Thursday, August 11, 2022

Man beats his dog ... and gets 25 years in a Texas prison!?!

I just saw a discussion of what sound like a remarkable local sentencing case out of Texas.  This local story, headlined "San Antonio man handed one of Texas' longest ever animal abuse prison sentences," provides these basics:

A San Antonio man is headed to prison on one of the longest sentences for animal abuse in Texas History.

Animal Care Services said that Frank Javier Fonseca was sentenced to 25 years in prison on animal abuse charges for a violent beating of his puppy, which was captured on video. He was sentenced in June and has previous felony convictions that include drug possession and crimes of retaliation, according to an ACS news release.

The video was captured in February 2019, showing Fonseca repeatedly hitting his young Rottweiler puppy named Buddy with his fists and a piece of wood, as well as kicking and choking the dog. ACS said the video was recorded by "an anonymous Good Samaritan." Court records show Fonesca was arrested in September 2021.

The 56-year-old San Antonio man told ACS that he was disciplining the dog for leaving his yard on Fenfield Avenue. Buddy survived the abusive attack and is now living with a new adoptive family, officials said.

This new Reason commentary, authored by Billy Binion, rightly questions this outcome under this full headline: "A 25-Year Prison Sentence for Beating Up a Dog Is Not Justice: Frank Javier Fonseca's punishment, which may amount to a life sentence, is a microcosm for many of the issues with the U.S. criminal legal system."  

A quick google search has not turned up much more information to justify or even fully explains what seems like a severe outcome, though I suppose I should never be too surprised by the lengthy sentences that can be and often are imposed under various habitual offender statutes.

August 11, 2022 in Examples of "over-punishment", Offender Characteristics, Offense Characteristics, Scope of Imprisonment | Permalink | Comments (6)

Friday, December 17, 2021

Another crazy long sentence resulting from crazy crude mandatory minimums after deadly accident in Colorado

A very sad case turned into a very extreme sentence for a truck driver in Colorado earlier this week.  This lengthy local story, headlined "Driver gets 110 years in fiery I-70 crash that killed 4," provides lots of the details and videos from the sentencing.  Here are the basics:

The man convicted after a crash on Interstate 70 that left four people dead was sentenced to 110 years in prison Monday afternoon.

Rogel Aguilera-Mederos was 23 when his semi-truck slammed into stopped traffic on the interstate near Denver West Parkway on April 25, 2019.  Four people died instantly from the impact: Doyle Harrison, William Bailey, Miguel Angel Lamas Arellano and Stanley Politano. It is believed they all died from injuries and not the resulting fire.

Aguilera-Mederos was found guilty by a jury on 27 counts in total.  The most serious charges were four counts of vehicular manslaughter.  Other counts he was found guilty of included first-degree assault, first-degree attempt to commit assault, vehicular assault, reckless driving and careless driving. He was found not guilty on 15 counts of first-degree attempt to commit assault.

Judge A. Bruce Jones sentenced Aguilera-Mederos to the required 10-year minimum for each of the six counts of first-degree assault with extreme indifference, to be served consecutively.  He was also sentenced to the required minimum of five years for 10 additional counts of attempted first-degree assault with extreme indifference.  Those will be served consecutively as well.

The judge said the legislature required him to order those sentences be served consecutively, which was why, he said, he issued the minimum sentence for those charges.  However, he did say he may have sentenced Aguilera-Mederos to more than the minimum, if not required to issue the sentences consecutively.

"In all victim impact statements I read, I did not glean from them someone saying, 'He should be in prison for the rest of his life, and he should never, ever get out," Jones said.  "Far from it. There was forgiveness reflected in those statements, but also a desire that he be punished and serve time in prison, and I share those sentiments."

In addition to the 110 years stemming from those charges, Aguilera-Mederos was sentenced to 30 years for 11 other charges that will be served concurrently.

Aguilera-Mederos was extremely emotional as he asked for forgiveness before Jones announced the sentence. "I know it has been hard and heartbreaking for everyone involved," he said though tears. "I can't sleep, I think all the time about the victims. A part of me will be missing forever, as well." Aguilera-Mederos said he took responsibility for the crash, and said it was not intentional. "I have never thought about hurting anyone in my entire life," he said....

The judge said his hands were tied when it came to sentencing, because Colorado's violent crime statute is specific. 9NEWS Legal Expert Scott Robinson said certain violent crimes require a minimum sentence for each victim, and they have to run consecutively. But he said there is one way for violent crime sentences to be reduced.

"Colorado's violent crimes statute gives judges some discretion after 180 days have passed," Robinson said. "Here, the sentencing judge, Bruce Jones, will have an opportunity to determine whether there were unusual and extenuating circumstances which would justify a reduction in the sentences imposed." The judge said he could not assure the courtroom this would be the end of this process, giving an indication that he may consider a motion like that.

The jury had to decide whether the crash resulted from a series of bad choices by the driver or a mechanical failure that the driver had no control over. Aguilera-Mederos faced 42 counts in all. He testified for hours and tearfully recounted publicly for the first time his version of what happened on that day.

Both sides agreed that his truck lost brakes at some point, but they disagreed on how or why that happened.... After the brakes were out, prosecutors argued that Aguilera-Mederos made a series of bad choices that resulted in the crash. One of them being his failure to use a runaway truck ramp on the highway.

I do not know the particulars of Colorado sentencing law, but I sure hope there is a mechanism for the reconsideration of this crazy extreme sentence before too long. But the very possibility that an awful accident can lead to an initial mandated sentence of 100+ years suggest to me that some reform of Colorado sentencing law is still needed.

Here is some other notable recent coverage of this case:

"Trucker’s 110-year sentence in fatal I-70 crash spotlights Colorado sentencing laws, prosecutors’ charging decisions"

"He Was Sentenced To 110 Years in Prison for Causing a Fatal Traffic Accident. The Judge Isn't Happy About It."

"Truck Driver Sentenced 110 Years For Deadly Crash Stemming From Brake Failure Even Though Everyone Agrees It's Unreasonable"

December 17, 2021 in Examples of "over-punishment", Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, State Sentencing Guidelines | Permalink | Comments (15)

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

"The Origins of the Superpredator: The Child Study Movement to Today"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new report from the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth.  Here is its introduction:

The 1995 superpredator narrative is often called out as the impetus for our nation's harmful sentencing policies for Black children.  After all, 75 percent of all kids sentenced to life without parole (JLWOP) were sentenced in the 90s or later, and 70 percent of this population are kids of color (60 percent Black).  But the pseudo-scientific, unsubstantiated, and racialized superpredator theory is actually part of an American tradition of deeming some children something other than children.

The term superpredator first appeared in a publication by American political scientist John J. DiIulio, Jr. in 1995. DiIulio predicted that a wave of teenagers driven by "moral poverty" numbering in the tens of thousands would soon be on the streets committing violent crime. These "hardened, remorseless juveniles" were framed in the article as a pressing "demographic crime bomb."  DiIulio's narrative used racist tropes to further stoke fear — broadly attributing "moral poverty" to "Black inner-city neighborhoods" and families and specifically and repeatedly calling attention to gang violence and "predatory street criminals" among "Black urban youth." 

Five years later, DiIulio renounced the superpredator theory, apologizing for its unintended consequences.  While Dilulio predicted that juvenile crime would increase, it instead dropped by more than half.  Conceding that he made a mistake, Dilulio regretted that he could not “put the brakes on the super-predator theory” before it took on a life of its own.

Despite his later distancing from the idea, DiIulio's terminology spread like wildfire through major news outlets and academic circles.  Coming just a few years after headlines using "wilding" and "wolf pack" to describe five teenagers convicted and later exonerated of raping a woman in Central Park, the rhetorical dehumanization of youth suspected of violence was not new, but DiIulio's coining of "superpredator" lent new credibility and energy.  The superpredator myth reinforced and sought to legitimize longstanding fears of Black criminality, disguised as developmental science and resting on pseudo-scientific assumptions that certain children are not children at all.

While the widespread adoption and popularization of DiIulio's rhetoric and the broader tough on crime atmosphere of the 1990s is instructive in examining our extreme sentencing policies, it is important to place them in the context of our long history of only regarding some children as worthy of protection.  This report highlights the superpredator theory as one manifestation of a longstanding practice in which policymakers, lawyers, and academics classify children on the basis of moral and racial beliefs.  These classifications permit racially biased perceptions of deviance to replace chronological age as the defining characteristic of youth.

This report takes as its jumping off point the Child Study movement of the 19th century, which had long lasting impact on the contours of academic inquiry and the American legal system.  The Child Study movement itself was of course rooted in a deeply racist culture, profoundly influenced by the justifications used to uphold slavery and Jim Crow, and with its own ideological predecessors dating back to the Enlightenment of the 18th century.

May 19, 2021 in Examples of "over-punishment", Offender Characteristics, Scope of Imprisonment, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

The Sentencing Project releases new report urging "A Second Look at Injustice"

Long-time readers know that I have long been a supporter of laws and practices that facilitate taking a second look at long sentences (see links below).  I continue to be pleased to see more and more advocacy for second look sentencing efforts, and I am especially pleased to see this new 50-page report from The Sentencing Project titled " " Here is the start of its Executive Summary:

Lawmakers and prosecutors have begun pursuing criminal justice reforms that reflect a key fact: ending mass incarceration and tackling its racial disparities require taking a second look at long sentences.

Over 200,000 people in U.S. prisons were serving life sentences in 2020 — more people than were in prison with any sentence in 1970. Nearly half of the life-sentenced population is African American.  Nearly one-third is age 55 or older.

“There comes a point,” Senator Cory Booker has explained, “where you really have to ask yourself if we have achieved the societal end in keeping these people in prison for so long.”  He and Representative Karen Bass introduced the Second Look Act in 2019 to enable people who have spent at least 10 years in federal prison to petition a court for resentencing.

Legislators in 25 states, including Minnesota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Florida, have recently introduced second look bills.  A federal bill allowing resentencing for youth crimes has bipartisan support.  And, over 60 elected prosecutors and law enforcement leaders have called for second look legislation, with several prosecutors’ offices having launched sentence review units.

This report begins by examining the evidence supporting these reforms.  Specifically:

•  Legal experts recommend taking a second look at prison sentences after people have served 10 to 15 years, to ensure that sentences reflect society’s evolving norms and knowledge.  The Model Penal Code recommends a judicial review after 15 years of imprisonment for adult crimes, and after 10 years for youth crimes.  National parole experts Edward Rhine, the late Joan Petersilia, and Kevin Reitz have recommended a second look for all after 10 years of imprisonment — a timeframe that corresponds with what criminological research has found to be the duration of most “criminal careers.”

•  Criminological research has established that long prison sentences are counterproductive to public safety.  Many people serving long sentences, including for a violent crime, no longer pose a public safety risk when they have aged out of crime.  Long sentences are of limited deterrent value and are costly, because of the higher cost of imprisoning the elderly.  These sentences also put upward pressure on the entire sentencing structure, diverting resources from better investments to promote public safety.

•  Crime survivors are not of one mind and many have unmet needs that go beyond perpetual punishment.  Ultimately, a survivor’s desire for punishment must be balanced with societal goals of advancing safety, achieving justice, and protecting human dignity.

A few on many recent prior posts on second-look topics:

A sampling of my prior writing on this front through the years:

May 12, 2021 in Examples of "over-punishment", Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Fourth Circuit to review en banc recent panel ruling that lengthy (within-guideline) drug sentence was unreasonable

I noted in this post a few months ago the fascinating split Fourth Circuit panel ruling in US v. Freeman, No. 19-4104 (4th Cir. Mar. 30, 2021) (available here), which started this way:

Precias Freeman broke her tailbone as a teenager, was prescribed opioids, and has been addicted to the drugs ever since. In 2018, she was sentenced to serve more than 17 years in prison for possession with intent to distribute hydrocodone and oxycodone in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 841(b)(1)(C). After Freeman’s appointed counsel initially submitted an Anders brief asking for the Court’s assistance in identifying any appealable issues, we directed counsel to brief whether Freeman’s sentence is substantively reasonable and whether Freeman received ineffective assistance of counsel on the face of the record. On both grounds, we vacate Freeman’s sentence and remand this case for resentencing.

The dissenting opinion concluded this way:

I have great sympathy for Freeman’s circumstances. Her story reflects failures in our community. One could argue her sentence does not reflect sound policy. But that does not make it unreasonable under the law. And while the record is concerning regarding the effectiveness of counsel Freeman received, it does not conclusively demonstrate a failure to meet the constitutional bar at this juncture. I dissent.

This case is already quite the fascinating story, but this new Fourth Circuit order shows that it is due to have another chapter at the circuit level:

A majority of judges in regular active service and not disqualified having voted in a poll requested by a member of the court to grant rehearing en banc, IT IS ORDERED that rehearing en banc is granted.

I am grateful for the colleague who made sure I saw this order, but I am disappointed that the very, very, very rare federal sentence reversed as unreasonably long is now getting en banc review when so many crazy long sentences so often get so quickly upheld as reasonable. The language of this order suggests the Fourth Circuit decide to rehear this case en banc on its own without even being asked to do so by the Justice Department.  And I am also unsure about whether Fourth Circuit en banc procedure will lead to any further briefing or arguments, but  the fact that there are two key issues (ineffective assistance of counsel AND reasonableness of the sentences) means that there might be a wide array of opinions ultimately coming from the full Fourth Circuit.

Prior related post:

May 11, 2021 in Drug Offense Sentencing, Examples of "over-punishment", Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (6)

Saturday, March 13, 2021

"From Damage Caps to Decarceration: Extending Tort Law Safeguards to Criminal Sentencing"

The title of this post is the title of this new article on SSRN authored by Andrea Roth and Jane Bambauer.  Here is its abstract:

The Supreme Court has recognized a civil defendant’s substantive due process right not to be subject to grossly excessive punitive damage awards.  Such awards — even if furthering legitimate state interests in retribution and deterrence — must not be grossly disproportionate to the compensatory damages reflecting the actual harm suffered by the plaintiffs.  More concretely, the “multiplier” — the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages — cannot be too high, with anything exceeding a 10:1 ratio deemed presumptively excessive.  This Article is the first to argue that a similar test should guard against grossly excessive criminal punishments; indeed, it seems odd that large corporations committing civil wrongs enjoy greater protection against overpunishment than criminal defendants, given the devastating effects of mass incarceration, particularly on communities of color.

As we show, there are compelling constitutional, logical, and policy reasons to ensure that criminal punishments are not grossly disproportionate to the harm caused.  In turn, although criminal courts might find the task of estimating the harm caused by a crime unfamiliar, we show how this could be done through surveys measuring the prison time a would-be victim would be willing to endure to avoid the crime.  Scholars have used such error-preference surveys in other legal contexts, but not yet in determining proportionality of punishment.  We offer a survey example as proof of concept and fodder for future research, and we report initial results corroborating the intuition that some crimes routinely trigger sentences grossly disproportionate to harm caused.  Whether or not criminal courts impose due process limits on punishment, our arguments and findings can be wielded by litigants, judges, and policy advocates to argue for lower sentences in individual cases, as well as to push for critically overdue sentencing reform.

