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June 10, 2023

Media starting to take more note of notable homicide declines in 2023

Regular readers know I have been documenting that, after significant increases in homicides throughout the US in 2020 and 2021, homicide numbers saw small declines in 2022 and these declines have increased into 2023.  (Posts in 2023 on this front, with links to some major city data, can be found here and here and here.)  Encouragingly, a number of media outlets have started discussing these encouraging homicide developments:

From The Atlantic, "The Murder Rate Is Suddenly Falling: The first five months of 2023 have produced an encouraging overall trend for the first time in years."

From the Christian Science Monitor, "What is behind a huge drop in the murder rate this year?"

From the Wall Street Journal, "Homicides Are Falling in Major American Cities: Local officials say pandemic factors that drove up murder rates are receding"

From the Washington Times, "Multiple U.S. cities experiencing decline in homicides, research firm says"

As I have said before, homicide trends always seem to be unpredictable and data can change in lots of ways in coming months.  Still, the latest homicide data continue to be trending the right way, and it is good to see these trends now getting broader attention.  

June 10, 2023 in National and State Crime Data | Permalink | Comments (3)

Infamous murderer, the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, dies in federal prison

The death of the infamous Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, seems worth blogging in part because the threat of the death penalty seemingly played a role in Kaczynski's willingness to plead guilty and accept multiple LWOP federal sentences.  (Also, in my sentencing classes, I have long used the rich facts of Kaczynski's crimes and history to explore with students capital sentencing theories and procedures.)  This lengthy Washington Post piece provides lots of details about his life and crimes, and here are short excerpts:

For 17 years, he picked his victims with cold deliberation, leaving a grisly trail of nail- and razor-blade-packed pipe bombs across the nation that killed three people and injured 23 others, several of them maimed for life.

He knew none of his victims and struck unpredictably from coast to coast in seemingly random acts from 1978 to 1995, baffling law enforcement officers and gripping the country in a kind of menacing unease — until his capture in early 1996 in the remote mountains of Montana.  There, Ted Kaczynski, the scrawny, bearded anti-technology anarchist popularly known as the Unabomber, surrendered peaceably at the primitive plywood cabin he had called home for 25 years....

The Harvard-trained mathematics prodigy turned lone serial bomber died June 10 at a federal prison medical facility in Butner, N.C.  He was 81.... Tracking down the Unabomber led to one of the nation’s longest and most expensive investigations. Then came years of research tracing his habits, propensities and psychological markers.  Still, a veil of mystery remained over the ultimate purpose of his acts beyond simple anger at a world that wouldn’t listen to him....

In September 1995, he sent his manifesto, titled “Industrial Society and Its Future,” to The Post and the Times....  The rambling prose seemed eerily familiar to David Kaczynski, a social worker at an Albany, N.Y., shelter for runaway youths. He began to suspect, reluctantly, that his brother was the Unabomber....

David took his suspicions to the FBI, and analysts quickly spotted close parallels in phraseology, even misspellings. Directed by David, agents massed at the cabin in the Montana woods on April 3, 1996, and took Ted into custody. Inside the cabin, they found a cache of bombmaking components.  David received the FBI’s $1 million reward and said he would use it to aid families who suffered because of his brother’s actions.

On Jan. 22, 1998, after extensive legal jockeying to avoid both the death penalty and an insanity defense, Mr. Kaczynski pleaded guilty and acknowledged all 16 bombings and the deaths and injuries they caused.  Unrepentant, he was sentenced to four consecutive life terms plus 30 years by U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. in Sacramento.

UPDATE: The latest reporting is that Kaczynski killed himself as noted in this New York Post headline: "Unabomber Ted Kaczynski reportedly committed suicide inside his jail cell."

June 10, 2023 in Celebrity sentencings, Death Penalty Reforms | Permalink | Comments (10)

June 9, 2023

Is it too early to try to calculate former Prez Trump's possible federal sentencing guideline range?

In one of my early articles, I discussed at length the challenges for defense attorneys presented by the intricacies of federal sentencing law.  As I explained:

From the very outset of representation, a defense attorney needs to assess the range of possible trial and sentencing outcomes for his client in order to properly craft an effective defense strategy and evaluate the prospects for striking a beneficial plea bargain.  In the federal system, this not only entails basic investigation concerning the defendant’s guilt, but also requires counsel to make an initial assessment of the defendant’s possible sentence under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.  

This old article came to mind this morning as I contemplated whether to do a post about reports that former Prez Donald Trump is now facing a multi-count federal indictment related to his handling of classified documents.  Though I doubt former Prez Trump will be seriously considering any plea deals anytime soon, his defense lawyers should still be starting on guideline calculations.

