Sentencing Law and Policy

US Sentencing Commission now officially without two of its seven voting members

With help from a colleague, I can report on significant news relating to the US Sentencing Commission that goes along with the new Congress.  As reported in this post, back in August 4, 2022, the Senate confirmed Prez Biden’s seven nominees to the US Sentencing Commission, fully reconstituting the Commission after many years of being down some members and after 3+ years without a quorum.  Since August 2022, the Commission has been fully loaded as well as quite active.  The seven commissioners were confirmed for staggered terms, with two of those terms — for former Judge John Gleeson and current Judge Claria Horn Boom — expiring October 31, 2023.  President Biden renominated both Judges Gleeson and Boom, and both nominations were reported favorably out of the Senate Judiciary Committee back in April 2024.  Judge Glesson’s nomination was reported by a bare majority, and Judge Boom’s nomination was reported unanimously. 
 
Both Judge Gleeson and Judge Boom were able to continue to serve after the expiration of their terms, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 992. That law authorized their continued service until "the date on which the Congress adjourns sine die to end the session of Congress that commences after the date on which the member’s term expired.”  But on Friday, January 3, 2025 at noon, Congress adjourned the second session of the 118th Congress sine die, the nominations of Judges Gleeson and Boom were returned to the White House, and, pursuant to section 992, the terms of these two Commissioners ended.  This development leaves the Commission now with only five voting members, three Democrats and two Republicans.  Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 994, it will require four of these five — a supermajority — to vote for any proposed amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines for those proposed amendments to be promulgated and sent to Congress.

The reduction in the number of active members on the Commission raise lots of questions, including whether President Trump will make nominations to the Commission to fill the two vacancies anytime soon, whether the Commission will move forward with additional proposed amendments to the drug guidelines and others as hinted at at their December public meeting (when they already published notable proposed amendments), whether and how the need for a supermajority of commissioners to amend the Guidelines and for other actions will impact the Commission’s agenda and plans, how Chair Reeves will guide this new Commission configuration to work with the new Administration and the new leadership of the 119th Congress and its two judiciary committees, and many more.  (Speaking of the new Administration, I am tempted to joke that whoever is gearing up DOGE might consider taking  premaure credit for the downsizing of Commission.  Jokes aside, the Commission always seemed more productive and effective when fully staffed.)

In the next few months, some of these questions will begin to be answered, and Commission membership dynamics are sure to impact federal sentencing law and policy in this new year and beyond.  Stay tuned.

Judge Merchan upholds Donand Trump's NY state convictions, suggests he will impose sentence of "unconditional discharge" next week

As reported in this AP piece, "a judge Friday set President-elect Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money criminal case for Jan. 10 — little over a week before he’s due to return to the White House — but indicated he wouldn’t be jailed." Here is more:

Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial, signaled in a written decision that he’d sentence the former and future president to what’s known as an unconditional discharge, in which a conviction stands but the case is closed without jail time, a fine or probation. Trump can appear virtually for sentencing, if he chooses.

Rejecting Trump’s push to dismiss the verdict and throw out the case on presidential immunity grounds and because of his impending second term, Merchan wrote that only “bringing finality to this matter” would serve the interests of justice.

He said he sought to balance Trump’s ability to govern, “unencumbered” by the case, against other interests: the U.S. Supreme Court’s July ruling on presidential immunity and the public’s expectation “that all are equal and no one is above the law,” and the importance of respecting a jury verdict. “This court is simply not persuaded that the first factor outweighs the others at this stage of the proceeding,” Merchan wrote in an 18-page decision.

Judge Merchan's full 18-page ruling, which is available at this link, is primarily concerned with rejecting the defense team's various arguments for dismissing all charges. As the very end, here is is how he explains his sentencing thoughts at the end of the decision:

While this Cout as a matter of law must not make any determination on sentencing prior to giving the parties and Defendant an opportunity to be heard, it seems proper at this juncture to make known the Court's inclination to not impose any sentence of incarcetation, a sentence authorized by the conviction but one the People concede they no longer view as a practicable recommendation.  As such, in balancing the aforementioned considerations in coniunction with the undetlying concerns of the Presidential Immunity doctrine, a sentence of an unconditional discharge appears to be the most viable solution to ensure finality and allow Defendant to pursue his appellate options.  Further, to assuage the Defendant's concerns regarding the mental and physical demands during this transition period as well as the considerations set forth in the 2000 OLC Memorandum, this Court will permit Defendant to exercise his right to appear virtually for this proceeding, if he so chooses.  People v. Reyes,72 Misc 3d 1133 [Sup Ct New York County 2011].