March 13, 2021 in Examples of "over-punishment", Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

The Sentencing Project releases "No End in Sight: America’s Enduring Reliance on Life Imprisonment"

The Sentencing Project has done remarkable work in recent years tracking (and advocating against) the growth of life and functional life sentences in the United States. This great work continues with the release today of this big report authored by Ashley Nellis titled "No End in Sight: America’s Enduring Reliance on Life Imprisonment." The whole 46-page report is worth a close read for anyone concerned about extreme punishments and mass incarceration, and here the start of the report's initial "Findings and Recommendations" section:

Before America’s era of mass incarceration took hold in the early 1970s, the number of individuals in prison was less than 200,000.  Today, it’s 1.4 million; and more than 200,000 people are serving life sentences — one out of every seven in prison. More people are sentenced to life in prison in America than there were people in prison serving any sentence in 1970.
Nearly five times the number of people are now serving life sentences in the United States as were in 1984, a rate of growth that has outpaced even the sharp expansion of the overall prison population during this period.  The now commonplace use of life imprisonment contradicts research on effective public safety strategies, exacerbates already extreme racial injustices in the criminal justice system, and exemplifies the egregious consequences of mass incarceration.
In 2020, The Sentencing Project obtained official corrections data from all states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons to produce our 5th national census on life imprisonment.
KEY FINDINGS
• One in 7 people in U.S. prisons is serving a life sentence, either life without parole (LWOP), life with parole (LWP) or virtual life (50 years or more), totaling 203,865 people;
• The number of people serving life without parole — the most extreme type of life sentence — is higher than ever before, a 66% increase since our first census in 2003;
• 29 states had more people serving life in 2020 than just four years earlier;
• 30% of lifers are 55 years old or more, amounting to more than 61,417 people;
• 3,972 people serving life sentences have been convicted for a drug-related offense and 38% of these are in the federal prison system;
• More than two-thirds of those serving life sentences are people of color;
• One in 5 Black men in prison is serving a life sentence;
• Latinx individuals comprise 16% of those serving life sentences;
• One of every 15 women in prison is serving life;
• Women serving LWOP increased 43%, compared to a 29% increase among men, between 2008 and 2020;
• The population serving LWOP for crimes committed as youth is down 45% from its peak in 2016;
• 8,600 people nationwide are serving parole-eligible life or virtual life sentences for crimes committed as minors.

February 17, 2021 in Data on sentencing, Detailed sentencing data, Examples of "over-punishment", Prisons and prisoners, Scope of Imprisonment | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday, December 03, 2020

"Cruel & Unusual Non-Capital Punishments"

The title of this post is the title of this new article available via SSRN authored by William Berry.  Here is its abstract:

The Supreme Court has rendered the Eighth Amendment a dead letter with respect to non-capital, non-juvenile life-without-parole sentences.  Its cases have erected a gross disproportionality standard that seems insurmountable in most cases, even for draconian and excessive sentences.  State courts have adopted a similar approach in interpreting state constitutional Eighth Amendment analogues, often finding that they are no broader than the Court’s narrow interpretation of the Eighth Amendment, despite linguistic variations in many cases.

Nonetheless, in a handful of state cases, state courts have found that state punishments violate the Eighth Amendment or its state constitutional analogue.  This article examines those cases to identify what non-capital punishments have caused courts to limit state punishment practices even in the shadow of an overwhelming, albeit unfortunate, trend of according constitutional deference to state punishment practices.  In light of these decisions, this Article advances a series of possible arguments by which to attack state and federal punishment practices in an effort to create more exceptions to the draconian status quo constitutional rule.

In Part I, the Article begins by providing an overview of Eighth Amendment gross disproportionality doctrine and its use in state constitutional analogues to the Eighth Amendment.  Part II examines the handful of state court cases that have found punishments unconstitutionally disproportionate.  In Part III, the Article advances one set of arguments — both systemic and case-based — for use in attacking non-capital state punishments under state constitutions.  Part IV, the Article advances a second set of arguments — both systemic and case-based — for use in attacking non-capital state punishments under the Eighth Amendment.

December 3, 2020 in Examples of "over-punishment", Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday, August 06, 2020

Ugly summer stories of southern justice in the form of extreme over-sentencing

The dog days of summer seems especially doggy this year, and here are a couple of notably ugly summer sentencing stories are part of this reality:

From CNN, "Louisiana Supreme Court upholds Black man's life sentence for stealing hedge clippers more than 20 years ago."  An excerpt:

A Black Louisiana man will spend the rest of his life in prison for stealing hedge clippers, after the Louisiana Supreme Court denied his request to have his sentence overturned last week.

Fair Wayne Bryant, 62, was convicted in 1997 on one count of attempted simple burglary. In his appeal to the Second Circuit Court of Louisiana in 2018, his attorney, Peggy Sullivan, wrote that Bryant "contends that his life sentence is unconstitutionally harsh and excessive."  
 
Last week, though, the state Supreme Court disagreed -- with five justices choosing to uphold the life sentence. The lone dissenter in the decision was Supreme Court Chief Justice Bernette Johnson, who wrote that "the sentence imposed is excessive and disproportionate to the offense the defendant committed."

From Fox News, "Disabled Iraq veteran faces five years in Alabama prison for legally prescribed medical marijuana." An excerpt:

By all accounts, Sean Worsley is a war hero. He earned a Purple Heart, along with a laundry list of additional military accolades, for clearing roadside bombs in Iraq. He also earned a lifetime of post-service ailments, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a traumatic brain injury (TBI). As a result of his injuries, Worsley was given a 100 percent disability rating from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. He treated the worst symptoms of both injuries with medical marijuana prescribed to him legally in Arizona.

Now, Worsley sits in an Alabama jail facing five years in the state’s notoriously violent prison system after admitting to an officer he was in possession of medical marijuana while driving through Alabama and a subsequent probation violation for missing a court date.

UPDATE: I now realize that the headline of this local version of the Fox story more clearly summarizes the ugly sentencing reality: "Black disabled veteran sentenced to spend 60 months in prison for medical marijuana."

August 6, 2020 in Examples of "over-punishment", Offender Characteristics, Offense Characteristics | Permalink | Comments (1)

Thursday, January 30, 2020

Rehearing petition (and guest post) in Mississippi Supreme Court case upholding 12-year prison term for mere possession of cell phone in jail

6a00d83451574769e2022ad3762ba2200c-320wiIn this post earlier this month, I noted a disheartening ruling by the Mississippi Supreme Court upholding 12-year prison term for mere possession of cell phone in jail.  Will Bardwell, an attorney in the Mississippi office of the Southern Poverty Law Center, last week sent me a copy of a motion for rehearing that he helped file in the case (which can be accessed below).  I asked Will if he might want to do a guest posting to go along with my posting of the motion, and here is what he sent my way:

On its edges, sentencing law can be a bit of a technical thicket — difficult to navigate for laymen, or even for practitioners who don’t often work in that field. But at its heart, sentencing law — and the constitutional demands under which it exists – embodies our society’s sense of fairness. Above all else, sentencing demands that punishment must fit the crime.

It is not news that a consensus has developed among Americans that our criminal justice system’s priorities must be recalibrated. Nor is it news that our laws have failed to keep pace with that consensus. Unfortunately, though, the human toll of that failure does continue to make news.

In early January, the Mississippi Supreme Court added another ignominious chapter to that story when it affirmed the 12-year prison sentence of my client, Willie Nash.  In 2017, Willie was arrested for a misdemeanor in Newton County, Mississippi. The county jail’s policy is to strip-search all arrestees, but when Willie arrived, the jail violated that policy — so the cell phone that a search would have uncovered remained with Willie.  Willie never lied about the phone or made any effort to conceal it.  And guards might never have discovered the phone if Willie had not offered it up and provided the passcode to unlock it.

For this, Willie was convicted of taking a cell phone into a jail — and sentenced to an astonishing 12 years in prison.  No fewer than 36 states punish cell phone possession in a correctional facility with no more than five years in prison.  If anyone in American history has ever gotten 12 years for doing what Willie did, then my partners and I at the Southern Poverty Law Center are unaware of it. 

When Willie’s sentencing judge announced that decision, he pointed to Willie’s two prior burglary convictions some two decades earlier and explained that, if prosecutors had indicted Willie as a habitual offender, then Willie could have received 15 years — “so I want you to consider yourself fortunate,” the judge said.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Mississippi Supreme Court’s affirmance of that sentence shocked the world: the decision made headlines as far as way as New Zealand. And you don’t need a law degree to be as alarmed by the Mississippi Supreme Court’s reasoning as by its result.

Like Willie’s sentencing court, the Mississippi Supreme Court rested its decision heavily on Willie’s prior convictions. It pointed out the sentencing judge’s reliance on “evidence of Nash’s criminal history;” and it distinguished authority favorable to Willie by explaining that “Nash’s prior felony convictions subjected him to fifteen years’ imprisonment, to be served day for day, had the State charged him as a habitual offender.”

Like Willie’s sentencing judge, the Mississippi Supreme Court seems to think that Willie should consider himself lucky. But I’ve been in a room with Willie. I’ve looked into his tired eyes, heard his quiet voice, and seen how his oversized prison uniform hangs over his thin, slumping frame.

Willie doesn’t feel lucky.  And the many Mississippians that I’ve spoken to, from the widest imaginable political perspectives, don’t think Willie is lucky.

In fairness, the Mississippi Supreme Court must view Willie’s case through a different lens than most people.  For most of us, the shock to our consciences has been enough for us to know that Willie’s punishment does not fit his actions. For the Mississippi Supreme Court, though, that question has been complicated by the United States Supreme Court’s contorted precedent concerning the Eighth Amendment’s proportionality requirement.

That the Eighth Amendment requires proportionality is no longer up for debate.  Aside from its existence, though, the Court’s decisions over the past 40 years have left nearly every other detail of the proportionality requirement unsettled.  Seemingly irreconcilable decisions have been left unreconciled, and ambiguities have been left unclarified. In recent years, the Court has seemed content to keep its silence on the issue, perhaps hoping that lower courts will clarify what it has muddled.

But the outcome in lower courts has been predictably chaotic.  These unanswered questions are not merely fodder for academic debate.  There are human beings languishing in prison because of this case law jumble. Willie is one of them.

In particular, one unanswered question lies at the heart of Willie’s case: the Mississippi courts’ use of his prior convictions to justify his sentence.  Despite his two burglary convictions nearly 20 years ago, Willie was not charged as a habitual offender.  Mississippi’s courts relied on those convictions anyway -- and urged him to “consider yourself fortunate.”

But none of the United States Supreme Court’s proportionality decisions hold that prior convictions contribute to a crime’s gravity when the defendant was not charged as a recidivist.  In Ewing v. California, the Court insisted that “weighing the gravity of Ewing’s offense” required it to “place on the scales not only his current felony, but also his long history of felony recidivism.” But Ewing had been sentenced under California’s “three strikes” law. Likewise, the defendants in Rummel v. Estelle and Lockyer v. Andrade – both of whose challenges to their life sentences failed – were sentenced under habitual offender statutes.

But Willie wasn’t charged as a habitual offender. And if Mississippi courts wanted to sentence him like a habitual offender, then prosecutors should have charged him as a habitual offender.  But they didn’t.

Not surprisingly, lower courts have taken this unworked detail in different directions.  In 2016, for example, the South Dakota Supreme Court held that “[f]or purposes of challenging the constitutionality of a sentence in a noncapital case, it appears that a defendant’s criminal history is only relevant when the sentence is enhanced under recidivism statutes.”  That court is not alone in its view. Obviously, Willie’s case illustrates that the Mississippi Supreme Court has reached the opposite result; neither is it alone.

I’m hopeful that the Mississippi Supreme Court will correct the injustice of Willie’s case [based on the rehearing motion below] without the need to petition the United States Supreme Court.  Willie’s case certainly does not rely on novel legal theories; even under the proportionality requirement’s framework as unsettled as it is, Willie’s sentence is grossly disproportionate.  If, instead of taking a cell phone into jail, Willie instead had committed second-degree arson or poisoned someone in an effort to kill them, Mississippi law would have imposed a shorter sentence than the one he is serving today.  A 12-year sentence for something so much more innocuous simply doesn’t pass the straight-face test.

But even if the Mississippi Supreme Court reconsiders Willie’s case, our society’s sense of basic fairness cries out for the United States Supreme Court to begin cleaning up the mess that its predecessors have made of the proportionality doctrine.  The cost of that confusion is human lives like Willie’s.  And that cost is growing.

Download Nash v State - Motion for Rehearing (filed)

Prior related post:

January 30, 2020 in Examples of "over-punishment", Offender Characteristics, Offense Characteristics, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Scope of Imprisonment, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Contesting LWOP in Louisiana for selling a joint thanks to a a "quad bill" and the trial penalty

I just came across this press piece, headlined "Louisiana Supreme Court to review life sentence over $30 marijuana sale at Tulane hearing," on a notable extreme state sentencing case just argued before a state high court. The details are as troubling as headline:

The weight of marijuana in a typical joint is what Derek Harris handed an undercover agent who knocked on his door in Abbeville in 2008.  Harris, a military veteran, handed the agent .69 grams of the drug and pocketed $30 in return.  Four years later, a judge found Harris guilty of marijuana distribution, a Vermilion Parish prosecutor invoked the state’s habitual-offender law, and the judge sentenced Harris to life in prison with no chance at parole as a four-time loser.

Harris’ prior convictions dated back to 1991, 17 years before that minor pot bust, and a conviction for dealing cocaine, according to court filings. He was convicted of simple robbery in 1993 and again in 1994. Three years before the ill-fated marijuana sale, in 2005, Harris was convicted again, on a charge of theft under $500.

If the life sentence seemed to some to be excessive — though 15th Judicial District Judge Durwood Conque claimed he had no choice after prosecutors unleashed a “quad bill” on Harris — his trial attorney skipped some key legal steps to seek a lower one and keep the issue alive for an appeal [and] the Louisiana Supreme Court hear[d] oral arguments over whether it's too late for Harris to claim his lawyer botched his sentencing....

Harris’ attorneys are asking the Supreme Court to upend a 24-year-old decision in which the high court ruled that a challenge to a sentence as being excessive can’t be raised after a defendant’s direct appeals have run out. Harris’ attorneys with the New Orleans-based Promise of Justice Initiative argue that he should be allowed to go back and prove his attorney failed him, in spite of that blanket rule.

District Attorney Keith Stutes’ office argues that the Supreme Court has been clear, and that Harris’ attorneys are barking up the wrong legal tree. Conque, the trial judge, told Harris at his initial sentencing that he didn’t think a 30-year maximum sentence was warranted. Instead, he handed Harris 15 years. But after prosecutors invoked the habitual-offender law, Conque said his hands were tied....