Meanwhile, though it seems the specifics of the indictment will not be public until early next week, a few press pieces are already discussing former Prez Trump's statutory sentencing exposure based on reports of the apparent charges in his indictment: 

From Forbes, "What Crimes Was Trump Charged With In Federal Documents Case? Here’s What We Know — And How Much Prison Time He Could Face"

From the New York Post, "Here are the charges and how many years Trump faces in federal Mar-a-Lago indictment"

Even though we do not know exactly the nature of all the charges, the New York Post piece concludes by asserting that "If convicted on all seven charges, the ex-president could face a 75-year prison sentence."  Of course, adding up the maximum sentence on all counts serves as a poor metric for assessing what likely sentence an indicted person might really face.  The applicable federal guideline range is a better metric, though that range is only advisory and the sentencing of a former president (and current presidential candidate) surely raises a number of unique 3553(a) sentencing issues.

Especially because we are still awaiting word from the Supreme Court on the use of acquitted conduct at sentencing (background here and here), I am tempted to use the indictment of former Prez Trump to try to bring more attention to that issue.  Based on current law, federal prosecutors could and likely would seek to have former Prez Trump sentenced on — and have his guideline range driven by — all their allegations even if he were acquitted on six of seven counts.  Interesting times.

UPDATEThe federal indictment of former Prez Donald Trump was unsealed this afternoon and can be found at this link.  The indictment runs 49 pages and has a total of 37 counts brought against the former president (with stat maxes adding up to 400 total years in prison, I believe).

June 9, 2023 in Celebrity sentencings, Federal Sentencing Guidelines | Permalink | Comments (17)

June 8, 2023

Arguing that Second Amendment rulings are serving "as a tool of progressive constitutionalism"

This new Slate commentary by Mark Joseph Stern, headlined "Progressive Judges May Have Found a Use for Clarence Thomas’ Terrible Guns Ruling," notes the alignment of judges in the recent en banc Third Circuit ruling in Range (discussed here) and makes some notable claims developing about Second Amendment jurisprudence.  Here are excerpts:

Will progressive judges ever find use for the Supreme Court’s recently expanded and disastrous interpretation of the Second Amendment? A major ruling on Tuesday suggests that they already are.  By an 11–4 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit held that some people convicted of felonies retain their right to bear arms. The decision drew support from judges across the ideological spectrum, uniting the court’s most conservative and liberal judges despite — or perhaps because of—its potentially revolutionary implications. This consensus suggests that we may be entering a new era of Second Amendment litigation, one in which left-leaning judges reluctantly embrace gun rights as a tool of progressive constitutionalism....

What’s behind the cross-ideological support for Range?  Probably not a deep certainty that Hardiman’s cursory historical overview and logic were correct, at least on the left flank of the court: In her exhaustive dissent, Judge Cheryl Ann Krause, an Obama appointee, eviscerated the majority’s historical analysis with a mountain of evidence proving that “legislatures have historically possessed the authority to disarm entire groups, like felons, whose conduct evinces disrespect for the rule of law.” (Krause also pointed out that Range’s conduct would have been a capital offense in 1791, and it’s difficult to see how a crime could be punishable by execution but not disarmament.) In Bruen, though, Justice Thomas simply ignored or discredited any evidence that did not fit his preferred narrative, tacitly inviting lower courts to do the same.  We are long past the point of pretending that the actual historical record matters to judges who are eager to bulldoze gun safety laws.

What’s a progressive judge to do?  Public defenders have already offered an answer: employ the Second Amendment in furtherance of progressive constitutional values like equal protection and the rights of criminal defendants.  Because so many high-profile gun cases are manufactured by conservative activists — including this one — it’s easy to forget who’s really on the front lines of the Second Amendment revolution: criminal defense attorneys representing indigent clients charged with firearm offenses.  (It’s telling that one Biden appointee who joined the majority in Range, Arianna Freeman, spent her entire legal career as a federal public defender.)  Public defenders have a Sixth Amendment obligation to provide their clients with a zealous defense, which increasingly includes constitutional challenges to gun restrictions.

That’s why New York City’s public defenders filed a brief in Bruen urging the Supreme Court to strike down nearly all limitations on public carry.  And it’s why the 3rd Circuit’s top public defenders — Freeman’s former colleagues — filed a similar brief in Range attacking the federal felon-in-possession ban.  The Supreme Court’s Second Amendment decisions all envision “law-abiding, responsible citizens” who seek to protect themselves and their families from violence.  But in the real world, the people who have the most to gain from these rulings are criminal defendants facing down years or decades in prison.  Recent decisions establishing a right to scratch out a gun’s serial number and purchase a firearm while under indictment or restraining order all arose out of criminal prosecutions, not NRA-backed test cases.

Like a growing number of public defenders, liberal judges like Freeman, Ambro, Greenaway, and Montgomery-Reeves may think that the Second Amendment can be repurposed as a weapon against over-policing and mass incarceration.  If upheld by the Supreme Court, Range will certainly be a boon to the criminal defense bar, as well as a source of immense confusion for prosecutors.  The majority’s standard is extraordinarily vague: It acknowledges that some people may be disarmed for committing a felony, but a person “like Range” could not.  How can judges tell when someone falls on Range’s side of the line?  The majority didn’t say.  In 2019, then-Judge Amy Coney Barrett took a stab at a clearer standard, asserting that only “dangerous” and “violent felons” may be disarmed.  But which crimes count as “violent”?  Is selling or using cocaine “violent”?  How about possessing child pornography?  Drunk driving?  Burglary? Harassment?  In a 2015 decision, the Supreme Court found it impossible to give the term “violent felony” a “principled and objective” standard.  Why should courts have any more luck today?