Facing guidelines recommending decades in prison, former Senator Menendez requests "sentence that relies heavily on alternatives to incarceration"

As reported in this New York Times piece, weeks "before Robert Menendez, New Jersey’s disgraced former U.S. senator, is scheduled to be sentenced for corruption, his lawyers submitted an emotion-laden appeal for leniency based on what they depicted as Mr. Menendez’s hardscrabble upbringing, life of service and devotion to family."  Here is more about the sentencing filing:

As they did during Mr. Menendez’s two-month bribery trial in Manhattan, [his lawyers] suggested that their client’s greatest failing was being led astray by a conniving wife. Nadine Menendez, the former senator’s wife, was charged with her husband with conspiring to trade his political influence for bribes of cash, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz convertible. Her trial is expected to start next month....

“The evidence showed that Senator Menendez was unaware of activities that Nadine was undertaking, including the receipt and sale of gold bars by Nadine, and cash she stored in her locked closet and her safe deposit box,” the lawyers wrote in their filing.

And in a letter of support also filed on Thursday, Mr. Menendez’s daughter, Alicia Menendez, a high-profile anchor on the cable news network MSNBC, hinted at the sacrifices her father continued to make for his wife, who was being treated for breast cancer....

Her letter is among more than 120 filed on behalf of Mr. Menendez, part of an attempt to justify a prison term far shorter than the 12 years recommended by the court’s probation department. The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which prosecuted Mr. Menendez, is expected to disclose the government’s sentencing recommendation in the coming weeks....

In Thursday’s filing, the former senator’s lawyers argued that the probation department’s recommendation of a 12-year prison term was “draconian — likely a life and death sentence for someone of Bob’s age and condition.” [The lawyers] suggested that the guidelines instead merited a sentence of no more than 27 months — and even that, they wrote, was too long. They urged Judge Stein to consider a period of imprisonment of less than 27 months paired with “at least two years’ rigorous community service.”

“He is certain never to commit future offenses,” the lawyers wrote about Mr. Menendez. “And his current state — stripped of office and living under a permanent shadow of disgrace and mockery — are more than sufficient to reflect the seriousness of the offenses and to promote respect for the law.”

The full 52-page sentencing filing is available at this link, and concludes with this paragraph:

For the foregoing reasons, the sentencing factors set out in Section 3553(a), as applied to the circumstances of this defendant and case, justify a substantially below-Guidelines sentence that credits Senator Menendez’s lifetime of good deeds and good character, his low likelihood of offending in the future, and the punishment he has already sustained due to his conviction.  As urged by a friend and former member of the Puerto Rican Senate Roberto L. Prats, “please consider that you are sentencing a good man who devoted his entire professional career to serving others. In doing so, he touched the heart and soul of many citizens, me included, asking for nothing in return.” Ex. U (Letter submitted by Roberto L. Prats, Esq.).  We respectfully submit that the Court should impose a sentence that relies heavily on alternatives to incarceration, as such a sentence is sufficient but not greater than necessary to accomplish the purposes of sentencing under 18 U.S.C. §3553(a).

"Toward Pretrial Criminal Adjudication"

The title of this post is the title of this new paper authored by Eric Fish and Chesa Boudin now available via SSRN. Here is its abstract:

The American criminal justice system faces a crisis of adjudication.  Courts rarely decide facts, hear arguments, or hold adversary hearings.  Trials are an endangered species.  Convictions nearly always happen when defendants declare themselves guilty pursuant to plea bargain agreements.  This crisis of adjudication undermines the system's legitimacy.  The rule of law has little purchase in a regime governed by guilty pleas.  Legal rights are not asserted. The government's evidence is not tested.  The values of neutrality, transparency, and legality are sacrificed as power moves from the courtroom to the prosecutor's office.  And case outcomes are dictated by punishment leverage, not by in-court presentation of evidence.  This has created a persistently high risk of wrongful convictions.  It has also eroded the rule of law and facilitated the growth of incarceration.