It appears prosecutors initially offered Harris a seven-year sentence, but he wanted three years, and the offers got worse for him from there. Harris has claimed he never got the offer. Stutes' office argues that the number doesn't matter, in the end. Any number would have netted life for Harris under the habitual-offender law, and a decision on whether to invoke that is left solely to the prosecutor's discretion.

Prosecutors outside of the New Orleans area rarely wheel out the habitual-offender law to jack up a prison sentence, state data collected by the Pew Charitable Trusts show. But when they do, it is often to follow through on a pre-trial threat aimed at pushing a defendant to take a guilty plea rather than go to trial.

One of three state 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal jurists on a panel that earlier rejected Harris’ appeal offered a blistering dissent. Judge Sylvia Cooks cited Harris’ service as a veteran of Operation Desert Storm and his drug addiction while calling his life sentence “shocking to my conscience.”  The state’s high court has set a high bar in deciding when a sentence is unconstitutionally severe. It reserves those decisions for punishment that “shocks the conscience“ amounting to “nothing more than the purposeful imposition of pain and suffering grossly disproportionate to the severity of the crime.”

In one notable case, the high court refused to lower a 13-year sentence handed to Bernard Noble, a New Orleans man caught with the equivalent of a few joints of marijuana. The court found that Noble’s case wasn’t shocking enough to overrule the Legislature’s tough sentencing laws at the time. Harris’ sentence, though, means he'll die in prison.

I find it so sad that even with all the positive sentencing reform momentum in recent years, there are still so many of these extreme sentencing stories of LWOP for the most minor of marijuana offenses or, as noted here, 12 years for harmlessly having a cell phone when booked into jail. As I said before, I fear it is still way too routine for way too many judges and prosecutors to be comfortable with sending people off to live in cages for years and decades without deep reflection on just what these sentences really mean for the defendant and what they say about American as a nation. Sigh.

January 28, 2020 in Examples of "over-punishment", Pot Prohibition Issues, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sunday, January 12, 2020

Mississippi Supreme Court upholds 12-year prison term for mere possession of cell phone in jail

If anyone is looking for a recent example of why and how America persistently earns its status as incarceration nation, look no further than this local article, headlined "Miss. Supreme Court upholds 12-year sentence of man convicted for having cellphone in jail."   Here are the ugly details:

The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed the 12-year sentence of a man convicted for having a cellphone in jail on Thursday.

Willie Nash was originally booked in the Newton County Jail for a misdemeanor charge when he asked a jailer to charge his smartphone. The jailer confiscated the phone and brought it to the sheriff’s deputy in charge....

A jury convicted Nash of possessing the cellphone in a correctional facility, a felony that carries three to 15 years in prison.  On Aug. 23, 2018, a judge sentenced Nash to 12 years in prison, telling Nash to “consider himself fortunate” for not being charged as a habitual offender based on his prior burglary convictions. Nash was also fined $5,000....

On appeal, Nash challenged the sentence, arguing a 12-year sentence was “grossly disproportionate to his crime” and in violation of the Eighth Amendment....  As for the proportionality of the sentence, the court ruled that while “obviously harsh," the sentence was not grossly disproportionate, and the court affirmed the conviction and sentence.

In a separate written opinion, Presiding Justice Leslie D. King agreed the court reached the correct ruling based on case law, but wrote of his concern that the case as a whole “seems to demonstrate a failure of our criminal justice system on multiple levels.”

King said it is probable that the Newton County Jail’s booking procedure was not followed in Nash’s case, allowing him to enter the jail with his phone.  King also noted that Nash’s behavior indicated that he was not aware that inmates could not bring phones into the correctional facility.  Justice King pointed out that Nash voluntarily showed the jailer his phone when asking him to charge it, suggesting that he was not told during booking that he was not allowed to keep his phone.

King also noted that Nash’s criminal history reveals a change in behavior, with his last conviction of burglary being in 2001, which he was sentenced to seven years in prison for.  For eight to 10 years, King said Nash had stayed out of trouble with the law. He also has a wife and three children who depend on him. Based on the nature of his crime, King said the judge should have used his discretion to consider a lesser sentence....

According to the Mississippi Department of Corrections website, Nash’s tentative release date is Feb. 2, 2029.

The full Mississippi Supreme Court opinion in this case is available at this link, and it serves to highlight how easy it is to use extreme and cruel punishments to justify more extreme and cruel punishments.  Because the defendant here is apparently parole eligible in as few as three years, the trial judge was not off-base when telling him that he was lucky not to be facing a true 15-year mandatory minimum under the state's habitual offender law. And the Supreme Court of Mississippi was able to cite to other cases of defendants getting even harsher sentences(!) for mere cell phone possession to conclude that this harsh sentence was not constitutionally problematic.

With the scale of punishments set so severely for so long in so many places throughout our country, I fear it has become almost routine for many judges and prosecutors to send people off to live in cages for years and years without deep reflection on just what these sentences really mean for the defendant and what they say about American as a nation.  I suspect that, if told in general terms that a citizen had been sent to prison for more than a decade for having a cell phone in the wrong place, most of us would think that this story was coming from China or Russia or some other country with a poor human rights record.  But, in fact, it is just another day in the United States, the supposed land of the free. Sigh.

January 12, 2020 in Examples of "over-punishment", Offender Characteristics, Offense Characteristics, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (3)

Thursday, September 12, 2019

Jailed for unpaid fines almost a decade after being imprisoned for years for $31 pot sale

This new Washington Post article reminded me of a name and an ugly case from nearly a decade ago.  As the article explains, the matter has not gotten any less depressing.  The headline provides the essentials: "She got 12 years for $31 of pot. Years after her parole, she was jailed for the unpaid court fees."  Here are the dispiriting details:

Sitting in her jail cell this week, Patricia Spottedcrow couldn’t imagine where she was going to get the money she needed for her release.  In 2010, the young Oklahoma mother, who had been caught selling $31 worth of marijuana to a police informant after financial troubles caused her to lose her home, was sentenced to 12 years in prison.  It was her first-ever offense, and the lengthy sentence drew national attention, sparking a movement that led to her early release.

But once she was home free, Spottedcrow still owed thousands in court fees that she struggled to pay, since her felony conviction made it difficult to find a job.  Notices about overdue payments piled up, with late fees accumulating on top of the original fines.  On Monday, the 34-year-old was arrested on a bench warrant that required her to stay in jail until she could come up with $1,139.90 in overdue fees, which she didn’t have. Nearly a decade after her initial arrest, she was still ensnarled in the criminal justice system, and had no idea when she would see her kids again....

Back in 2011, Spottedcrow became an unwitting poster child for criminal justice reform when the Tulsa World featured her in a series about women incarcerated in Oklahoma. Then 25, she had just entered prison for the first time, and didn’t expect to be reunited with her young children until they were teenagers.

At the time of her arrest, Spottedcrow was unemployed and without a permanent home, the paper reported. She was staying at her mother’s house in the small town of Kingfisher, Okla., when a police informant showed up and bought an $11 bag of marijuana.  Two weeks later, he returned to buy another $20 worth of the drug from Spottedcrow.  Both mother and daughter were charged with distribution of a controlled substance, and, because Spottedcrow’s children were at home when the transaction took place, possession of a dangerous substance in the presence of a minor....

The two women both were offered plea deals that would have netted them only two years in prison, the World reported, but Spottedcrow didn’t want her 50-year-old mother, who has health issues, incarcerated.  Because neither had a prior criminal record and they had sold only a small amount of pot, they took their chances and pleaded guilty without negotiating a sentencing agreement, assuming they would be granted probation.

Instead, the judge sentenced Spottedcrow to 10 years in prison for the distribution charge, plus another two years for possession. Her mother received a 30-year suspended sentence so that she could take care of the children.  Kingfisher County Associate District Judge Susie Pritchett, who retired not long afterward, told the World she thought the sentence was lenient.  The mother-daughter pair had been behind “an extensive operation,” she claimed, adding, “It was a way of life for them.”

Spottedcrow said that wasn’t true.  “I’ve never been in trouble, and this is a real eye-opener,” she told the paper at the start of her prison stint.  “My lifestyle is not like this. I’m not coming back. I’m going to get out of here, be with my kids and live my life.”

After the World’s story published in 2011, supporters rallied around Spottedcrow’s cause, urging officials to reconsider her punishment.  At the time, Oklahoma had the highest per capita rate of female incarceration in the country, a title it continues to hold today.  Advocates contended that lengthy sentences like hers were part of the problem, and questioned whether racial bias could have played a role — Spottedcrow is part Native American and part African American.

That same year, a different judge reviewed Spottedcrow’s sentence and agreed to shave off four years.  Then, in 2012, then-Gov. Mary Fallin (R) approved her parole.  Spottedcrow got home in time to surprise her kids when they stepped off the school bus.  The American Civil Liberties Union described her release as a “bittersweet victory,” noting that serving only two years of a 12-year sentence was highly unusual, but the penalty that she received for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense wasn’t out of the ordinary for Oklahoma.

It also wasn’t the end of her troubles.  In 2017, five years after Spottedcrow was released from prison, Ginnie Graham, a columnist for the World, checked into see how she was doing.  The picture that she painted was dispiriting: Spottedcrow’s growing family was living in a motel off the interstate because having a felony drug conviction on her record made it virtually impossible for her to find housing, and she hadn’t been able to find work, either. “I’ve never had Section 8 or HUD, but I need it now,” she said. “I even called my (Cheyenne and Arapahoe) tribe to help, and they didn’t. I called the shelters, and they don’t take large families.”

That same year, at a forum on criminal justice reform, Spottedcrow explained that she couldn’t go back to working in nursing homes like she had done before her arrest because of her felony conviction.  And in a small town like Kingfisher, every other potential employer already knew about her legal woes....

While Spottedcrow struggled to care for her six children, the Kingfisher County Court Clerk’s Office mailed out more than a dozen notices saying she had fallen behind on her payments.  Each letter meant that the court had tacked on another $10 fine, and that another $80 would be added on top of that if the office didn’t get the money within 10 days.  When Spottedcrow first reported to prison, she owed $2,740 in fines.  After her release, she made payments at least every other month according to the World.  But it barely made an impact on her ballooning debt: When she was arrested this week, she owed $3,569.76....

Spottedcrow’s new arrest on Monday brought renewed attention to her nearly decade-old court case. KFOR morning news anchor Ali Meyer, who detailed the saga in a widely shared Twitter thread, noted that cannabis has been a booming industry in Oklahoma ever since the state legalized medical marijuana in 2018, and left it up to doctors to determine who qualified.

On Tuesday afternoon, Meyer posted the number for the Kingfisher County Court Clerk’s Office, which would allow anyone to make payments on Spottedcrow’s behalf.  By Wednesday, seven anonymous supporters had covered not just the $1,139.90 that she needed to get out of jail, but her entire $3,569.76 outstanding balance, the station reported.

Somewhere, Franz Kafka is smiling.

Prior posts on Spottedcrow's case:

September 12, 2019 in Examples of "over-punishment", Offense Characteristics, Pot Prohibition Issues, Race, Class, and Gender | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sunday, February 10, 2019

Doesn't the FIRST STEP Act add juice to Eighth Amendment challenge to extreme stacked 924(c) sentence in Rivera-Ruperto?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by the interesting intersection of an important sentencing reform in the new FIRST STEP Act and an important Eighth Amendment case that I have had my eye on for some time  finally getting before the Supreme Court.  Let me explain, starting with the FIRST STEP provision.

For those particularly concerned about extreme mandatory minimum sentences, Section 403 of the FIRST STEP Act is a heartening overdue change to federal sentencing law.  This provision, described as a "clarification of Section 924(c)," now eliminates the required "stacking" of 25-year mandatory minimums for using a firearm during other crimes for those offenders without a prior record convicted of multiple 924(c) counts at the same time.  In other words, the extreme 25-year recidivism enhancement of 924(c) is now to apply only to actual recidivists.

The prior requirement of "stacking" 924(c) counts led to Weldon Angelos' extreme 55-year mandatory-minimum sentence for selling marijuana with his personal guns nearby (which is discussed at length here by Paul Cassell, the judge forced to impose the sentence).  US Sentencing Commission data here and here shows that well over 100 offenders each year have been subject to convictions for multiple 924(c) counts.  Just a few of many extreme 924(c) stacked sentences are noted in prior posts here and here and here and here.  Sadly, Congress did not make Section 403 of the FIRST STEP Act retroactive, and thus defendants previously subject to these extreme stacked sentences will get no direct relief from the new Act.

But there is one particular defendant with a particularly extreme stacked 924(c) sentence that I am hoping might get some indirect benefit from the new law in his on-going Eighth Amendment litigation.  Wendell Rivera–Ruperto, who was paid in 2010 by undercover FBI informants to serve as "armed security" at six faux drug deals, received a federal sentence of nearly 162 years, of which 130 years were for his six stacked convictions under 924(c).  As discussed here a year ago, in a terrific First Circuit opinion denying rehearing en banc in United States v. Rivera-Ruperto, No. 12-2364 (1st Cir. Feb 27, 2018) (available here), Judge David Barron lamented how judges "have no choice but to approve mandatory 'forever' sentences ... so long as they can hypothesize a rational reason for the legislature to have thought that the underlying criminal conduct was as serious as the large quantity drug possession at issue in Harmelin."  In so doing, Judge Barron highlights many questionable elements of the Harmelin ruling and, writing on behalf of the entire First Circuit, suggests SCOTUS take up Rivera–Ruperto to reconsider the "three-decades old, three-Justice concurrence in Harmelin."

As of a few days ago, as revealed in this SCOTUS docket sheet, all the cert papers have been finally filled in Rivera–Ruperto, and the Justices will consider the case at their February 22 conference.  Notably, and not surprisingly, the feds now say in opposition to cert that passage of the FIRST STEP Act reduces the important of the case: "future defendants in petitioner's position will not be subject to mandatory consecutive sentences of at least 25 years [and the] question presented by his case therefore has diminishing significance."  But, as the title of this post is meant to suggest, the fact that the Eighth Amendment is supposed to take guidance from an "evolving standards of decency" and be responsive to a "national consensus" against a sentence, I strongly believe the enactment of the FIRST STEP Act primarily operates to make Wendell Rivera–Ruperto's constitutional claim even more substantively potent. 

As I explained here, I see Justice Anthony Kennedy's departure as creating a new window of opportunity for advocates to urge overturning (or cutting back) the terrible Eighth Amendment precedent that is Harmelin.  Thus, I am rooting super hard for the Justices to grant cert in Rivera–Ruperto.   I am fearful the Court will remain fearful of taking on these issues and thus leave the (now-even-stronger) Eighth Amendment claim in this case to be considered anew through an inevitable 2255 motion.  Still, my fingers are crossed to support the cert chances of potentially the biggest non-capital Eighth Amendment case in a generation.