This uncertainty would force prosecutors to think twice before bringing felon-in-possession charges, asking first whether they could persuade a court that the defendant is sufficiently “dangerous” or “violent” or “non-law-abiding” to justify disarmament.  And from a criminal justice reform perspective, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Plenty of left-leaning commentators have argued that the felon-in-possession ban is disproportionately enforced against people of color, contributing to mass incarceration and persecution of minority communities.  For many progressives, these problems raise concerns about equal protection, unlawful policing, and unconstitutional sentences.  But this Supreme Court doesn’t see them that way; it cares far more about gun rights than traditional civil rights, such as basic civic equality of Black Americans.  So progressive judges may instead seek to use the Second Amendment as a stand-in for constitutional principles that SCOTUS has abandoned.

If that’s the strategy, it carries real risks.  Most obviously, this approach risks legitimizing a sweeping and lethal interpretation of the Second Amendment during an epidemic of gun violence in America.  Liberal support for an expansive right to bear arms could entrench decisions like Bruen, contributing to their status as “settled” precedent that will be harder to overturn in the future.  In 2023, though, progressive judges must take their wins wherever they can find them.  Only they can decide whether the trade-offs are worth it.

A few prior related posts:

June 8, 2023 in Gun policy and sentencing, Second Amendment issues, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (2)

How many of the many thousands convicted of federal aggravated identity theft might now have Dubin claims?

As reported in this prior post, the US Supreme Court this morning rejected the Fifth Circuit's (and the Government's) very broad reading of aggravated identity theft under 18 U.S.C. § 1028A(a)(1). The Court explained in Dubin v. US, No. 22-10 (S. Ct. June 8, 2023) (available here), that the two-year mandatory sentence of 1028A only applies "when the defendant’s misuse of another person’s means of identification is at the crux of what makes the underlying offense criminal, rather than merely an ancillary feature."  For a variety of reasons, I hope federal prosecutors have in the past mostly used the hammer of the two-year mandatory prison term of 1028A in "crux" cases rather than "ancillary" cases (and I sense some other circuits have sometimes limited cases in this way).  But the Dubin case and others cited therein certainly suggest that more than a few persons in the past have been wrongly subject to 1028A liability in "ancillary" cases.

Helpfully, the US Sentencing Commission has one of its great "Quick Facts" publications focused specifically on "Section 1028A Aggravated Identity Theft Offenses."  This July 2022 version reports on the total number of 18 U.S.C. § 1028A offenders sentenced from Fiscal Year 2017 through 2021.  Interestingly, in the three pre-pandemic years, there were over 1000 annual total 1028A offenders sentenced in federal courts; but in FY 2020 and thereafter the yearly numbers clocked in at just over 600.  The typical sentence for most of these offenders across a number of years seems to be in the four- to five-year range.  Consequently, using very "back of the envelop" math, I would guestimate there could be as many as a couple thousand 1028A offenders who are currently imprisoned and maybe a few thousand more currently serving terms of supervised release.  I remain eager to believe and hope that most of these folks were soundly convicted in "crux" cases, but surely many may be eager to claim in court that their convictions and added prison terms were wrongly imposed in "ancillary" cases.

Offenders now looking to pursue what might be called "Dubin claims" could, of course, face procedural barriers of all sorts.  But the still open-ended sentence reduction authority of 3582 might be one ready means for at least some (over-sentenced) prisoners to secure relief.  And there are likely more than a few currently pending federal prosecutions that may get a jolt of uncertainty with Dubin now requiring crux/ancillary distinctions in the application of 18 U.S.C. § 1028A(a)(1).  (But, critically, Justice Gorsuch's concurring opinion warns that we ought not try to sort any of this out while driving to summer vacation.  As he sternly explains: "Criminal statutes are not games to be played in the car on a crosscountry road trip.") 

June 8, 2023 in Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Offense Characteristics, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered, White-collar sentencing, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (2)

SCOTUS limits reach of aggravated identity theft two-year mandatory statutory add-on sentence

The Supreme Court this morning delivered yet another big win for a federal white-collar criminal defendant with 9-0 ruling limiting the reach of aggravated identity theft federal statute in Dubin v. US, No. 22-10 (S. Ct. June 8, 2023) (available here).  Justice Sotomayor authored the opinion for the Court, which starts this way:

There is no dispute that petitioner David Fox Dubin overbilled Medicaid for psychological testing.  The question is whether, in defrauding Medicaid, he also committed “[a]ggravated identity theft,” 18 U.S.C. § 1028A(a)(1), triggering a mandatory 2-year prison sentence.  The Fifth Circuit found that he did, based on a reading of the statute that covers defendants who fraudulently inflate the price of a service or good they actually provided.  On that sweeping reading, as long as a billing or payment method employs another person’s name or other identifying information, that is enough.  A lawyer who rounds up her hours from 2.9 to 3 and bills her client electronically has committed aggravated identity theft.  The same is true of a waiter who serves flank steak but charges for filet mignon using an electronic payment method.