To address this crisis, academics and reformers have mostly focused on reviving the criminal jury trial.  This Article proposes instead to reframe criminal procedure in a way that emphasizes robust pretrial adjudication.  There are a variety of hearings and other legal proceedings that can happen before a jury trial.  These include grand juries, preliminary hearings, witness depositions, suppression hearings, and bench trials.  In most American jurisdictions, these procedures are weak or nonexistent.  But in some places, they are powerful.  California has an unusually demanding grand jury process.  Florida gives defendants broad rights to depose witnesses before trial.  North Carolina provides misdemeanor defendants both an initial bench trial and a subsequent jury trial.  This Article examines these and other unique practices to propose a fresh way of thinking about criminal adjudication.  It should not be an all-or-nothing proposition that begins and ends with the jury trial.  Adjudication is, at its core, the testing of evidence and law, before a neutral tribunal, carried out in public by trained legal experts.  And adjudication, thus understood, can be incorporated into the pretrial criminal process much as it is in civil cases.  Robust pretrial adjudication serves many of the criminal trial's essential functions-producing evidence, creating transparency, imposing burdens, dignifying the parties, and preserving the rule of law.  Such procedures can supplement the rarely exercised right to a jury trial.  And, if made effective, they can help restore the power of courts in a system that has mostly abandoned adjudication.

"The Problem with the ‘Criminal Legal System’"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new essay in Vital City authored by Greg Berman.  I recomment the full piece, and here are some excerpts:

The field of criminal justice is not immune to this problem [of “style-guide liberalism”].  For example, in many quarters, people are no longer referred to as defendants or inmates (and certainly never criminals) but as “justice-impacted individuals" or “justice-involved individuals” instead. The ungainliness of this phrasing is matched by its opacity. Is a crime victim a “justice-impacted individual”? A witness? Aren’t we all “justice-impacted” at some level?....

[T]he campaign to spread “criminal legal system” springs from a very different impulse than “justice-impacted individual” — instead of seeking to affirm a long-suffering population, in this case the goal is to tear down a venerated institution....

Worse than being exclusionary, “criminal legal system” reads as a pejorative to those who staff the system.  One wonders why responsible voices on the left, which traditionally has sought to argue in favor of greater investment in government, would deliberately, and with such a broad brush, try to undermine one of our most important democratic institutions.

It is of course true that the American justice system has been responsible for numerous miscarriages of justice over its long history.  But many of our most important systems — think about the health care system or the child protection system, for example — often fail to live up to their appellations.  Despite its shortcomings, no one is arguing for the education system to be re-named “the social advancement system.”

Justice is, of course, an aspirational goal. Not even the system’s fiercest defenders would claim that it achieves justice in all cases. But having this goal as a north star gives the system — as fractured and beleaguered as it is — a sense of identity and purpose.  Don’t we want our law enforcement, community supervision and correctional agencies to at least strive to achieve justice? No one is motivated to go to work to try to achieve “criminal legal.”

A short round-up of new stories for a new year

I have recently seen some press pieces with various types of discussion of what might be expected in various areas of law and policy that connect to criminal justice and sentencing. So here is a short round-up:

From Forbes, "Bureau Of Prisons: 2024 Year In Review And Outlook for 2025"

From The Hill, "Yes, policies advancing justice can prevail again in Trump 2.0"

From Law360, "Cannabis Advocates Hone Their Policy Goals For 2025"

From Louisville Public Media, "How a Kentucky death penalty case could have national implications"

From USA Today, "New criminal justice laws in effect Jan. 1, 2025 in states like California, Illinois: What to know"

From the Wall Street Journal, "Biden Made the Judiciary More Diverse — but Not More Liberal"

Call for Papers: FSR issue on “A Justice System Crossroads: Reflecting on Biden’s Record and Projecting a Second Trump Term”

The editors of the Federal Sentencing Reporter are seeking articles for a new FSR issue on “A Justice System Crossroads: Reflecting on Biden’s Record and Projecting a Second Trump Term.”  Here is some background on this call for papers:

Every major federal election impacts sentencing and criminal justice policy and practice in many ways, both predictable and unpredictable.  But, with the 2020 and 2024 elections including all sorts of political rhetoric and policy debates around crime and criminal justice issues, the election of Donald Trump and the upcoming control of both Houses of Congress by the Republicans feel especially significant for a wide array of sentencing and criminal justice issues.  The 2024 election follows the recent and still on-going implementation of the landmark First Step Act. And, of course, both Presidents Trump and Biden have developed significant criminal justice records ranging from notable use of clemency powers to nominations transforming the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Sentencing Commission (not to mention the U.S. Supreme Court).