A few prior related posts:

February 10, 2019 in Drug Offense Sentencing, Examples of "over-punishment", FIRST STEP Act and its implementation, Gun policy and sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (0)

Friday, October 19, 2018

Rastafarian musician gets eight-year sentence after being found with 2.89 pounds of marijuana in car

I sometimes see reporters and others suggest that personal marijuana possession and use has already become essentially de facto legal throughout the country.  This story of a sentencing in Mississippi this week, headlined "Jamaican-born musician sentenced to 8 years in prison for marijuana he legally obtained," puts the lie to this suggestion. Here are the details:

A Jamaican-born musician convicted of drug trafficking in Madison County for marijuana he said he obtained legally in Oregon for his personal use received an eight-year prison sentence without parole Monday. Madison County Circuit Judge William Chapman said Patrick Beadle, 46, of Oregon, faced a maximum 40 years in prison after a jury convicted him in July under the state's drug trafficking law.

Beadle, who performs under the name BlackFire, was charged with drug trafficking, although he said the marijuana he had with him was for his personal use and was obtained legally in Oregon where medical marijuana was legalized in 1998. Oregon voters approved recreational use of marijuana in 2014. Prosecutors admitted there was no evidence to prove Beadle was trafficking in drugs other than the amount of marijuana, 2.89 pounds, and that it was concealed in his vehicle.

Chapman departed from giving Beadle the 10 to 40 years under the drug trafficking law, but he wouldn't reduce it to simple possession because he said the jury convicted Beadle under the drug trafficking law. Chapman said Beadle would have to serve the eight year sentence day-for-day since the law doesn't allow for parole or probation....

Patrick Beadle said he has a medical marijuana card from Oregon to treat chronic pain in both knees where cartilage has worn down from his years of playing college basketball. Marijuana use is also common among Rastafarians.

Beadle said he was traveling March 8, 2017, southbound on I-55 after entering Madison County and at about 10 a.m., he was pulled over on I-55 near Canton by a Madison County deputy for the alleged traffic violation of crossing over the fog line, the painted line on the side of a roadway. He disputes the deputy's assertion that he crossed over the fog line. He said his dreadlocks and out-of-state auto tag made him a target for racial profiling....

In the Beadle case, then-Deputy Joseph Mangino found no large sums of money, drug paraphernalia or weight measuring scale to substantiate the trafficking charge. "This is not the typical defendant you see. "He is not a drug dealer," said Randy Harris, who was Beadle's trial attorney.

This lengthy (pre-sentencing) article from another local paper provides a few more details and some context about this disconcerting case:

Beadle was southbound on I-55 and had crossed from Yazoo into Madison County. A few seconds later, a Madison County sheriff’s deputy pulled him over.  A search of Beadle’s car revealed 2.8 pounds of marijuana.

Following a trial in July, a jury took 25 minutes to find him guilty of charges that could land him in prison for up to 40 years without parole.  Beadle, who is African American, and his allies say the fact that he was pulled over is a clear case of racial profiling while law enforcement officials maintain that a traffic violation led to the stop....

In Madison County, drug dispositions between 2013 and 2017 -- that is, drug charges settled in those years -- neared 1,000, based on data provided by the Administrative Office of Courts. Of those total charges, only two people were found guilty by a jury as Beadle was, Mississippi Today found.  Out of all the drug dispositions, about three in five were faced by African Americans.

That discrepancy goes up when looking only at guilty pleas.  The majority of defendants pled guilty to over 600 charges in Madison County during that timeframe. About 66 percent of those individuals were black -- though black people make up only 38 percent of the county’s population -- while 32 percent were white.

October 19, 2018 in Drug Offense Sentencing, Examples of "over-punishment", Offender Characteristics, Offense Characteristics, Pot Prohibition Issues, Race, Class, and Gender | Permalink | Comments (5)

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

"The Trial Penalty: The Sixth Amendment Right To Trial on the Verge of Extinction and How To Save It"

The title of this post is the title of this extraordinary big new report released today by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Here is an overview of the 84-page report from the NACDL's website:

The ‘trial penalty’ refers to the substantial difference between the sentence offered in a plea offer prior to trial versus the sentence a defendant receives after trial. This penalty is now so severe and pervasive that it has virtually eliminated the constitutional right to a trial.  To avoid the penalty, accused persons must surrender many other fundamental rights which are essential to a fair justice system

This report is the product of more than two years of careful research and deliberation. In it, NACDL examines sentencing and other data underlying the fact that, after a 50 year decline, fewer than 3% of federal criminal cases result in a trial. With more than 97% of criminal cases being resolved by plea in a constitutional system predicated upon the Sixth Amendment right to a trial, the fact of imbalance and injustice in the system is self-evident.  The report identifies and exposes the underlying causes of the decline of the federal criminal trial and puts forth meaningful, achievable principles and recommendations to address this crisis. With its release, NACDL intends to launch a sustained effort to rein in the abuse of the trial penalty throughout federal and state criminal justice systems.  The Trial Penalty report, and the principles and recommendations it puts forward, seeks to save the right to a trial from extinction.

Former US District Judge John Gleeson authored a thoughtful Foreword to the report, and here are excerpts that also provide a partial account of what follows:

This report is a major contribution to the discussion of one of the most important issues in criminal justice today: the vanishing trial.  Once the centerpiece of our criminal justice ecosystem, the trial is now spotted so infrequently that if we don’t do something to bring it back, we will need to rethink many other features of our system that contribute to fair and just results only when trials occur in meaningful numbers.

The first task in solving a problem is identifying its causes, and this report nails that step.  Mandatory minimum sentencing provisions have played an important role in reducing our trial rate from more than 20% thirty years ago to 3% today.  Instead of using those blunt instruments for their intended purpose — to impose harsher punishments on a select group of the most culpable defendants — the Department of Justice got in the habit long ago of using them broadly to strong-arm guilty pleas, and to punish those who have the temerity to exercise their right to trial.  The Sentencing Guidelines also play an important role, providing excessively harsh sentencing ranges that frame plea discussions when mandatory sentences do not.  Finally, the report correctly finds that federal sentencing judges are complicit as well.  In too many cases, excessive trial penalties are the result of judges having internalized a cultural norm that when defendants “roll the dice” by “demanding” a trial, they either win big or lose big.  The same judges who will go along with a plea bargain that compromises a severe Guidelines range are too reticent to stray very far from the sentencing range after trial.

The report’s principles and recommendations will stimulate some much-needed discussion.  Today’s excessive trial penalties, it concludes, undermine the integrity of our criminal justice system.  Putting the government to its proof is a constitutional right, enshrined in the Sixth Amendment; no one should be required to gamble with years and often decades of their liberty to exercise it.  The report properly raises the “innocence problem,” that is, the fact that prosecutors have become so empowered to enlarge the delta between the sentencing outcome if the defendant pleads guilty and the outcome if he goes to trial and loses that even innocent defendants now plead guilty.  But there’s an even larger hypocrisy problem.  Our Constitution claims to protect the guilty as well, affording them a presumption of innocence and protecting them from punishment unless the government can prove them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  A system characterized by extravagant trial penalties produces guilty pleas in cases where the government cannot satisfy that burden, hollowing out those protections and producing effects no less pernicious than innocents pleading guilty.

The report’s recommendations range from the sweeping (ban those mandatory minimums) to the technical (eliminate the motion requirement for the third “acceptance” point), and include suggested modifications to the “relevant conduct” principle at the heart of the Guidelines, pre-plea disclosure requirements, “second looks” at lengthy sentences, and judicial oversight of plea discussions.  A particularly attractive recommendation would require judges sentencing a defendant who went to trial to pay greater attention to the sentences imposed on co-defendants who pled guilty; few things place today’s excessive trial penalty in sharper relief.

There is no such thing as a perfect criminal justice system. But a healthy one is constantly introspective, never complacent, always searching for injustices within and determined to address them.  The sentencing reform movement a generation ago disempowered judges and empowered prosecutors.  Federal prosecutors have used that power to make the trial penalty too severe, and the dramatic diminution in the federal trial rate is the result.  Our system is too opaque and too severe, and everyone in it — judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys — is losing the edge that trials once gave them.  Most important of all, a system without a critical mass of trials cannot deliver on our constitutional promises. Here’s hoping that this report will help us correct this problem before it is too late.

July 10, 2018 in Examples of "over-punishment", Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (6)

Friday, July 06, 2018

Notable District Judge struggles against mandatory minimums, especially stacked gun charges

This new Politico article, headlined "Manafort judge emerges as skeptic of long mandatory minimum sentences," reports on a notable federal judge expressing notable concerns with mandatory minimums.  Here are excerpts:

The judge overseeing former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's looming trial on tax and bank fraud charges is known as a tough jurist, often snapping at attorneys for ignoring his directions and rebuking defendants he views as insufficiently contrite.  But, in recent years, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis has begun to direct his public ire at an unusual target for a Reagan-appointed judge: laws that impose lengthy mandatory minimum sentences judges have no authority to waive or reduce.

Ellis has complained directly to Congress about what he's called the "excessive" sentences required for some offenders. He's also publicly lamented the situation, as he did recently during a drug dealer's sentencing that took place in an Alexandria, Virginia courtroom packed with national media, high-powered prosecutors and others awaiting a key hearing in the case against Manafort.

"This situation presents me with something I have no discretion to change and the only thing I can do is express my displeasure," Ellis said last week as he sentenced Frederick Turner, 37, to a mandatory minimum of 40 years in prison for dealing methamphetamine.  "I chafe a bit at that, but I follow the law. If I thought it was blatantly immoral, I'd have to resign. It's wrong, but not immoral."  Ellis told Turner's lawyer that any relief for his client lies with Congress. "I think you're knocking on the wrong door for a remedy. The remedy is across the river," the judge said.

However, in another case, the 78-year-old judge is going even further.  In April, confronted by a 28-year-old armed robbery convict facing a mandatory minimum 82-year sentence, Ellis' frustration grew so intense that he balked at imposing what he called a "very severe" sentence.  Instead, the judge recruited a high-powered law firm to scour the law in search of some way to avoid imposing what is effectively a life sentence on Lamont Gaines, who was convicted of a string of robberies of 7-11 stores and a check-cashing business.

The judge appointed Daniel Suleiman, a former aide to Attorney General Eric Holder, to come up with any argument that might help Gaines win a more lenient sentence. Suleiman, a partner at Covington & Burling, set on one possibility: a Supreme Court ruling in April that invalidated a law very similar to the one requiring the lengthy sentence for Gaines.  In a brief filed last month, Suleiman argued that the April decision has "direct application" to Gaines' case and "would permit this Court not to sentence Gaines to 82 years."

Federal prosecutors rejected that argument last week, insisting that the 82-year sentence is still required in the case. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Alexander Blanchard and Rebeca Bellows filed a brief urging Ellis to consider Gaines "real-world conduct" and reminding the judge that the defendant "endangered...victims' lives and instilled them with the fear they would be physically harmed."  Ellis has yet to signal whether he'll buy into the new argument to cut down the potential sentence in Gaines' case.

Ellis' current preoccupation with federal sentencing laws is not that the mandatory minimums for specific crimes are too harsh, but that in cases involving multiple charges the result can be unjust, resulting in decades of extra incarceration for a defendant who chooses to go to trial rather than plead guilty.  While prosecutors often settle for a guilty plea to a single serious charge, carrying, say, a 10-year minimum sentence, the government will pursue several such charges when a defendant goes to trial.  Federal law typically requires that sentences for crimes involving use of a gun run consecutively, a phenomenon often referred to as "stacking."...

In 2015, Ellis wrote to Congress about the "stacking" practice, calling it "grossly excessive and unjust." He said the law was supposed to cover felons who re-offended after leaving prison, but is being applied to those "who never had the chance to learn a lesson from the sentence imposed for the first conviction."

While efforts have been underway in Congress for years to ratchet back some of the mandatory sentences, the Trump administration's policy on the issue has been confusing. White House officials, including President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, have shown interest in criminal justice reform proposals.  However, Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent a letter to the Senate in February slamming a bipartisan bill that would limit the application of mandatory minimum sentences, including by reining in "stacking" of charges.  Sessions said the measure was ill-advised at a time when the U.S. is struggling with an epidemic of opioid abuse and deaths....

Back in 2015, though, Sessions said he believed changes to "stacking" were called for.  "I think the stacking issue is a problem....I would support reform on the stacking provisions," the Alabama senator said at a Judiciary Committee session on a similar reform bill that never passed....

Criminal justice reform advocates say Congress needs to step in and that laments like the one from Ellis last week underscore the urgency of the issue.  "The federal gun stacking law isn’t tough. It’s stupid. It’s irrational.  That’s why even conservative judges like Judge Ellis are urging Congress to fix it," said Kevin Ring of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. "It's a no-brainer."

July 6, 2018 in Examples of "over-punishment", Gun policy and sentencing, Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (4)

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

As Kim Kardashian heads to White House, I hope she advocates for many federal offenders excessively sentenced

Donald-Trump-Body-Shame-Kim-KardashianIn this post earlier this month I asked, "Might Kim Kardashian West actually convince Prez Trump to grant clemency to federal drug offender?" The post was prompted by the news that "Kim Kardashian West and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner have spoken over the phone about a possible presidential pardon for Alice Marie Johnson, a 62-year-old great-grandmother serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense."  This Vanity Fair article now reports that Kimme (who still has more Twitter followers than Prez Trump) is now headed to the White House to speak in person with Kushner and Prez Trump about a clemency grant.  Here are the details:

After months of back-channel talks between Kim Kardashian and Jared Kushner, the high priestess of reality television is coming to the White House.  By late afternoon on Wednesday, Secret Service agents will wave Kardashian and her attorney through the southwest appointment gate to the West Wing, where they will meet Kushner to discuss prison reform before he walks with them to sit down with President Donald Trump, likely in the Oval Office, along with White House counsel.  According to a person familiar with the meeting, Kardashian plans to ask Trump to pardon a woman serving a life sentence without parole for a first-time drug offense.  (White House staffers have joked about who will get to accompany her to the West Wing, and what they should wear for the occasion. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)...

Kardashian, a more recent prison reform evangelist, appears to be approaching the White House meeting with equal seriousness.  She will not be bringing the camera crew for her reality show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, nor will she bring a publicist or her sisters, according to the person familiar with the situation.  (Her husband, Kanye West, who recently tweeted a photo of his red Make America Great Again hat, will not be present either, though there have been talks about him making a White House appearance of his own at a later, to-be-determined date.)  Instead, Kardashian hopes to make a legal argument to President Trump for why he should pardon Alice Johnson, a 62-year-old great-grandmother serving a life sentence without parole for a first-time drug offense.  More than 21 years after Johnson went to prison, Kardashian came across Johnson’s story on Twitter earlier this year and reached out to Ivanka, who connected her to Kushner, according to the source. In an interview earlier this month, Kardashian said that, if given the opportunity, she would “explain to [Trump] that, just like everybody else, we can make choices in our lives that we’re not proud of and that we don’t think through all the way.”...