The text and context of the statute do not support such a boundless interpretation.  Instead, § 1028A(a)(1) is violated when the defendant’s misuse of another person’s means of identification is at the crux of what makes the underlying offense criminal, rather than merely an ancillary feature of a billing method.  Here, the crux of petitioner’s overbilling was inflating the value of services actually provided, while the patient’s means of identification was an ancillary part of the Medicaid billing process.

Justice Gorsuch authored the only separate opinion, which is a notable concurring opinion starting this way:

Whoever among you is not an “aggravated identity thief,” let him cast the first stone.  The United States came to this Court with a view of 18 U.S.C. § 1028A(a)(1) that would affix that unfortunate label on almost every adult American. Every bill splitter who has overcharged a friend using a mobile-payment service like Venmo.  Every contractor who has rounded up his billed time by even a few minutes.  Every college hopeful who has overstated his involvement in the high school glee club.  All of those individuals, the United States says, engage in conduct that can invite a mandatory 2-year stint in federal prison.  The Court today rightly rejects that unserious position.  But in so holding, I worry the Court has stumbled upon a more fundamental problem with § 1028A(a)(1).  That provision is not much better than a Rorschach test. Depending on how you squint your eyes, you can stretch (or shrink) its meaning to convict (or exonerate) just about anyone.  Doubtless, creative prosecutors and receptive judges can do the same.  Truly, the statute fails to provide even rudimentary notice of what it does and does not criminalize.  We have a term for laws like that.  We call them vague.  And “[i]n our constitutional order, a vague law is no law at all.” United States v. Davis, 588 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 1).

June 8, 2023 in Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Sentences Reconsidered, White-collar sentencing, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 7, 2023

Spotlighting notable sentence reduction for prisoner sexually abused by multiple BOP guards

This new NPR piece, headlined "Prison sexual assault victims can now petition for compassionate release," highlights a recent grant of a sentence reduction under 3582(c)(1)(A) for a prisoner who was repeatedly sexually abused by federal prison guards.  Here are the particulars and some broader context:

For years, Aimee Chavira suffered sexual abuse in a Dublin, Calif., federal prison by the officers responsible for protecting her. Now, thanks to a program known as compassionate release, she is free. And her freedom could help pave a similar path for other people who experienced physical or sexual assault behind bars.

"We are very hopeful that this can lead to more women who were abused at Dublin getting out," said Erica Zunkel, Chavira's lawyer.

Chavira, 44, has been home for less than two weeks after learning her request for compassionate release had been granted by a federal judge. Those petitions allow people in prison the chance to convince a court they should be freed because of extraordinary and compelling circumstances.

Typically, those cases involve terminal illness or other dire medical conditions. In April, the U.S. Sentencing Commission, a federal body that sets advisory guidelines, voted to expand the bases for compassionate release to include sexual and physical assault by prison workers.

Chavira reported her abuse to a psychologist and a warden at the Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin. But they did nothing. The warden later was convicted of sexual abuse and lying to the FBI. Five other officials have been charged with sexually abusing women at the facility, in what became known as a so-called "Rape Club." One of them, John Bellhouse, was convicted this week on charges that include sexual abuse of an incarcerated person.

Chavira said she knows women from the Dublin prison who have been moved to other facilities, where they continue to suffer retaliation and face trauma. "This is just one prison that's coming out to the light," she said. "What's happening in all the rest of the prisons with the rest of the people that don't have any help or a voice?"

Last year, a bipartisan probe by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found widespread sexual abuse by officers in federal prisons with few consequences for those officers....

Zunkel, the associate director of the Federal Criminal Justice Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School, said it's important that Chavira and other survivors of assault get released as soon as possible. "The experts confirm it doesn't matter if you're moved to a different prison, it doesn't matter if they're offered the very best therapy possible, the Bureau of Prisons is a fundamentally unsafe place for a survivor of sexual violence to recover from," Zunkel said.

In Chavira's case, prosecutors did not object to her request for compassionate release....

Chavira said she's determined to speak out for all the people she met in prison who are still experiencing abuse and poor conditions behind bars. "There is no help, if you went in in one piece, you're coming back out in a million pieces, because you're beyond broken," she said. For now, she said she intends to get stronger emotionally and "show everybody, you know, I went through this, and I got out of it."

The short ruling granting compassionate release is available here and the detailed motion filed by Erica Zunkel on behalf of Aimee Chavira is available here.