With the Biden Administration winding down and another Trump Administration gearing up, the editors of the Federal Sentencing Reporter are eager to have judges, lawyers, other practitioners, policy advocates, academics, and researchers, share thoughts on the Biden legacy and what we might expect (or hope for) in the new Administration for publication in a fall 2025 FSR issue.  We encourage a wide array of authors to contribute commentaries on the wide range of topics connected to criminal justice, including guideline reform, charging, clemency, compassionate release, BOP operations, forfeiture and more.

FSR commentaries for this issue could just “look back” at where we’ve been the last four years, perhaps examining the out-going Biden Administration’s implementation of various aspects of the First Step Act or the work of the finally functioning U.S. Sentencing Commission.  Or they could “look forward” to such issues as how the incoming Trump Administration’s Department of Justice might move forward on the death penalty or mandatory minimum sentencing. With Presidents Trump and Biden making controversial use of clemency powers, we would especially welcome writings about pardon practices and proposals for reforms.  For this issue and others, FSR always welcomes commentaries from all perspectives, including insights from sentencing experiences in the states and other countries.  Everyone with an informed interest in sentencing law and practice is highly encouraged to submit a commentary for this issue.

FSR articles are typically brief — 2000 to 5000 words, though they can run longer — with light use of citations in the form of endnotes.  The pieces are designed to be read by busy stakeholders, including lawyers, judges, scholars, and legislators (as well as, of course, members and staff of the US Sentencing Commission).  Priority will be given to drafts submitted by March 15, 2025, and later submissions will be considered as space permits.  Submissions should be sent electronically to berman.43 @ osu.edu with a clear indication of the author and the author’s professional affiliation.

Awful start to 2025 after lots of good crime news in 2024

I have been thinking for a few days about a post highlighting positive crime trends in 2024, but I did not want to "jinx" the positive story until 2024 was fully complete.  Depressingly, it turned out to be the first few hours of 2025 that brought awful crime news with the horrific mass murder in downtown New Orleans.  (Notably, this press piece yesterday detailed that in New Orleans in 2024 murders were down 35%, while crime overall in the city was down 26%.)

I sincerely hope the evil mass killing to start 2025 is not a harbinger of a change with respect to a whole lot of positive crime trends.  A quick google news search of "crime in 2024" turns up many press stoies of police reporting, in many major cities nationwide, significant drops in homicides and many other crimes.  Here are a few press pieces detailing the national story:

From ABC News, "US poised to see dramatic drop in homicides for 3rd straight year: More than 5,000 fewer homicides have been recorded this year compared to 2023."

From the New York Times, "Murders Plunge: We have good news to start your 2025."

From NPR, "Early data suggests carjackings and car thefts fell in 2024"

From PBS News Hour, "U.S. sees sharp decline in murders and other crimes in 2024"

From Police1, "Violent crime drops in 2024, with 16% fewer homicides nationwide"

For so many reasons, I hope that all the positive crime trends n 2024 continue into 2025 and beyond.  But perhaps the most predicatable reality about crime trends is their unpredictability.  At his Substack, Juff Asher has this much-more analytical predictive effort in this post titled "Predicting The 2025 Crime Trends."  But that post concludes by noting his "forecast relies on some evidence, but it’s much more of a guess."

Chief Justice discusses importance of, and threats to, "independence of judges" in his annual year-end report

The Chief Justice of the United States always closes out a calendar year by releasing a year-end report on the federal judiciary.  This year, the Chief's "2024 Year End Report on the Federal Judiciary" is a quite lenthy and interesting essay on the history, importance and threats to judicial independence.  The whole essay is worth multiple reads, and here are a few notable paragraphs from the middle of the essay:

At the end of the day, judges perform a critical function in our democracy. Since the beginning of the Republic, the rulings of judges have shaped the Nation’s development and checked the excesses of the other branches.