The Kushner-Kardashian summit marks something of a turning point for the First Son-in-Law. It will be Kushner’s first major act since he was granted a permanent, top-level security clearance last week, after more than a year of negative headlines about why his clearance had been delayed and then downgraded. Among White House tea-leaf readers, the news was received as evidence that perhaps Kushner’s legal exposure in Robert Mueller’s investigation might not be as severe as many had believed it to be, and gave credence to the idea that his standing in the West Wing might be somewhat restored. Those in Ivanka and Kushner’s social orbit in New York joked with each other about how much money they stood to lose on various bets they had made over when Kushner would be indicted by Mueller.

But Kushner and Ivanka are not focused on the chatter, or their old friends in New York — at least not on Wednesday. They plan to host Kardashian for dinner at their home after her presidential sit-down, a private evening with the most famous sibling of America’s other First Family.

I somewhat doubt that Kimme will "make a legal argument to President Trump," but I am hoping somebody (perhaps even Jared Kushner) has thought to urge Ms. Kardashian to talk about excessively sentenced federal defendants beyond Alice Marie Johnson.  In a prior post, I noted that the CANDO website has a detailed list of Top 25 Women who deserve clemency from federal prison.  And the Life for Pot site has its own detailed lists of Nonviolent Inmates (over 62) Serving​ Life without Parole for Marijuanha and Inmates(under 62) Serving ​Sentences of Life without Parole in Federal Prison for Marijuana.  Notably, over the weekend, Ms. Kardashian did tweet here about the story of Matthew Charles (discussed in this recent post).  

It would be something for Kimme to get clemency relief for a single federal defendant; it would be something special is she could secure clemency relief for a number of individuals.  

Prior related post:

May 30, 2018 in Clemency and Pardons, Examples of "over-punishment", Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (6)

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

The Matthew Charles saga: another sad example of why complete abolition of parole was a mistake for federal sentencing

Matthew_charles-_march_2018_outside_wpln_1Last year I wrote an article in this special issue of the journal Federal Probation in which I explained why I believe the federal sentencing system has been disserved by the complete abolition of parole.  I have been thinking about that article in conjunction with the story that blew up my twitter feed over the weekend, the story of Matthew Charles described in this Nashville Public Radio piece.  Here are excerpts from a story that should be read in full:

It looks like a party — but Charles isn’t leaving for a big new job, or trying his luck in a new city. He’s going to prison. To finish out a 35-year term for selling crack to an informant in the 90’s.

Charles had already served 21 years before his sentence was cut short as a result of crack guideline changes passed by the Obama administration. But the U.S. Attorney’s office appealed his release on the grounds that Charles was legally considered a “career offender” due to a prior stint in state prison. They said the retroactive change in the law did not apply to him — and a Court of Appeals agreed.

“He’s rebuilt his life and now they’re coming to snatch it,” says "Wolf", who met Charles at a halfway house in 2016. They’ve volunteered together almost every Saturday since, long after fulfilling their community service requirements.  Wolf is talking to John Hairston, an old friend of Charles’ who flew in from Houston.  They’ve seen each other twice in over two decades — but for years, they wrote each other letters.  “The whole thing pisses me off to be honest,” he says, partly to Wolf and partly to the group of guests seated at another table across the lawn, who're listening intently and shaking their heads. “But it underscores how big a need there is for some reform in the justice system. I don’t care what they say.”

Since his release in 2016, Charles has held a steady job. He volunteers every Saturday, has reconnected with his family, and started a serious relationship. But really, his rehabilitation started years prior.

In prison, he took college classes and correspondence courses, he taught a GED program and became a law clerk. With his training, he helped other incarcerated men understand the judicial system long after their public defenders moved on to the next case.

Charles kept the secrets of those who were illiterate so they wouldn’t face ridicule or harassment — he read them letters from the court and drafted filings for them in the library. He organized bible studies and counseled newcomers. Two decades in federal insitututions — from maximum to low security — without a single disciplinary infraction.

Those that know Charles say they can’t understand why the justice system won’t recognize his rehabilitation. But the federal Bureau of Prisons did away with parole and most "good behavior" incentives years ago — even the best behaved must serve out the majority of their term.

Charles says the whole situation feels surreal. "I'm so tired” he says, after his hearing is postponed for the second time. “I am beyond tired. I always say to myself and others, ‘when is enough going to be enough?’”

Last time Charles faced time in prison, he was a drug dealer in his 20’s. At his sentencing in December 1996, a federal judge called Charles “a danger to society who should simply be off the streets.” Charles doesn’t dispute that. Until then, his entire life was embroiled in chaos....

Now in his 50’s, Charles has the support of friends and his community — and even the judge who ordered him back to prison. Everything is different. And yet, he says, nothing's changed.

On March 28, in a courtroom filled with more than two dozen of Charles’ friends, coworkers and loved ones, Judge Aleta Trauger called Charles’ case “sad” and commended his “exemplary rehabilitation.” But, she added that “her hands were tied” and reimposed his original sentence. She gave him 45 days to get his affairs in order.

The ruling from the Sixth Circuit explaining why Charles' sentencing reduction was improper is available at this link. It makes for an interesting read, as it notes that back in 1996 Charles' "recommended guidelines range [was] 360 months to life, but [the sentencing court] varied upward and imposed a 420-month sentence based on Charles’ background and misconduct." (I highlight this line because it itself reflects how the passage of time distorts reality: the original sentencing court did not quite "vary" upward because the concept of a "variance" did not exist prior to the 2005 Booker decision.) 

The initial decision to impose a prison sentence of 35 years rather than just 30 years on Charles may have made perfect sense circa 1996.  As explained by the Sixth Circuit, the district court had to consider "Charles’ many prior offenses: kidnapping a woman on two consecutive days 'for the purpose of terrorizing her'; burglarizing a home; and fleeing from a police interrogation, shooting a man in the head, and attempting to run off in the victim’s car."  But, obviously, Charles is now a much different man than the man he was when committing all these prior offenses.  But, just as obviously, modern federal sentencing law presents no way to give effect to changed realities because parole and other like mechanisms were vanquished through the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.

I am a strong supporter of the FIRST STEP Act in part because it includes some parole-like features to enable the early release of offenders who have demonstrated rehabilitation potential in various ways.  (In my Federal Probation article, I describe certain prison reform efforts by Congress as a kind of "parole light.")  But I continue to think the federal system would be even better served by considering a more general return of parole, at least for sentences of a decade or longer, or at least considering the kind of second-look resentencing provisions (allowing judicial modification after serving 15 years of prison sentence) that have been put forward in the new American Law Institute's revised Modern Penal Code sentencing provisions (discussed here and here by leading academics).

May 29, 2018 in Drug Offense Sentencing, Examples of "over-punishment", Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Sentences Reconsidered | Permalink | Comments (23)

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Meek Mill pledges to "shine a light" on criminal justice issues after Pennsylvania Supreme Court orders his release on bail

As reported in prior posts here and here from last November, rapper Meek Mill became the focus point for complaints about an unfair criminal justice system in Philadelphia after he received a seemingly extreme 2-4 year prison sentence for violating his probation from a 2008 gun and drug case.  Today, as reported in this USA Today article, he got some relief thanks to this short order from the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania:

Meek Mill is finally free. The rapper's lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, confirmed to USA TODAY that the rapper was freed on bail Tuesday after Pennsylvania's Supreme Court ordered a judge to release him while he appeals decade-old gun and drug convictions. "We are thrilled that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has directed Judge Brinkley to immediately issue an order releasing Meek on bail," said Tacopina in a statement. "As we have said all along, Meek was unjustly convicted and should not have spent a single day in jail."

Mill immediately vowed via social media to use his spotlight to "shine a light" on how America's criminal justice systems treat people of color.

The Philadelphia-born rapper (real name is Robert Rihmeek Williams) has been fighting for release from jail for the past five months. Mill was sentenced in November to two to four years in prison for violating probation on a roughly decade-old gun and drug case (a ruling opposed at the time by the Philadelphia district attorney and Meek's probation officer).

But in March, the most damning piece of evidence came to light when Philly District Attorney Larry Krasner admitted that Mill may have been unjustly convicted thanks to a cop who lied at his 2008 trial. Krasner said he would not oppose Mill's immediate release on bail pending appeal of his case. Because hundreds of other convictions have already been reversed based on information provided by a whistleblowing cop, "there is a strong showing of likelihood of (Mill's) conviction being reversed (in whole or in part)," Krasner said in a statement at the time. "Therefore the Commonwealth is unopposed to (Mill's) petition for bail."

Lawyers for Mill have accused Judge Genece Brinkley, who sentenced Mill 10 years ago and has subsequently tacked on 14 years of probation, of having "a personal vendetta" against him. An investigation by Rolling Stone said Brinkley "repeatedly torched his rap career each time he was poised for mega-stardom."

Since last fall, Mill and his lawyers have been trying and failing to persuade Brinkley to release him on bail while his case is appealed. On Tuesday, Mill's lawyer said the legal team was "also pleased that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has noted that Judge Brinkley may opt to remove herself from presiding over any further proceedings in Meek’s case in the interests of justice."

The district attorney's office also weighed in on Tuesday. "As our office has made clear in recent court filings, the Pa. Supreme Court’s decision on Meek Mill being released on bail is consistent with the position of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office," Ben Waxman, spokesperson for the DA, said in a statement to USA TODAY on Tuesday. Waxman noted that "just last week, our office agreed to withdraw prosecution from three lesser-known individuals whose cases were also tainted by potential police credibility issues by following the same procedures and analysis."...

A national movement has surged in Mill's defense, along with a hashtag: #FreeMeekMill. While in prison, Mill has received high-profile visits from New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Philadelphia 76ers co-owner Michael Rubin, Colin Kaepernick and Philadelphia's mayor. Kraft has subsequently called for reform of the criminal justice system.

On Tuesday, Mill tweeted his thanks, calling the past five months "a nightmare."... Mill continued: "To the Philly District Attorney’s office, I’m grateful for your commitment to justice. I understand that many people of color across the country don’t have that luxury and I plan to use my platform to shine a light on those issues. In the meantime, I plan to work closely with my legal team to overturn this unwarranted conviction and look forward to reuniting with my family and resuming my music career."

It is not uncommon for high-profile persons caught up in the criminal justice system to pledge a commitment to reform efforts upon their release, but it is a bit more uncommon to see these persons effectively follow-up on such a pledge (I am thinking of Martha Stewart here). In this case, I have an inkling Meek Mill will in fact be an important high-profile advocate for criminal justice reform.

Prior related posts:

April 24, 2018 in Celebrity sentencings, Examples of "over-punishment", Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (2)

Wednesday, April 04, 2018

The intricate realities of the drug war on full display in recent Seventh Circuit ruling on ineffective assistance of counsel in plea negotiations

A helpful reader alerted me to an interesting panel ruling by the Seventh Circuit handed down yesterday in Brock-Miller v. US, No. 16-3050 (7th Cir. April 3, 2018) (available here). The reader rightly noted that this opinion provides a thorough discussion of ineffective assistance of counsel in plea negotiations before ordering the district court to hold a hearing to explore claims of deficient performance by the defendant's lawyer.  I also found remarkable the case's accounting of how our federal drug laws can functionally operate to turn a seemingly minor crime into an offense carrying a 20-year mandatory minimum.

Specifically, as the panel opinion explains, LeeAnn Brock-Miller pleaded guilty, "pursuant to a plea agreement, to one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute heroin [resulting in] the agreed-upon sentence of ten years’ imprisonment."   What did she do to get this decade-long sentence?  According to the opinion, she was driving with three other men (one of whom it seems was her husband) on a highway headed to purchase 54 grams of heroin in Chicago; and according to sentencing testimony: "this car trip was an isolated incident, where she agreed to give the others a ride in exchange for one gram of heroin for herself.  Brock-Miller had an extensive criminal history that corroborated her claim that she did not sell drugs but was an addict who simply bought drugs for personal consumption."

Problematically for Brock-Miller, (1) that lone car trip allowed the Government to claim she was part of a drug conspiracy to traffic more than a kilo of heroin, triggering a possible 10-year mandatory minimum, and (2) she had a prior Indiana conviction for “Unlawful Possession of Syringes or Needles” which the Government claimed was a predicate drug felony under 851 that doubled her potential mandatory minimum term to 20 years in federal prison(!).  With the feds threatening this big hammer, the defendant here understandably was amenable to her defense counsel's advocacy to accept a plea deal that called for "only" a 10-year sentence.

But as the Seventh Circuit goes on to explain, the defendant's prior Indiana conviction was not actually a qualifying predicate to double her applicable mandatory minimum and she had a reasonable trial argument that not foreseeable was the "full kilogram of heroin charged in the indictment [for] someone who joined the conspiracy at the very end, in a deal involving only 54 grams."  In other words, the defendant had a winning legal argument that her mandatory minimum should not have been doubled, and a viable argument that she should not be subject to any mandatory minimum term at all.  Luckily for the defendant, a Seventh Circuit panel helped figure this out and the apparent ineffectiveness of her counsel may allow her to get resentenced in a more fitting way.

But I must conclude by stressing the dark cloud that overwhelms any Brock-Miller silver lining: the very possibility that "an addict who simply bought drugs for personal consumption" could be threatened with a 20-year mandatory minimum federal prison term reveals how dysfunctional and morally bankrupt our federal sentencing laws can be.  And I am quite certain that LeeAnn Brock-Miller is not the first person nor the last person to be chewed up by these laws; indeed, sadly, there are many thousands that have come before her, and likely many thousands still to come.

April 4, 2018 in Drug Offense Sentencing, Examples of "over-punishment", Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered | Permalink | Comments (21)

Friday, March 30, 2018

Texas woman sentenced to five years in prison (!?!?!) for voting illegally

When I first saw the basics of this state sentencing story out of Texas, reported under the headline "Tarrant County woman sentenced to five years in prison for illegally voting in 2016," I did not really believe it. Even after reading the details excerpted below, I am still not quite sure I believe that a judge decided it was just and effective to send someone to prison for half a decade for casting a vote illegally:

A judge sentenced a Rendon woman to five years in prison Wednesday for voting illegally in the 2016 presidential election while she was on supervised release from a 2011 fraud conviction. Crystal Mason, 43, waived her right to a jury trial and chose to have state District Judge Ruben Gonzalez assess her sentence.

J. Warren St. John, her defense attorney, said after the verdict was rendered that an appeal had already been filed and he is hopeful his client will soon be released on bond. "I find it amazing that the government feels she made this up," St. John told the court. "She was never told that she couldn't vote, and she voted in good faith. Why would she risk going back to prison for something that is not going to change her life?"...

During her testimony, Mason — who served just shy of three years in federal prison — told the court that she was assigned a provisional ballot after she arrived at her usual polling place and discovered that her name was not on the voter roll.