June 7, 2023 in FIRST STEP Act and its implementation, Prisons and prisoners, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (32)

New Sentencing Project report reviews "Adults 25 and Younger Sentenced to Life without Parole"

The Sentencing Project today released this new report on certain LWOP sentencing patterns titled "“Left to Die in Prison: Emerging Adults 25 and Younger Sentenced to Life without Parole.” Here are excerpts from the report's "Executive Summary" (with endnotes removed):

Beginning at age 18, U.S. laws typically require persons charged with a crime to have their case heard in criminal rather than juvenile court, where penalties are more severe.  The justification for this is that people are essentially adults by age 18, yet this conceptualization of adulthood is flawed.  The identification of full criminal accountability at age 18 ignores the important, distinct phase of human development referred to as emerging adulthood, also known as late adolescence or young adulthood.  Compelling evidence shows that most adolescents are not fully matured into adulthood until their mid-twenties.

The legal demarcation of 18 as adulthood rests on outdated notions of adolescence.  Based on the best scientific understanding of human development, ages 18 to 25 mark a unique stage of life between childhood and adulthood which is recognized within the fields of neuroscience, sociology, and psychology.  Thus, there is growing support for providing incarcerated people who were young at the time of their offense a second look at their original sentence to account for their diminished capacity.  A 2022 study found similar levels of public support for providing a second look at prison sentences for crimes committed under age 18 as for those committed under age 25.... 

Two in five people — 11,600 individuals — sentenced to LWOP between 1995 and 2017 were under 26 at the time of their sentence.  In Michigan, Pennsylvania, and California, nearly half of those sentenced to LWOP were younger than 26.  Nationally, the peak age at conviction was age 23, which is well within the period between youth and adulthood.

Moreover, two thirds (66%) of people under 26 years old sentenced to LWOP are Black compared with 51% of persons sentenced to LWOP beyond this age. As we show in this report, our analysis finds that being Black and young has produced a substantially larger share of LWOP sentences than being Black alone. This fact reinforces the growing understanding that extreme sentences disproportionately impact Black Americans.

The report’s findings support a recent sentencing trend recognizing emerging adulthood as a developmental stage; more than a dozen states have introduced or passed legislative reforms or adopted jurisprudential restrictions in recent years to protect emerging adults from extreme punishment.  These reforms utilize the latest scientific understanding of adolescence and young adulthood to recognize emerging adulthood as a necessary consideration in assigning culpability. 

In light of strong evidence showing the unique attributes of emerging adulthood, sentences that allow no review once adolescent development is concluded are especially egregious.

June 7, 2023 in Data on sentencing, Detailed sentencing data, Offender Characteristics, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered | Permalink | Comments (3)

"Plea Bargaining Abolitionism: A History"

The title of this post is the title of this new piece authored by William Ortman now available via SSRN. Here is its abstract:

How does a tragedy on the scale of mass incarceration happen?  Scholarship has focused on the carceral appetite of politicians, criminal justice practitioners, and the public. R ightly so, but mass incarceration took more.  On paper, American law has a built-in check on carceral appetites: a labor-intensive system of criminal adjudication via trials. Yet as mass incarceration wreaked havoc in the 1980s and beyond, that system barely registered.  It had been supplanted, over the previous century, by a form of adjudication far better suited to punitive fervor.  Plea bargaining enabled mass incarceration.  If only Americans had been warned about plea bargaining before it was too late, maybe the catastrophe could have been avoided.

Except that they — we — were warned.  In the 1970s, an unlikely assortment of academics, prosecutors, judges, and even a Nixon-administration crime commission sought to rally the country to abolish plea bargaining.  While they did not speak in unison, they were united by a conviction that the system of plea bargaining that had matured in mid-century American courts was fundamentally unjust.

Plea bargaining abolitionists in the 1970s tried to tell us that something basic had gone wrong with the criminal process.  Perhaps predictably, the broader legal profession didn’t heed the warning.  When prosecutors and judges attempted to formally ban plea bargaining — as they did in Alaska, El Paso, and elsewhere — other prosecutors and judges, joined by defense lawyers, found ways to circumvent them.  And when scholars and politicians decried the injustice of plea bargaining, they were told to be more realistic.

June 7, 2023 in Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Scope of Imprisonment, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (9)

June 6, 2023

En banc Third Circuit rules, based on Bruen, that federal felon-in-possession law is unconstitutional when applied to nonviolent, nondangerous offender

Creating a circuit split concerning the lawfulness of a frequently-applied federal gun control provision, the full en banc Third Circuit today found unconstitutional the application of federal felon-in-possession law to a person with a false statement conviction. The majority opinion in Range v. Attorney General, No. 21-2835 (3d Cir. 2023) (available here), runs less than 20 pages, but it is followed by 80+ pages of concurring and dissenting opinions.  (The vote for Range was 11-4.)  Here is how the majority opinion authored by Judge Hardiman concludes:

Our decision today is a narrow one. Bryan Range challenged the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) only as applied to him given his violation of 62 Pa. Stat. Ann. § 481(a).  Range remains one of “the people” protected by the Second Amendment, and his eligibility to lawfully purchase a rifle and a shotgun is protected by his right to keep and bear arms.  Because the Government has not shown that our Republic has a longstanding history and tradition of depriving people like Range of their firearms, § 922(g)(1) cannot constitutionally strip him of his Second Amendment rights.  We will reverse the judgment of the District Court and remand so the Court can enter a declaratory judgment in favor of Range, enjoin enforcement of § 922(g)(1) against him, and conduct any further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