Of course, the courts are no more infallible than any other branch.  In hindsight, some judicial decisions were wrong, sometimes egregiously wrong. And it was right of critics to say so.  In a democracy — especially in one like ours, with robust First Amendment protections — criticism comes with the territory. It can be healthy.  As Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote, “[a] natural consequence of life tenure should be the ability to benefit from informed criticism from legislators, the bar, academy, and the public.”

Unfortunately, not all actors engage in “informed criticism” or anything remotely resembling it.  I feel compelled to address four areas of illegitimate activity that, in my view, do threaten the independence of judges on which the rule of law depends: (1) violence, (2) intimidation, (3) disinformation, and (4) threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.

In addition to an interesting essay, the 2024 year-end report includes federal "workload of the courts" data in an appendix. Here are some of the provided data that might most interest federal criminal justice fans:

In the regional courts of appeals, filings remained fairly stable, falling less than one percent from 39,987 in fiscal year (FY) 2023 to 39,788 in FY 2024. This was an 18 percent drop from FY 2019, the last full fiscal year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Total civil appeals were down two percent from the prior year to 21,270. Criminal appeals increased four percent to 10,067.

Appeals by pro se litigants, which amounted to 48 percent of filings, increased three percent to 19,101. Prisoner petitions accounted for 21 percent of appeals filings (a total of 8,388), and 87 percent of prisoner petitions were filed pro se, compared with 38 percent of other appeals filings....

The federal district courts docketed 69,673 criminal defendant filings (excluding transfers) in FY 2024, an increase of six percent from the prior year and a reduction of six percent from FY 2020. The largest categories were filings for defendants accused of immigration offenses, which increased 30 percent to 25,446, and filings for defendants charged with drug offenses, which fell eight percent to 16,735.

Ninety percent of total filings for defendants charged with immigration-related offenses were received by the five districts on the southwestern border: the District of Arizona, the Southern District of California, the District of New Mexico, the Southern District of Texas, and the Western District of Texas....

A total of 121,777 persons were under post-conviction supervision on September 30, 2024, a decrease of one percent from the prior year and a reduction of five percent from FY 2020. Of that number, 109,174 were serving terms of supervised release after leaving correctional institutions, a decrease of one percent from FY 2023.

Cases activated in the pretrial services system, including pretrial diversions, rose two percent to 72,899.

Outgoing North Carolina Gov issues capital communtations and other notable clemency actions

I believe today is the last full day in office for North Carolina's Governor Roy Cooper, and he is going out with two notable sets of clemency actions as reported in this press releases from this office:

"Governor Issues 2 Commutations and 2 Pardons of Forgiveness"

"Governor Cooper Takes Capital Clemency Actions"

Here is part of the statement regarding the capital clemencies:

Today, Governor Roy Cooper announced that he has commuted the sentences of 15 people on death row in North Carolina to life without the possibility of parole. He commuted these sentences after a thorough review of detailed petitions for clemency submitted by the defendants, input from district attorneys and the families of victims, and close review by the Governor’s Office. 

“These reviews are among the most difficult decisions a Governor can make and the death penalty is the most severe sentence that the state can impose,” said Governor Cooper. “After thorough review, reflection, and prayer, I concluded that the death sentence imposed on these 15 people should be commuted, while ensuring they will spend the rest of their lives in prison.”

No executions have been carried out in North Carolina since 2006 due to ongoing litigation. Before today’s commutations, North Carolina had 136 offenders on death row and the Governor’s Clemency Office received petitions for clemency from 89 of them. The Governor’s Office carefully reviewed, researched, and considered these 89 petitions for commutations, which included the 15 that were granted today.

BJS closes out 2024 with "Prisons Report Series: Preliminary Data Release, 2023"

Via email today, I received word that Bureau of Justice Statistics has released "Prisons Report Series: Preliminary Data Release, 2023," which is a web report (available here) providing "preliminary statistics on key items from the annual prisons data collection." For prison data junkies, these data are always timely, and here is a bit more from the webpage with background and "Key findings":

This preliminary release includes counts from 2013 through 2023 and a year-to-year comparison of 2022 and 2023 by jurisdiction and the sex of persons who were incarcerated.  Statistics from 2023, the latest data year, are preliminary and may be updated once BJS publishes the final data in its annual report, Prisoners in 2023 – Statistical Tables, which is scheduled for release in early 2025.  The annual report will present data on prison capacity and counts of incarcerated individuals, admissions, and releases.