Gonzalez, who questioned Mason during her testimony, asked why she did not thoroughly read the documents she was given at the time. The form you are required to sign to get the provisional ballot is called an affidavit, Gonzales told Mason. "There's a legal connotation to that, right?" Gonzales asked.

Mason responded that she was never told by the federal court, her supervision officer, the election workers or U.S. District Judge John McBryde, the sentencing judge in her fraud case, that she would not be able to vote in elections until she finished serving her sentence, supervised release included. She also said she did not carefully read the form because an election official was helping her.

During cross-examination by Tarrant County prosecutor Matt Smid, Mason was reminded that she had jeopardized her freedom in the past by violating federal tax laws. Sacrificing her freedom to vote was not something she would knowingly do, Mason told Gonzales. "I inflated returns," Mason said. "I was trying to get more money back for my clients. I admitted that. I owned up to that. I took accountability for that. I would never do that again. I was happy enough to come home and see my daughter graduate. My son is about to graduate. Why would I jeopardize that? Not to vote. ... I didn't even want to go vote."

Mason was taken to jail after the conclusion of her trial on Wednesday as a chorus of small children leaving the courtroom waved and said, "Bye-bye, Big Mama."

Mason, who was known as Crystal Mason-Hobbs at the time, pleaded guilty to fraud in 2011. As part of her plea agreement, she was ordered to pay $4.2 million in restitution, according to court documents. The fraud charge stemmed from a tax preparation business Mason and her ex-husband, Sanford Taylor Hobbs III, owned and operated in Everman in which they submitted inflated tax refunds to the Internal Revenue Service on behalf of clients.

Mason later divorced her husband, who received a similar sentence after he also pleaded guilty. Mason testified Wednesday that she has remade herself since her release from prison, including getting a degree in a new field and getting a new job.

She had gone to vote at her mother's insistence and brought her driver's license as identification, according to her testimony. When poll workers could not find her name on the list of registered voters, Mason said, she obtained a provisional ballot and was coached through the process by a worker. Mason testified that she did not remember the form saying anything about people on supervised release being prohibited from voting.

To register to vote in Texas, a person must be 18 and a U.S. citizen and cannot be a convicted felon or have been declared mentally incapacitated by a court. In Texas, convicted felons can have their voting privileges restored after fully completing their sentences.

I really cannot fully wrap my mind around the notion that the crime of voting once illegally, even if done with great malice, is the sort of offense that should or even could lead to multiple years in prison. Of course, one might think this is a story about how tough Texas is with all criminals.  But a quick Google new search produces these recent stories of seemingly much worse crimes resulting in probation sentences in Texas:

"Hallsville man sentenced to probation in online solicitation of minor case"

"Woman who made up story about being raped by black men is sentenced to probation"

"Jury gives Waco man probation in deadly drunken driving crash"

March 30, 2018 in Examples of "over-punishment", Offender Characteristics, Offense Characteristics | Permalink | Comments (11)

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Florida judge imposes 100 years in prison for child porn possession for first offender claiming innocence

This local article about a state sentencing in Florida, headlined "Man, 37, sentenced to 100 years for child porn conviction," reports on a remarkably severe sentence handed down yesterday. Here are the details:

A 36-year-old St. Johns County man is looking at spending the rest of his life behind bars after Circuit Court Judge Howard Maltz sentenced him to 100 years in prison Wednesday morning. The sentencing came nearly two months after a jury found Jesse Graham Berben guilty on 20 counts of possession of child pornography at the end of a two-day February trial.

Berben, who maintained his innocence even through his sentencing hearing Wednesday, was arrested by St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office detectives in April 2015 after authorities obtained a search warrant for his Washington Street apartment — where he was living with his father at the time — and finding files containing the pornography on his computer.

His arrest report indicates that Berben denied knowing anything about the files or how they ended up on his computer. While he admitted to having a peer-to-peer file-sharing program that he used to download music, he denied using his computer to keep or download child pornography and said that if such files were found that it must have been compromised in some way.

Berben’s attorney, Tom Cushman, said after the sentencing that his client had maintained his innocence to him from the day that they first met, and that Berben had been offered a plea agreement from the state that would have netted him a prison sentence of about 5 years, “but he refused to plead because he said he was not guilty and he wasn’t going to plead guilty to something he didn’t do and become a registered sex offender with it.”

The sentence he ultimately received was more than four-times the “lowest permissible” sentence Maltz could have handed down based on sentencing guidelines submitted in court Wednesday (the maximum sentence was life in prison). It was also beyond even what Assistant State Attorney Mitch Bishop asked for while standing in for his colleague Chris Ferebee, who prosecuted the case.

Bishop, in his remarks before sentencing, said that the images — most of them movie files — found on Berben’s computer depicted children, some as young as 5-years-old, engaged in various sex acts. He pushed back on the notion, expressed by some, that merely possessing such images is not nearly as bad as carrying out the acts depicted.

“The problem with that is that viewing these images, possessing these images creates a market for someone else to produce them,” he said. “I don’t think that point should be overlooked.” Berben, he argued, not only downloaded the files but kept them in the file sharing program, making them available to others.

Bishop asked Maltz for a sentence that would include the rest of Berben’s “meaningful life,” arguing that someone who is “sexually gratified by” or even “sexually curious” by such images does not possess much “rehabilitative potential.”...

Cushman, citing his client’s 10 years of military service and lack of any criminal record, asked Maltz to consider something far less than Bishop asked for, and pointed out that the sentencing guidelines for the possession of child pornography made his client eligible for a punishment “possibly greater than if he’d actually committed the act.”...

Maltz, though, citing the images seen at the trial, called the case “quite troubling” and said he agreed with the state’s argument against any notion that possession of the images is a victimless crime. “I see little difference in culpability between those who actually sexually abuse and exploit children, and those who encourage and promote the conduct by downloading and sharing videos of such, which I think warrants a significant sentence,” he said.

Maltz sentenced Berben to five years in prison for each of the 20 counts, to be served consecutively. Cushman said Berben plans to appeal the sentence.

I am pretty sure that Florida lacks any general parole provisions, so the defendant in this case is certain to die in prison if his convictions or sentence is not modified on appeal.  Notably, a somewhat similar case from Florida a few years ago, the Vilca case discussed here where an LWOP sentence was imposed for child porn possession, had convictions reversed based on a discovery violation as noted here.  Also, in a similar case from South Dakota, the Bruce case discussed here, the South Dakota Supreme Court found a 100-year prison sentence for child porn possession constitutionally excessive.

It will be interesting to see if this case might get the level of attention that some others involving extreme prison terms sometimes do.  And it will be interesting to see how the Florida courts engage with these matters on appeal. 

April 13, 2017 in Examples of "over-punishment", Offense Characteristics, Scope of Imprisonment, Sex Offender Sentencing | Permalink | Comments (24)

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

"Unusual Deference"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new paper about the Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence authored by William Berry III and now available via SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

Three Eighth Amendment decisions — Harmelin v. Michigan, Pulley v. Harris, and McCleskey v. Kemp — have had enduring, and ultimately, cruel and unusual consequences on the administration of criminal justice in the United States.  What links these cases is the same fundamental analytical misstep — the decision to ignore core constitutional principles and instead defer to state punishment practices.  The confusion arises from the text of the Eighth Amendment where the Court has read the “cruel and unusual” punishment proscription to rest in part on majoritarian practices.  This is a classical analytical mistake — while the Amendment might prohibit rare punishments, it does not make the corollary true — that all commonly used punishments must be constitutional.

This “unusual deference” to state punishment practices in light of this misconstruction of the text has opened the door to a proliferation of punishments that are disproportionate, arbitrary, and discriminatory.  As such, this article argues for a restoration of the Eighth Amendment from its present impotence by reframing the concept of unusualness in terms of the Court’s stated Eighth Amendment values and unlinking it from its deferential subservience to state legislative schemes.

Part I of the article explains the genesis of the Court’s unusual deference.  Part II of the article explores the manifestations of unusual deference, examining the flaws in the evolving standards of decency, differentness deference, and three most far-reaching examples of unusual deference — Harmelin, Pulley, and McCleskey.  Finally, the article concludes in Part III by reimagining an Eighth Amendment free from the error of unusual deference and demonstrating how such an approach could begin to remedy the problem of mass incarceration.

February 28, 2017 in Examples of "over-punishment", Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Scope of Imprisonment, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (2)

Saturday, February 11, 2017

A (crazy) harsh sentence for a voter fraud conviction in Texas

According to Prez Trump, voter fraud may be one of the most prevalent federal crimes in the United States (perhaps second only to marijuana use).  In light of the President's claims in this regard, I have to think the crazy harsh sentence imposed by a state court in Texas reported in this New York Times article is intended to try to deter this rampant crime.  The lengthy front-page NYT article is headlined "Illegal Voting Gets Texas Woman 8 Years in Prison, and Certain Deportation," and here are the interesting details:

Despite repeated statements by Republican political leaders that American elections are rife with illegal voting, credible reports of fraud have been hard to find and convictions rarer still.

That may help explain the unusually heavy penalty imposed on Rosa Maria Ortega, 37, a permanent resident and a mother of four who lives outside Dallas. On Thursday, a Fort Worth judge sentenced her to eight years in prison — and almost certainly deportation later — after she voted illegally in elections in 2012 and 2014.

The sentence for Ms. Ortega, who was brought to this country by her mother as an infant, “shows how serious Texas is about keeping its elections secure,” Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said in a statement. Her lawyer called it an egregious overreaction, made to score political points, against someone who wrongly believed she was eligible to vote.

“She has a sixth-grade education. She didn’t know she wasn’t legal,” said Ms. Ortega’s lawyer, Clark Birdsall, who once oversaw voter fraud prosecutions in neighboring Dallas County. “She can own property; she can serve in the military; she can get a job; she can pay taxes. But she can’t vote, and she didn’t know that.”

The punishment was strikingly harsh for an offense that usually merits far less jail time, if any. A second fraudulent ballot case in metropolitan Fort Worth ended in 2015 with probation. Ms. Ortega insisted in court that she had been unaware that she was ineligible to vote and was confused by registration forms and explanations by election officials.

Prosecutors for Mr. Paxton and Tarrant County said that she had lied and that the same forms and conversations proved it. A jury convicted her Wednesday of two felony charges. Mr. Birdsall said Mr. Paxton’s office had been prepared to dismiss all charges against Ms. Ortega if she agreed to testify on voting procedures before the Texas Legislature. But the Tarrant County criminal district attorney, Sharen Wilson, vetoed that deal, he said, insisting on a trial that would showcase her office’s efforts to crack down on election fraud.

Both the attorney general’s office and the county prosecutor declined to comment on the specifics of Mr. Birdsall’s statement, citing privacy rules for plea-bargain negotiations. A spokeswoman for Ms. Wilson, Sam Jordan, said any negotiations were only “discussions,” a description Mr. Birdsall disputed....

Ms. Ortega’s case is unusual not just for its harshness but for its circumstances. Many fraud convictions that draw prison sentences — and some that do not — involve clear efforts to influence election results. Texas prosecutors won prison sentences for four men who moved into a hotel in 2010 to claim residency so they could sway a local election. A woman in Brownsville, Tex., was placed on five years’ probation for casting five absentee ballots under different names in elections in 2012.

Lawyers offered no clear motive for Ms. Ortega’s decision to cast ballots beyond her desire to participate in elections. Ms. Ortega, a native of Monterrey, Mexico, came to Texas with her mother when she was an infant. More than a decade later, the family was scattered after the mother was arrested and deported. Two brothers born in Dallas automatically gained citizenship; Ms. Ortega became a permanent resident and gained a green card, her brother Tony Ortega, 35, said in an interview.

As a Dallas County resident, she registered to vote and later cast ballots in elections in 2012 and 2014, her lawyer, Mr. Birdsall, said. While that was illegal, there was no attempt to break the law, he maintained: Some government forms allow applicants to declare that they are permanent residents, but the voting registration form asks only whether an applicant is a citizen. Lacking the permanent resident option, he said, she ticked the “citizen” box. When the county later mailed her a registration card, he said, she believed she “was good to go.”

Ms. Ortega moved to neighboring Tarrant County and again registered, but this time checked a box affirming that she was not a citizen. When her application was rejected in March 2015, the trial showed, she called election officials and told them that she had previously voted in Dallas County without difficulty. Told that she could not vote unless she was a citizen, she asked for another application, and returned it with a check in the box affirming citizenship. That raised questions, and law enforcement officials arrested her on fraud charges.

Jonathan White, an assistant attorney general who helped prosecute the Ortega case with Tarrant County officials, said the evidence of fraud was unambiguous. “She told the elections office she was a citizen,” he said. “She told everyone else she wasn’t,” including a recorded statement to prosecutors in which she said she was a citizen of Mexico.

Mr. Birdsall said the arrest and prosecution are punishing a woman for her own confusion over whether residency and citizenship confer the same rights. “She wasn’t trying to topple the country,” he said. “She was trying to make more serious decisions about our country than the 50 percent of the people who didn’t bother to vote in the last election.”...

Ms. Ortega is now in a Fort Worth jail awaiting transfer to a state prison. Her four children, ages 13 to 16, are being cared for by siblings and her fiancé, Oscar Sherman, 27, a trucker who said her arrest had scotched their plans to marry. The children’s fate is unclear. Mr. Sherman lacks legal custody; her siblings are still debating their options.

Ms. Ortega’s future is bleak. The federal government frowns on giving green cards to felons. “She’ll do eight years in a Texas prison,” Mr. Birdsall said. “And then she’ll be deported, and wake up blinking and scratching in a country she doesn’t know.”

Far-right websites have seized on Ms. Ortega’s conviction as proof that Mr. Trump is right about rampant fraud and efforts by Democrats to steal the November election. There is, however, at least one flaw in that story: Ms. Ortega was a registered Republican. “She voted for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama in the 2012 election. In 2014 she voted for our current attorney general, Ken Paxton,” Mr. Birdsall said. “And guess what? He’s the one responsible for prosecuting her.”

February 11, 2017 in Examples of "over-punishment", Offender Characteristics, Offense Characteristics | Permalink | Comments (30)

Monday, November 07, 2016

"Extreme Prison Sentences: Legal and Normative Consequences"

The title of this post is the title of this intriguing looking new paper authored by Melissa Hamilton now available via SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

The American criminal justice system has an obsession with lengthy prison sentences.  From theoretical perspectives, harsh penalties may be justified to retributively punish heinous criminals, to incapacitate dangerous people, and to deter potential wrongdoers.  But for a penalty to achieve any of these purposes it must still be proportional to the offense and offender.  A disproportionately severe sentence is harmful in being unnecessary and tyrannical in nature.