The longest dissent was is authored by Judge Krause, and here are a few paragraphs of its introduction (with footnotes omitted):

Section 922(g)(1) of the U.S. Code, Title 18, embodies this delicate equilibrium and comports with traditional principles that have guided centuries of legislative judgments as to who can possess firearms.  As Justice Alito has observed, § 922(g) “is no minor provision.  It probably does more to combat gun violence than any other federal law.” And as a “longstanding” and widely accepted aspect of our national gun culture, the federal felon-possession ban — carefully crafted to respect the laws of the states — is the keystone of our national background check system, and has repeatedly been characterized by the Supreme Court as “presumptively lawful.”  Where, as here, the legislature has made a reasonable and considered judgment to disarm those who show disrespect for the law, it is not the place of unelected judges to substitute that judgment with their own.

Yet today’s majority brushes aside these realities and the seismic effect of its ruling.  It is telling that, although it describes itself as limited “to Range’s situation,” today’s opinion is not designated non-precedential as appropriate for a unique individual case, but has precedential status, necessarily reaching beyond the particular facts presented.  It is also telling that it tracks precisely the Fifth Circuit’s deeply disturbing opinion in United States v. Rahimi, which, finding no precise historical analogue, struck down as unconstitutional the ban on gun possession by domestic abusers.  And in the process, the majority creates a circuit split with the Eighth Circuit’s recent opinion in United States v. Jackson, which rejected the notion of “felony-by-felony litigation” and recognized that “Congress acted within the historical tradition when it enacted § 922(g)(1) and the prohibition on possession of firearms by felons.”

Though the federal government would normally seek certiorari review of this kind of ruling, I wonder if the feds might seek to urge the Supreme Court to take up a different case raising the same issue.  Bryan Range's case seems particularly sympathetic, as he was only convicted nearly three decades ago of making a false statement to obtain food stamps in violation of Pennsylvania law.  But, whatever the vehicle, the constitutionality of Section 922(g)(1) is clearly one (of a number of) post-Bruen Second Amendment issues the Supreme Court is going to have to confront.

June 6, 2023 in Collateral consequences, Gun policy and sentencing, Second Amendment issues | Permalink | Comments (15)

Missouri completes execution of man who murdered two jail guards back in the year 2000

As reported in this AP piece, a "Missouri man who shot and killed two jailers nearly 23 years ago during a failed bid to help an acquaintance escape from a rural jail was executed Tuesday evening." Here is more:

Michael Tisius, 42, received a lethal injection of pentobarbital at the state prison in Bonne Terre and was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m., authorities said.  He was convicted of the June 22, 2000, killings of Leon Egley and Jason Acton at the small Randolph County Jail....

Tisius’ lawyers had urged the U.S. Supreme Court to block the execution, alleging in appeals that a juror at a sentencing hearing was illiterate, in violation of Missouri law.  The court rejected that motion Tuesday afternoon.  The Supreme Court previously turned aside another argument — that Tisius should be spared because he was just 19 at the time of the killings.  A 2005 Supreme Court ruling bars executions of those under 18 when their crime occurred, but attorneys for Tisius had argued that even at 19, when the killings occurred, Tisius should have had his sentence commuted to life in prison without parole.

Advocates for Tisius had said he was largely neglected as a child and was homeless by his early teens.  His path to the death chamber began in 1999 when, as an 18-year-old, he was jailed on a misdemeanor charge of pawning a rented stereo system.  In June 2000, Tisius was housed on that charge at the same county jail in Huntsville with inmate Roy Vance. Tisius was about to be released, and court records show the men discussed a plan in which Tisius, once he was out, would help Vance escape.

Just after midnight on June 22, 2000, Tisius went to the jail accompanied by Vance’s girlfriend, Tracie Bulington.  They told Egley and Acton that they were there to deliver cigarettes to Vance.  The jailers didn’t know that Tisius had a pistol.  At trial, Bulington testified that she looked up and saw Tisius with the gun drawn, then watched as he shot and killed Acton.  When Egley approached, Tisius shot him, too.  Both officers were unarmed.  Tisius found keys at the dispatch area and tried to open Vance’s cell, but couldn’t. When Egley grabbed Bulington’s leg, Tisius shot him several more times.

Tisius and Bulington fled but their car broke down later that day in Kansas.  They were arrested in Wathena, Kansas, about 130 miles (210 kilometers) west of Huntsville.  Tisius confessed to the crimes.

Sid Conklin, now presiding commissioner of Randolph County, was a Missouri State Highway Patrol officer who investigated the killings in 2000. Conklin said the deaths of the two young jailers — both in their 30s — still haunt the community.  “I hope this brings closure for all citizens of Randolph County,” said Conklin, who witnessed the execution.

Another now-retired highway patrol investigator, Randy King, described the jailers as “good, everyday people trying to make a living.” “I pray for the guy’s (Tisius’) soul, but it’s been 23 years and it’s time for justice to be served,” King said.  He also witnessed the execution.

