at this link.

Should every state have a dedicated commission to receive complaints about prosecutors?

The question in the title of this post was my first reaction to the news of a commission just created in Georgia.  This AP piece, headlined "Georgia enacts law letting panel punish, oust prosecutors," provides these details:

Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill into law Friday creating a new commission empowered to discipline and remove wayward prosecutors, saying it will curb “far-left prosecutors” who are “making our communities less safe.”

Kemp made the remarks at the Chatham County Sheriff's Office in Savannah, where he signed the measure establishing the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission, which will launch July 1 and start accepting complaints Oct. 1....

The efforts continue anti-crime campaigns that Republicans ran nationwide last year, accusing Democrats of coddling criminals and improperly refusing to prosecute whole categories of crimes, including marijuana possession.

Georgia Democrats strenuously opposed the measure, saying the Republican legislative majority was seeking another way to impose its will on Democratic voters at the local level....

Crucially, the Georgia law mandates that a prosecutor must consider every case for which probable cause exists and can’t exclude categories of cases from prosecution. Experts have said that considering every case individually is unrealistic, because prosecutors turn down many more cases than they charge. However, it’s unclear if the new law will change prosecutors’ behavior or just lead them to avoid talking publicly about charging decisions.

The eight-member commission will include six current or former prosecutors and two other lawyers. It will oversee DAs and solicitors general — elected prosecutors who handle lower-level crimes in some counties....

The law was born from frustrations involving a white Republican prosecutor in suburban Atlanta who was indicted for bribery related to sexual harassment claims. He lingered in office until he pleaded guilty to unprofessional conduct and resigned in 2022.

Some Democrats were interested in similar measures for a time because of Jackie Johnson, a coastal Georgia DA who was charged with hindering the police investigation into the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery. Democratic interest cooled after voters ousted Johnson.

The rules could also target prosecutors who declared before Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022 that they wouldn't prosecute abortion-related offenses. Seven current Georgia DAs fit that description.

Though the AP piece leans into the political dynamics driving some debates over prosecutorial behaviors, this official press release from Gov Kemp notes that the new Georgia Commission can and will be policing local prosecutors on various fronts:

Governor Brian P. Kemp, accompanied by First Lady Marty Kemp, members of the General Assembly, district attorneys and solicitors-general, and other local and state leaders, signed Senate Bill 92 today, establishing the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission (PAQC). The PAQC will serve as a valuable oversight mechanism for district attorneys and solicitors-general across Georgia, ensuring these officials fulfill their constitutional and statutory duties....

The bill establishes the following grounds for the removal or involuntary retirement of a district attorney or solicitor-general from office:

• Mental or physical incapacity that interferes with the performance of duties that is likely permanent;
• Willful misconduct in office;
• Willful and persistent failure to carry out statutory duties;
• Conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude;
• Conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice which brings the office into disrepute; or
• Knowingly authorizing or permitting an assistant district attorney or assistant solicitor-general to commit any of the aforementioned acts.

To parrot this press release, I sincerely think it would be a great idea to have a "valuable oversight mechanism for district attorneys" in every state (and for federal prosecutors, too).  I have often heard from persons who sincerely believe they have witnessed a prosecutor engage in "willful misconduct" or "conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice which brings the office into disrepute"; so creating a central commission (comprised mostly of former and current prosecutors) to hear complaints about, and conduct any needed investigations of, the work of prosecutors makes a lot of sense to me. Of course, like many government entitles, if unduly politicized or problematically ideological, this commission could possibly do more harm than good.  But, given the general lack of transparency and accountability for prosecutorial actions and practices, I am inclined to be hopeful about this new PAQC.

"Evidence Rules for Decarceration"

The title of this post is the title of this new paper authored by Erin Collins and available via SSRN. Here is its abstract:

Two observations about the operation of the criminal legal system are so widely accepted that they are seem undeniable: First, it is a system of pleas, not trials.  Second, the system is too punitive and must be reformed.  One could easily think, therefore, that the Rules of Evidence, which apply intentionally and explicitly only to the adjudicatory phase of criminal procedure, have nothing to do with the solution.  And legal scholarship focusing on decarceration largely reflects this assumption: while many have explored reforms that target front end system actors and processes that lead people into the system (e.g. police, prosecutors, broad criminal statutes), and back end reforms that that seek to lessen the toll of punitive policies (sentencing reform, alternatives to incarceration), markedly fewer have explored how what happens in the middle — adjudication — contributes to mass incarceration.

While this oversight makes sense, it is not justified because it is also equally undeniable that plea bargaining happens in the shadow of trial.  This Essay examines how the shadow of trial — specifically, the shadow cast by evidentiary rulings about the accused person’s past — contributes to the perpetuation of an expansive carceral state.  It identifies how evidence rules have been relaxed, tweaked, specialized, or unmoored from their foundational principles in ways that facilitate prosecution and conviction or essentially force plea deals — without regard for the truth, fairness, or justice of the outcome.  In other words, it identifies ways that evidence law undermines the Rules’ primary purpose, which is to advance fair proceedings “to the end of ascertaining the truth and securing a just determination.”