This Article reports on an empirical study of extreme sentences, which is defined to include sentences of imprisonment of at least 200 years. The author compiled an original dataset of extreme sentences issued in the federal sentencing system. Since the year 2000, federal judges sentenced 55 individuals to prison terms ranging from 200 to 1,590 years.  At such a length, these sentences may appear irrational as they are beyond any person’s natural lifespan, particularly as the federal system provides no opportunity for parole.  Thus, it may be of interest to understand how and why such extraordinary sanctions came to fruition and to confront the consequences thereof in terms of normalizing extreme prison sentences.

The study undertook quantitative and qualitative analyses of a variety of sources related to the cases in the dataset.  The sources included statistical databases, case opinions, governmental press releases, and news reports.  The study results revealed that the discourses underlying extremely long sentences generally (a) justified them for the theoretical purposes of retribution, incapacitation, and/or deterrence; (b) approved them on proportionality grounds; (c) regarded the penalties as the practical equivalent of life sentences; (d) represented an exclusionist mindset; (e) relied upon dehumanizing caricatures; and (f) presented with cognitive biases, such as anchoring and scaling effects.

In the end, however, the Article still questions whether the extreme nature of these sentences is rational in any circumstance as they represent penalties that no person can possibly complete.  And even if a prison term of at least two centuries may be a proper one, the author posits that such a penalty appears disproportionate for multiple cases in the dataset.  At least a few of the defendants, for example, were nonviolent, first-time offenders.  Further, the federal judiciary’s acceptance of sentences of these extreme lengths has normative consequences that likely will continue to have a ratchet effect in future cases.

November 7, 2016 in Examples of "over-punishment", Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Scope of Imprisonment, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (5)

Monday, August 08, 2016

Broad perspectives on the narrowness of recent federal clemency and sentencing reform efforts

Two of my favorite lawprof colleagues, Erik Luna and Mark Olser, remind me why they are among my favorites through this new Cato commentary titled "Mercy in the Age of Mandatory Minimums." Here are excertps:

Recently, we stood in a backyard eating barbecue with a man named Weldon Angelos.  He was only a few weeks out of federal prison, having been freed some four decades early from a 55-year sentence for selling a small amount of marijuana while possessing firearms.  Weldon was not among the 562 inmates whose sentences were commuted by President Obama, including Wednesday’s historic grant of commutation for 214 nonviolent prisoners. Instead, Weldon’s release was made possible through a negotiated motion by the government that, alas, cannot be replicated in other cases.

For a dozen years, Weldon had been the poster boy of criminal justice reform for liberals and conservatives alike. His liberation is cause for celebration for those who believed the punishment did not fit the crime.  Nonetheless, the Angelos case remains a cautionary tale about both the inherent ruthlessness of “mandatory minimum” terms of imprisonment and the ineffectiveness of the Obama administration’s clemency initiative.

Mandatory minimum laws bar the consideration of facts upon which a sentencing judge would normally rely.  In Weldon’s case, the law compelled a 55-year sentence.  It didn’t matter that Weldon was a first-time offender with no adult record or that he was the father of three young children.  Nor did it matter that he never brandished or used the firearms and never caused or threatened any violence or injury....

Most of all, it did not matter that the sentencing judge — a conservative Bush appointee known for being tough on crime — believed that the punishment was “unjust, cruel, and irrational.”  Ultimately, the judge was bound not only by the mandatory minimum statute but also the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, which largely acquiesces to prosecutors’ charging decisions while providing almost no check on excessive prison terms.

Absent a doctrinal reversal by the Supreme Court (don’t hold your breath), any meaningful safeguard against misapplication of mandatory minimums will have to come in the form of legislation from Congress or from the president through the application of the clemency power.  As for the former, lawmakers are considering several [reform] bills... [that] are entirely laudable, but they are also quite modest.  Indeed, the Senate bill passed in April expands some mandatory minimum provisions and adds a couple of new ones to the federal code....

The positive aspects of the reform bills should be supported all the same.  Sadly, legislative efforts appear to be mired in an intramural fight among Republicans, as well as hindered by Democratic intransigence toward another worthy reform, namely, a requirement that law enforcement prove a culpable mental state rather than holding defendants strictly liable.  Until lawmakers can agree on a means to prevent draconian sentences, clemency will remain the only remedy for such miscarriages of justice.

Unfortunately, the federal clemency system is also dysfunctional.  Weldon’s petition for clemency was filed in November 2012 — and it then sat, unresolved one way or another, for three-and-a-half years.  The support for the petition was unprecedented, spanning activists, academics and experts from every political camp imaginable.  While Weldon is not wealthy and could not afford high-priced lobbyists or attorneys, the facts of his case drove the story onto the pages of leading news outlets.  Yet nothing happened.  Even when the Obama administration launched the “Clemency Project 2014” and Weldon’s case was accepted into that program, he languished in prison as the petition slogged through the seven vertical levels of review any successful clemency case must navigate.

Clemency is meant for cases like Weldon’s, where the requirements of the law exceed the imperatives of justice.  The fact that a case like his cannot receive clemency from an administration dedicated to expanding the use of this presidential prerogative lays bare the root problem we face — too much process and bureaucracy coursing through a Department of Justice that bears a built-in conflict of interest....

It was thrilling to see Weldon free, eating off of a paper plate in the light of a Utah evening.  He is just one of many, though, and systemic reform of both mandatory minimums and the clemency process should be an imperative for this and the next administration.

August 8, 2016 in Aspects and impact of Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, Clemency and Pardons, Criminal justice in the Obama Administration, Examples of "over-punishment", Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday, August 04, 2016

After inquiries by members of Congress, Oregon US Attorney agrees to drop federal marijuana charges against Native American teen

I reported in this post last week about the suprising federal prosecution in Oregon of Devontre Thomas, 19-years-old Native American subject earlier this year to a one-count federal misdemeanor charge for possessing "about a gram" of marijuana.  The press coverage of this case prompted members of Congress from Oregon, as reported in this local piece, to inquire about this prosecution:

Three members of Oregon's congressional delegation are demanding U.S. Attorney for Oregon Billy Williams explain why his office is prosecuting a Native American teenager for allegedly possessing a gram of marijuana.  In letter [sent August 4, 2016], U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, Sen. Jeff Merkley and Rep. Earl Blumenauer, all Oregon Democrats, ask Williams to give them a full list of the marijuana crimes his office has pursued since 2014, when Oregon voters legalized recreational cannabis.

"Marijuana possession charges have declined in Oregon over the past few years, and we hope to see that trend continue," the delegation writes. "We hope that your office continues this focus on dangerous criminal activity, rather than pursuing crimes involving a substance legal in Oregon."

Now, and surely not coincidentally, this piece from Marijuanapolitics.com reports in its headline that federal prosecutors are "to Drop Charges Against Oregon Teen Devontre Thomas." Here are the latest details:

Even those that don’t support legalizing cannabis were hard pressed to support the federal government threatening Oregon teen Devontre Thomas with a year long prison term over about a gram of marijuana.  Drug War reform advocates and concerned citizens across the nation were frankly appalled of such a harsh sentence facing a nonviolent teenager in a state that had legalized cannabis with over 56% of the vote in 2014.

Thomas’ attorney, Ruben Iniguez worked tirelessly for his client and he left me a message stating that the charges would be dismissed in 60 days so long as Thomas stayed out of trouble and stayed employed and/or in school, conditions he was confident the teen would fulfill.  Iniguez thanked advocates for reaching out and offering to help with Thomas’ case.

August 4, 2016 in Drug Offense Sentencing, Examples of "over-punishment", Pot Prohibition Issues, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (6)

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Nearly four years(!?!) in federal prison for MLB scout who hacked into rival team's research and notes

As reported in this local article, headlined "Former Cardinals scouting director sentenced to 46 months for hacking Astros database," a notable defendant got a significant federal prison sentence for some illegal corportate espionage. Here are some of the details:

The former St. Louis Cardinals scouting director who admitted he hacked accounts of the Houston Astros to gain insight into their operations was sentenced Monday afternoon to 46 months in prison.

Chris Correa pleaded guilty in January to five counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer. As part of his plea, Correa admitted to using the accounts of three Astros employees to view scouting reports, amateur player evaluations, notes on trade discussions and proposed bonuses for draft picks.  The information he accessed was given an estimated value of $1.7 million by the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Correa, 36, also admitted taking measures to conceal his identity. The sentence includes two years of supervised release and restitution payment of $279,038.65.  He will remain free until he is to report to prison, in two to six weeks....

During his guilty plea six months ago, Correa contended he hacked into the Astros accounts to see if former Cardinals employees had taken proprietary data or statistical models to use in their new positions with the Astros. Correa told prosecutors he found evidence that it did occur, U.S. Attorney Kenneth Magidson told the Post-Dispatch at that time....

Giles Kibbe, general counsel for the Astros, said after the sentencing that Correa accessed the Houston team’s database 60 times on 35 different days. “I don’t know what he saw or thought he saw,” Kibbe said, adding that what was clear from listening to U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes during the sentencing is this: “The Astros were victims in this case.”...

Houston and its general manager, Jeff Luhnow, who began his baseball career with the Cardinals more than a decade ago, have repeatedly denied that Luhnow or any other former Cardinals employees brought information to the Astros. “The Astros refute Mr. Correa’s statement that our database contained any information that was proprietary to the St. Louis Cardinals,” the team said in a statement in January. Along with the U.S. attorney’s investigation, in which no other member of the Cardinals’ organizations was charged, the team completed an internal investigation; its outcome was Correa’s dismissal a year ago....

Correa read a four-minute statement to the judge before Hughes handed down his sentence. “I behaved shamefully,” Correa said, in apologizing to the Astros. “The whole episode represents the worst thing I’ve ever done by far.”

As he continued reading, offering an apology to his family with the promise to “regain your trust,” Hughes stopped Correa, asking him to turn around and speak directly to family members attending the hearing. Correa did so, his voice breaking as he repeated his apology. Correa said that because of his actions, he lost his career and his house, and he will work with his wife to rebuild “a quiet life of integrity.”

Hughes chastised Correa several times for his actions, comparing them to middle-school behavior. The judge used as an example a teacher asking Correa if he threw the eraser to which Correa would justify the action by saying: “Bobby did, too!”

“I hope it didn’t work then. It’s not going to work now,” Hughes said. The judge likened Correa’s hacking actions to altering a check by adding extra zeroes “and wiping out someone’s bank account.” Hughes also disclosed in court that Correa had been using prescription drugs without a prescription since the hacking charges, and that he could also have been prosecuted for that crime.

Hughes noted that Correa had taken college classes in ethics, asking: “At any time did you think hacking the Astros’ computers and using other people’s passwords was ethical?”

“No, your honor,” Correa said. Correa left the courthouse without comment, climbing into the passenger seat of a white SUV that was quickly driven away....

As part of his plea in January, Correa admitted to illicitly accessing Houston’s database through three accounts from at least March 2013 to the end of June 2014. He began by accessing the email account of one Astros employee who used to work for the Cardinals, referred to in the documents as “Victim A.” Although never mentioned by name in the documents, two of the former employees being described are believed to be Luhnow and Sig Mejdal. Both were key architects in the early days of the Cardinals’ analytic departments, and both are now baseball operations execs in Houston.

Correa took advantage of the fact that “Victim A” had used a password for his Astros email that was similar to the one he used with the Cardinals. He had gained the password when “Victim A” turned in his Cardinals laptop before leaving the team. Correa was able to access the accounts of two other Houston employees and through them see information in a database nicknamed “Ground Control.” On March 24, 2013, Correa viewed an Excel file of every amateur player eligible for the draft as well as the Astros’ internal evaluations and the scouts’ proposed bonuses to offer the players. He also looked at the Astros’ evaluations of Cardinals’ prospects.

That June, during the draft, Correa entered Ground Control and filtered the Astros’ information on players not yet drafted. He also looked at specific pages for two players, neither of whom the Cardinals drafted.

During that visit he looked at Houston’s scouting information for three of the eight players the Cardinals’ selected the previous day in rounds three through 10. At baseball’s trade deadline, July 31, Correa peered into Houston’s notes on trade discussions. In March 2014, he again entered the database and looked at 118 pages of what court documents called “confidential information.”

Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak and other team officials have stated they did not know about the breaches until investigators alerted them in early 2015.

I have reprinted the details of this "hacker's crime" because I am struggling to see what aggravating factors justified a nearly four-year prison sentence for a white-collar offenders who would appear to present no obvious risk to public safety and who has admitted his misdeeds and seems to show genuine remorse for his computer crimes.  I sumrise from the press description here that the the defendant's federal sentencing guidelines range was driven up significantly by the U.S. Attorney's determination that the "estimated value" of corporate information accessed here was $1.7 million.   But the fact that the defendant was ordered to pay less than $300K in restitution suggest that the actual harm to the Cardinals was far less than the economic number that appears to have driven the defendant's sentence up so much under the applicable sentencing guidelines.

Because I have not done a careful study of lots of recent computer crime cases, I am not sufficiently informed about whether this particular defendant's crime was distinctly bad or whether his sentence is distinctly severe.  But I do know that modern problems in the US with mass incarceration is aggravated when we now have persons who pose no threat to public safety and who commit crimes that seem to have a relatively small impact on a huge rich company getting sent away to federal prison for a really long period of time.

July 19, 2016 in Examples of "over-punishment", Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Scope of Imprisonment, White-collar sentencing | Permalink | Comments (30)

Friday, June 03, 2016

Weldon Angelos, poster child for need to reform federal mandatory minimums, apparently released after serving 12 years of 55-year sentence

Images (2)Regular readers likely know the name Weldon Angelos and likely recall some of the details of his 55-year mandatory minimum federal sentence based on his convictions for low-level marijuana dealing and firearm possession.  And regular readers likely will also be intrigued and heartened to read this new Washington Post story, headlined "Utah man whose long drug sentence stirred controversy is released," indicating that Weldon was released earlier this week.  Here are the (somewhat mysterious) details:

One federal inmate who was released — but not under Obama’s clemency initiative — is Weldon Angelos, 36, a father of three from Utah who was sentenced in 2004 to a 55-year mandatory minimum prison term in connection with selling marijuana.

The specific circumstances of Angelos’s release are unclear because court records in his case are sealed. But after a long campaign from his supporters, including Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Angelos was quietly released Tuesday after a federal court granted him an immediate reduction in sentence. He was able to immediately go home to his family without serving three months in a halfway house, as those who receive clemency are required to do. The release allowed Angelos to see the son he left at age 7 graduate from high school Thursday.

Angelos is one of the nation’s most famous nonviolent drug offenders and became a symbol of what advocates said was the severity and unfairness of mandatory sentences. His case was championed by the group Families Against Mandatory Minimums, former FBI director Bill Sessions, conservative billionaire Charles Koch and others. Three years ago, more than 100 former judges and prosecutors, former elected and appointed government officials, and prominent authors, scholars, activists and business leaders signed a letter urging Obama to grant Angelos commutation.