Bulington and Vance are serving life sentences on murder convictions....

The execution was the 12th in the U.S. this year, and the third in Missouri. Only Texas, with four, has executed more people than Missouri this year.

June 6, 2023 in Death Penalty Reforms | Permalink | Comments (1)

Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth reporting that "1,000 individuals who were sentenced to life in prison as children are now free"

I received an email this morning from The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth (CFSY) reporting in this way on what seems like a notable resentencing milestone:

As of June 6, 2023, we’ve reached an incredible milestone: 1,000 individuals who were sentenced to life in prison as children are now FREE! Since 2009, we have been fighting alongside family members, formerly incarcerated individuals, survivors of violence, lawyers, legislators, and advocates to reach this landmark. Today, we celebrate alongside each of you and affirm once again that “No Child Is Born Bad.”

The CFSY website also provides these notable particulars on the freed group:

What do you know about these 1000 individuals who were told as children they would die in prison serving life without parole and are now free? Their recidivism rates are exceedingly low, while the time they served is exceedingly high....

RECIDIVISM RATES OF FORMER JUVENILE LIFERS ARE EXTREMELY LOW: BETWEEN 0 AND 2%.  A study in Louisiana found the recidivism rate of those who were sentenced to juvenile life without parole to be 0% while a study in Pennsylvania found it to be 1.14%. the national recidivism rate is reported to be between 40% and 68%.

THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF YEARS THESE 1000 FORMER JUVENILE LIFERS SERVED IS EXTREMELY HIGH: 30 YEARS. The median time served for homicide in the U.S. is 17 years according to statistics from the federal bureau of justice – up from less than six years before the year 2000.

THE AVERAGE AGE UPON RELEASE: 47 YEARS OLD.  While teenagers are more prone to break the law, most who commit serious crimes mature out of a tendency to break laws around 25 years old, according to criminologists, biological brain researchers, and decades of experience.

AMERICANS OVERWHELMINGLY BELIEVE THESE 1000 HAVE A CAPACITY FOR POSITIVE CHANGE: 70%. Over two-thirds of Americans agree that children who receive lengthy sentences should have their sentences reviewed by a judge or parole board after no more than 15 years, with the opportunity for release. This majority holds across race, age, gender, political affiliation, and education.

THE LONGEST SERVING AND OLDEST TO BE FREED: JOE LIGON. Locked up at age 15, Joe Ligon became the nation’s longest-serving juvenile ‘lifer.’ at 83, he became the oldest to be freed.

June 6, 2023 in Offender Characteristics, Prisons and prisoners, Scope of Imprisonment, Sentences Reconsidered | Permalink | Comments (16)

June 5, 2023

A long-form account of one small part of modern stories about compassionate release for dying federal prisoners

Anyone interested at all in the topic of compassionate release should be sure to make time to read this extended account of one federal prisoner's quest to help fellow prisoners secure end-of-life sentence reductions. This piece by Anna Altman for The Atavist Magazine is fully titled "The Quality of Mercy: Gary Settle has helped dozens of federal prisoners get compassionate release. Will it ever be his turn to go home?". Here is one small snippet of very long piece that is worth the time to read in full:

Compassionate release is grounded in the idea that changes to a person’s health may weaken the justification for their incarceration.  What reason is there for imprisoning someone with Alzheimer’s when he no longer understands that he is being punished?  When someone with late-stage liver disease can’t get out of bed and is no longer a threat to society?  When “rehabilitation” is no longer feasible because a person has advanced cancer?  “We’re not doing any social good, if we were in the first place, in keeping them locked up,” [FAMM's Mary] Price said.  “And we can do a great deal of good in terms of helping people repair relationships and comfort each other and say goodbye.”

There is also a financial calculus that works in the BOP’s favor, one noted prominently in a 2013 DOJ report on compassionate release: It’s almost always cheaper to release sick people than to keep them locked up until they die.  One study found that the annual cost of caring for just 21 seriously ill prisoners in California was almost $2 million per person, while the median per capita cost of nursing home care in the state was $73,000 per year.

After a judge allowed [terminal cancer patient R.] Smith to go home, Settle noticed a shift at Butner.  He later wrote an email to FAMM, trying to put into words what he was witnessing.  “In this place of death and dying, among incarcerated men who are holding on to life with nothing but more cells, more keys, more misery in their future, your efforts are having real, tangible results.  Your efforts are giving hope,” he wrote.  “You are giving life back to people, and you are giving them the most precious gift of all, time. Time to heal old wounds, to take a last breath of freedom and to leave this world with peace and dignity.”

FAMM worked closely with Settle through the summer and fall of 2019 to help people at Butner.  “We didn’t appoint him,” Price said. “He appointed himself.”  Settle made copies of FAMM’s newsletter and distributed them to his neighbors.  He kept an eye out for people whose health was worsening and approached those he thought might qualify for compassionate release.  He told them what he knew about the First Step Act, which he had studied, and about the Compassionate Release Clearinghouse.  He spent six to eight hours a day requesting medical records, addressing envelopes, and updating his contacts on the outside about various cases.  Settle read medical records, cross-referencing terms with a diagnostic manual and a medical encyclopedia he’d ordered, so he could send the most pertinent information about sick prisoners to their lawyers.  Before long his cell was covered with piles of paper.