• The U.S. prison population was 1,254,200 at yearend 2023, a 2% increase from 2022 (1,230,100).  At yearend 2023, persons sentenced to more than 1 year under the legal authority of state and federal correctional authorities accounted for 96% (1,210,300) of the total U.S. prison population.
• There were 1,124,400 males sentenced to more than 1 year in state or federal prison at yearend 2023 (93% of the U.S. prison population sentenced to more than 1 year).  This represents an increase of 2% from yearend 2022 (1,103,200) but a decrease of 21% from 2013 (1,416,100).
• There were 85,900 females sentenced to more than 1 year in state or federal prison at yearend 2023.  This represents an increase of 4% from yearend 2022 (82,500) but a decrease of 18% from 2013 (104,300).  The number of persons sentenced to more than 1 year under the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Prisons decreased 2% from yearend 2022 (146,100) to yearend 2023 (143,300).

A little commentary on the Third Circuit's big Second Amendment ruling in Range

Last week, as noted here, the fully Third Circuit again found the federal felon-in-possesion criminal ban to be unconstitutional as applied to Byran Range.  This outcome, as well as the 13-2 vote (with judges appointed by six different presidents supporting the outcome), seems like a pretty big deal for the future of Second Amendment jurisprudence.  But so far I have seen only a little discussion of the big ruling, no doubt in part due to its timing.  Here are a round up of the commentary I have seen:

From GunMag, "The Most Critical 2024 Second Amendment Case"

From Lisa Foundation, "A Good Day at the Range" 

From The Reload, "How Rahimi Made Two Judges Switch Sides on Non-Violent Felon Gun Rights"

From the Wall Street Journal, "The Second Amendment, Reawakened: An appeals court says a nonviolent misdemeanor doesn’t end gun rights."

From Washington Gun Law, "One of the Best Second Amendment Rulings in a Long Time"

"Women on Death Row in the United States"

The title of this post is the title of this new paper recently posted to SSRN authored by Sandra Babcock, Nathalie Greenfield and Kathryn Adamson. Here is its abstract:

This Article presents a comprehensive study of forty-eight persons sentenced to death between 1990 and 2022 who were legally recognized as women at the time of their trials.  Our research is the first of its kind to conduct a holistic and intersectional analysis of the factors driving women’s death sentences.  It reveals commonalities across women’s cases, delving into their experiences of motherhood, gender-based violence, and prior involvement with the criminal legal system.  We also explore the nature of the women’s crimes of conviction, including the role of male codefendants and the State’s use of aggravating factors.  Finally, we reveal for the first time the extent to which capital prosecutions are dominated by men — including judges, elected district attorneys, defense attorneys, and juror forepersons.

We present our data against the backdrop of prevalent theories that seek to explain both the rarity of women’s executions and the reasons why certain women are singled out for the harshest punishment provided by law.  We explain why those frameworks are inadequate to understand the role that systemic gender bias plays in women’s capital prosecutions.  We conclude by arguing for more nuanced research that embraces the complexities in women’s capital cases and accounts for the presence of systemic and intersectional discrimination. 

A few headlines highlighting horrors, but also hope, in prisons

A new year often creates a feeling of hope and renewal.  And I was planning to blog today about two recent lengthy feature articles discussing hope and renewal in US prisons thanks to, of all things, coding and pickleball.  But, sadly, some recent deadly news from US prisons provides a sobering reminder that prisons can often be filled with more horrors than hope.  So, first links to the horrible pieces:

From ABC News, "'Shocking' footage shows handcuffed inmate who died after prison guards beat him"

From Fox News, "Ohio corrections officer killed during inmate assault Christmas morning: 'Made the ultimate sacrifice'"

With a chaser of hope:

From CNN, "Inmates are learning to code in prison. Jobs may be hard to come by"

From ESPN, "The unexpected impact of pickleball on prison life"