Settle also relayed information from incarcerated individuals to their family members.  He helped people who were too sick to make it to a computer, those who had been transferred off-site for care, and others who had never learned to read or write.  Sometimes he wrote compassionate release requests himself, parroting the language he had seen in other applications.  The ones that went to the BOP were all but certain to be rejected or ignored, but that was part of the process: For a prisoner to file a motion directly with a judge, they first had to “exhaust administrative remedies,” in legal parlance.

Word got around Butner about what Settle was doing.  He would leave his cell after a nap to find four or five guys gathered outside, some of them in wheelchairs with paperwork in their laps.  He was willing to assist just about anyone — he said he only refused people convicted of sex crimes.  “Gary is able to form relationships with all kinds of people,” said Juliana Andonian, an attorney who used to work at FAMM.  “He didn’t want to make himself the center of the story.  That was really notable, the lack of ego.”

It isn’t uncommon for people in prison to help one another with legal matters.  Jailhouse lawyers — some with legal training, some without—review statutes in a prison’s law library, file paperwork, and perform other tasks for fellow prisoners, often for a fee or some other form of compensation.  “Someone less sincere could make a lot of money or do a lot of harm,” Andonian said.  Settle refused payment, even to cover the cost of emails he sent and phone calls he made.  The mother of a man Settle helped go home remembered sending him a thank-you note.  “That’s about all he let me send him,” she said.

One day a thought dawned on Price.  “He is doing this job that the Bureau of Prisons should be doing,” she said.  “They should be moving heaven and earth to be sure that people are connected to family and loved ones when they’re near the end of their lives.”

June 5, 2023 in FIRST STEP Act and its implementation, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (3)

"Left Behind, Again: Intellectual Disability and the Resentencing Movement"

The title of this post is the title of this new article authored by Katie Kronick and now available via SSRN. Here is its abstract:

This Article examines the exclusion of individuals with intellectual disability from much of the current resentencing movement.  Across the country, incarcerated individuals are filing motions in federal and state courts seeking release as part of a nationwide movement toward decarceration.  These motions are possible because new legislation and case law have been moving away from the “law and order” policies that permeated the criminal legal system for the last several decades.  Those eligible for release include individuals sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for non-violent drug offenses or offenses they committed as children.  In addition, elderly and very sick incarcerated individuals can seek review of their sentences in many jurisdictions.

Although the current resentencing movement has its roots in Atkins v. Virginia — in which the Supreme Court held that execution of individuals with intellectual disability violated the Eighth Amendment — individuals with intellectual disability have not been an explicit part of this movement.  The Article uniquely considers the role of practical concerns that impede incorporation of individuals with intellectual disability into the resentencing movement, such as difficulties identifying individuals with intellectual disability in the criminal legal system.  This Article also examines the Court’s opinions both on proportionality in sentencing and individuals with intellectual disability to argue that the Court’s delay in defining “intellectual disability,” history of discriminatory opinions, and failure to extend Atkins beyond the death penalty context have contributed to individuals with intellectual disability’s exclusion from resentencing.

Finally, this Article proposes both litigation and legislative strategies to more explicitly include individuals with intellectual disability in resentencing and early release efforts.  Relatively small changes can have a substantial impact on individuals with intellectual disability who are incarcerated and on the resentencing and criminal legal system reform movements.

June 5, 2023 in Offender Characteristics, Prisons and prisoners, Sentences Reconsidered | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 4, 2023

Top-side SCOTUS briefs in Pulsifer address FIRST STEP Act's expansion of statutory safety valve

Though we still await opinions in a number of criminal justice cases this SCOTUS Term (which all should be decided in the next few weeks, some details here), I am already excited for the fascinating little sentencing case the Justices already have on tap for next Term.  As flagged here, the Justices in late February granted certiorari in Pulsifer v. United States.  Stated in a pithy way, the issue in Pulsifer is whether the word "and" as used in the FRIST STEP Act's expansion of the mandatory minimum statutory safety valve actually means "and" or might instead mean "or." 

As I have noted before, federal criminal justice practitioners and sentencing fans should be following Pulsifer closely because its resolution will impact how thousands of drug defendants are sentenced in federal courts every year.  And statutory construction gurus should also be interested in how Pulsifer addresses statutory issues related to textualism, plain meaning and the rule of lenity.  

Though SCOTUS oral argument in Pulsifer will not be scheduled until October of November, the first set of briefs were filed in the last few weeks.  Specifically, SCOTUSblog has assembled on this Pulsifer case page the merits brief filed by Mark R. Pulsifer as well as four distinct amici briefs (three in support of Pulsifer and one in support of neither party).  The briefs all make for interesting reads and reinforce my sense that Pulsifer will be a fun one at oral argument and beyond.

June 4, 2023 in Drug Offense Sentencing, FIRST STEP Act and its implementation, Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (0)