In February, former federal judge Paul G. Cassell, who sentenced Angelos, wrote a letter asking Obama to swiftly grant him clemency. Cassell said that the sentence he was forced to impose was “one of the most troubling that I ever faced in my five years on the federal bench” and that it was one of the chief reasons he stepped down as a judge.

But Obama never granted clemency to Angelos. The granting of mercy instead came from the Salt Lake City prosecutor who charged him in the case, according to his lawyer. “After three and half years of inaction on Weldon’s clemency petition, he is free because of the fair and good action of a prosecutor,” attorney Mark W. Osler said. “He returns to citizenship because of the actions of one individual — just not the individual I was expecting. Weldon’s freedom is a wonderful thing but remains just one bright spot among many continuing tragedies.”

A White House spokeswoman said that the White House cannot respond with details about any individual clemency case. Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, called the release of Angelos “fantastic news and past due.”

I am inclined to guess, absent hearing any details to the contrary, that the Utah federal prosecutor agreed to what some have come to call a Holloway motion: a motion first engineered by former Judge John Glesson in the case of Francios Holloway (discussed here) by urging prosecutors to move to undo stacked federal gun charges that had resulted in acrazy-long mandatory minimum prison term.

A few of many prior related posts on Angelos and Holloway cases:

June 3, 2016 in Examples of "over-punishment", Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Second Amendment issues, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (6)

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

"Many serving sentences for marijuana offenses deserve clemency"

The title of this post is the headline of this recent San Francisco Chronicle commentary authored by Alex Contreras, a former federal inmate serving a 40-year sentence for drug and gun charges who received clemency from President Obama in December 2015.  Here is the text:

More than 10,000 clemency applicants wake up every day in a federal prison, awaiting an answer from President Obama on whether their lengthy prison sentence will come to an end. Most of them will be crushed when they are eventually denied.  There are a few, however, who will realize the unlikely and overwhelming joy of finally being released. I was one of those rare few whose name was on the list of Obama’s recent clemency grants.  And while I was excited to finally be going home — and extremely grateful to the president — I was also perplexed by those who weren’t on the list.

In speaking about criminal justice reform, Obama has highlighted the injustice of incarcerating marijuana offenders for “long stretches,” and has described marijuana as being “less harmful than alcohol” and a “vice,” not unlike cigarette smoking. He also instructed his Justice Department to not prosecute medical or recreational marijuana sellers who are operating under state law.  But his pool of clemency recipients does not reflect these views.

Out of the 306 clemency grants, less than 3 percent were marijuana offenders, and not one of them was a medical marijuana provider, despite being the most deserving given that they were following state law and the Obama administration is no longer prosecuting them. Some of them are even serving decades in prison.

One such inmate is Ricardo Montes, a Latino serving a harsh mandatory 20-year sentence for operating a medical marijuana dispensary in Modesto under California law.  Montes and his co-defendant received the longest sentences ever doled out to any medical marijuana provider, because — during the aggressive George W. Bush administration — they were charged under a fearsome mandatory minimum statue designed for drug kingpins and dangerous cartels.

Individuals like Montes are even more deserving of clemency than I was.  Yet I fear that men such as Montes will be left to serve the remainder of their lengthy prison terms, while others reap the rewards of the change in the legal landscape of our nation’s marijuana policies. I hope that Obama’s remaining clemency grants will reflect his sensible views regarding marijuana, ensuring that our criminal justice system “keeps its basic promise of equal treatment for all.”

May 25, 2016 in Clemency and Pardons, Drug Offense Sentencing, Examples of "over-punishment", Pot Prohibition Issues, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (1)

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Paul Cassell, the former federal judge who sentenced Weldon Angelos to 55 years, writes directly to Prez Obama to support his clemency petition

As reported in this Washington Post article, headlined "Former federal judge to President Obama: Free the man I sentenced to 55 years in prison," former US District Judge (and now Prof) Paul Cassell has now written directly to the President to urge him to "swiftly commute his sentence." Regular readers likely know a lot about the story of Weldon Angelos, whom I once helped represent as he pursued collateral appeals, and the Post article provides some of the details and context behind his current push for clemency:

Calling the sentence “one of the most troubling that I ever faced in my five years on the federal bench,” Paul G. Cassell, now a professor at the University of Utah’s law school, said the mandatory minimum sentence he was required to impose on Angelos was one of the chief reasons he chose to step down as a judge.

“I write you as the judge who sentenced Weldon Angelos to a 55-year mandatory minimum prison term for non-violent drug offenses,” Cassell wrote to Obama. “It appears to me that Mr. Angelos meets all of the criteria for a commuted sentence.” Cassell was appointed to the bench in 2002 by former President George W. Bush.

In December, Obama granted clemency to 95 drug offenders as part of his continuing effort to give relief to drug offenders who were harshly sentenced in the nation’s war on drugs. But Angelos, who is behind bars at the Federal Correctional Institution at Mendota, was not on the president’s list. The president has commuted the sentences of 184 federal inmates, more individuals than the past five presidents combined. But sentencing reform advocates say that hundreds — and potentially thousands — of inmates who meet the Obama administration’s criteria for clemency, including Angelos, are still behind bars....

Angelos, the son of a Greek immigrant and the 36-year-old father of three, is one of the nation’s most famous nonviolent drug offenders and a symbol of the severe mandatory sentences. His case has been widely championed, including by Utah’s Republican Sen. Mike Lee, former FBI Director Bill Sessions, the group Families Against Mandatory Minimums and conservative billionaire Charles Koch. “Judge Cassell’s letter articulates well the grave injustice involved in Weldon’s prison sentence,” said Mark Holden, general counsel and senior vice president of Koch Industries,” who has urged attention to the Angelos case.

Like many inmates, Angelos has missed being with his children as they grew up. His 18-year-old son, Anthony, was six when he was sent to prison. His son, Jesse, was 4. His 13-year-old daughter, Meranda, was an infant. In an interview, Angelos said he had hoped the president would grant him clemency in time for him to see Anthony graduate from high school in June.

Angelos was sentenced to 55 years without the possibility of parole after he sold marijuana to a police informant three times in 2002, each time charging $350. Prosecutors alleged that Angelos, the founder of Utah hip-hop label Extravagant, was a gang member and a drug dealer. Angelos denied the allegations and declined a plea bargain offered by prosecutors. Angelos never used or pulled a gun, but the informant later testified in court that he saw one in Angelos’s car during the first buy. He said that during the second buy, Angelos was wearing an ankle holster holding a firearm. Officers later searched his home and found a gun.

The sentence Angelos received as a nonviolent first-time offender fell under a law called 924(c). Federal drug laws require 5- to 30-year mandatory minimum sentences for possessing, brandishing or discharging a gun during a drug-trafficking crime. For each subsequent gun conviction, there is a mandatory sentence of 25 years that must be served consecutively. This is often referred to as “gun stacking,” which is why Angelos received 55 years without parole. He received five years for the gun in the car; 25 years for the second gun charge, having one in an ankle strap; and another 25 years for a third firearms charge, the gun police found in his home. He got one day for the marijuana.

In 2004, when Cassell sentenced Angelos, he wrote a lengthy opinion, comparing Angelos’s sentence (738 months) with the guideline sentences for the kingpin of three major drug trafficking rings that caused three deaths (465 months), a three-time aircraft hijacker (405 months), a second-degree murderer of three victims (235 months) and the rapist of three 10-year-olds (188 months).

Related prior posts providing some Angelos case history:

February 10, 2016 in Clemency and Pardons, Drug Offense Sentencing, Examples of "over-punishment", Gun policy and sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (6)

Thursday, November 26, 2015

So thankful for federal judges encouraging prosecutors to reconsider extreme sentence... but...

I wish that such reconsideration of extreme sentences were more the norm than the exception in our modern era of mass incarceration.  The notable new judicial trend for which I am thankful was discussed earlier this week in this Wall Street Journal article headlined "Persuasive Judges Win Reduced Sentences for Some Convicts: Federal prosecutors agree to do-overs in a handful of cases, another sign of shifting attitudes about punishment."  Here are excerpts:

Francois Holloway became a free man this year three decades earlier than planned, thanks to a well-placed ally. U.S. District Judge John Gleeson in Brooklyn, N.Y., who put Mr. Holloway away in 1996 for participating in armed carjackings, had lobbied prosecutors for years to reduce Mr. Holloway’s 57-year sentence.

Federal trial judges have little leeway in sentencing when prosecutors trigger mandatory-minimum laws that set floors for punishment, and they have few means of revisiting closed cases, unless new evidence comes to light or a major legal error was committed. But they can be persuasive.  Federal prosecutors have agreed in recent years to sentence reductions in a handful of cases, most after public pressure from judges.

Such do-overs are another sign of shifting attitudes about punishment and growing bipartisan support for criminal justice policies that emphasize rehabilitation.  The practice does have its detractors, who say such relief should come from the White House in the form of commutations and pardons, not from the courthouse.

So far, the cases have tended to involve defendants who rejected plea deals, lost at trial and received prison terms several times larger than they would have if they had they pleaded guilty, sometimes called a “trial penalty.” Mr. Holloway balked at a deal that would have sent him to prison for about 11 years. He ended up receiving a mandatory minimum of 45 years because one of his co-assailants brandished a gun during the three carjackings. He earned the balance for stealing the vehicles, per federal sentencing guidelines that were binding on Judge Gleeson at the time....

After Mr. Holloway lost his appeal, he turned to a federal law frequently used by federal prisoners to challenge their sentences as excessive or to show that their lawyers were ineffective to the point of depriving them of their rights. At the urging of Judge Gleeson, the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn last year withdrew its opposition to Mr. Holloway’s petition, citing his “extraordinary” record while in prison, as well as the responses of Mr. Holloway’s victims, who supported his early release. Attorney General Loretta Lynch headed the U.S. attorney’s office at the time.  Judge Gleeson vacated two of Mr. Holloway’s convictions and resentenced him to time served. “Prosecutors are almost never criticized for being aggressive,” he wrote in a July 2014 ruling lauding Ms. Lynch’s move. “Doing justice can be much harder.”

U.S. attorneys have accepted reduced punishments “where prosecutors, the court and victims have agreed that a sentence is unjust,” but such cases are rare, said Melanie Newman, a spokeswoman for Ms. Lynch. “The government nearly always seeks to preserve the finality of sentences where there is no legal flaw,” Ms. Newman said.

Harlan Protass, a partner at Clayman & Rosenberg LLP who represented Mr. Holloway, said the case has become a model for taking a second look at sentences.  Mr. Protass and Sam Sheldon, a partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP in Washington, D.C., hope to establish a law-school clinic with the mission of persuading the government to allow new sentence hearings and reduced prison terms for certain offenders....

In another New York case, Randy Washington, a crack-cocaine dealer from the Bronx convicted of armed robbery, found a friend in his sentencing judge, who last year admonished prosecutors to consider whether the 52-year mandatory-minimum prison sentence Mr. Washington faced was “worthy of the public’s trust and confidence.” His punishment later was cut in half.

Prosecutors in Oklahoma agreed this year to allow an Army National Guard veteran sentenced to life for cocaine smuggling to leave prison after serving nearly three decades.  In Atlanta, the government shortened from life to 25 years the sentence of a man convicted of cocaine distribution.  Meanwhile, prosecutors in Montana dismissed several gun and drug counts against a medical-marijuana grower, lopping off 80 years of an 85-year mandatory sentence....

Some federal prosecutors have declined requests by federal judges for shorter sentences.  In Philadelphia, U.S. District Judge Jan DuBois recently implored prosecutors for a penalty that “better serves the interests of justice” in the case of Tyrone Trader, who was convicted for his role as a street-level dealer in a cocaine-trafficking conspiracy...  Mr. Trader received a mandatory life sentence under federal law, after the Justice Department filed a notice with the court showing Mr. Trader had prior felony drug convictions.  The other street-level dealers who took pleas have been released from prison, Judge DuBois noted, adding that the average federal sentence for murder was less than 23 years in fiscal 2014.  “It is difficult to see how a sentence of life imprisonment in Trader’s case is just,” Judge DuBois wrote in an August ruling.

U.S. Attorney Zane David Memeger said in a statement that the government carefully considers each case before making charging decisions and that there was “no basis” for reducing Mr. Trader’s sentence.

November 26, 2015 in Examples of "over-punishment", Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Prisons and prisoners, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Scope of Imprisonment, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Alabama Chief Justice laments mandatory LWOP drug sentence for 76-year-old offender

As reported in this AP article, "Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore says the case of a 76-year-man sentenced to life without parole for a drug offense shows the need to change sentencing laws."  Here is more about the notable separate opinion authored by the top jurist of the the Cotton State:

Moore issued a special writing Friday as the Supreme Court refused to overturn the case of Lee Carroll Brooker. "I believe Brooker's sentence is excessive and unjustified," Moore wrote.

Brooker lived with his son in Houston County, and court documents show police found a marijuana-growing operation there during a search in 2013. The elderly man was convicted of drug trafficking last year, and a judge sentenced him to life without parole because of past robbery convictions in Florida. His son was also convicted. Moore writes that the life-without-parole sentence for a non-violent drug offense shows "grave flaws" in Alabama's sentencing system.

"A trial court should have the discretion to impose a less severe sentence than life imprisonment without the possibility of parole," Moore added. "I urge the legislature to revisit that statutory sentencing scheme to determine whether it serves an appropriate purpose."

The full opinion by Chief Justice Moore is available at this link.

September 13, 2015 in Drug Offense Sentencing, Examples of "over-punishment", Offender Characteristics, Scope of Imprisonment, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (5)

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Citing much research and data, Judge Posner rails against "the problem of the elderly prisoner"

The Seventh Circuit this past week issued an otherwise routine affirmance of a drug conviction in US v. Presley, No. 14-2704 (7th Cir. June 11, 2015) (available here), the opinion end up not at all routine because of Judge Posner's lengthy concluding (dicta?) about problems with exceedingly long federal sentences and the elderly prisoners these sentences create.  I would urge all federal sentencing fans to read Judge Posner's work in Presley in full, and these passages help highlight why (even with lots of Judge Posner's great cites and data left out):

The only questionable feature of the judgment is the length of the sentence — almost 37 years, though it is within the applicable guidelines range because of Presley’s very lengthy criminal history. Presley was 34 years old when sentenced... [and if he] earns the maximum possible good-time credit he’ll be almost 64 years old when released. If he earns no good time he’ll be almost 69.  And after release he’ll undergo five years of supervised release, which like parole is a form of custody because it imposes significant restrictions on the supervisee....

The judge pointed out that Presley is a career offender, that he began his criminal career when he was 16, that he was a large-scale heroin dealer, and that he had committed disciplinary violations in previous incarcerations.  What the judge failed to consider was the appropriateness of incarcerating Presley for so long that he would be elderly when released.  Criminals, especially ones engaged in dangerous activities such as heroin dealing, tend to have what economists call a “high discount rate” — that is, they weight future consequences less heavily than a normal, sensible, law-abiding person would....

The sentencing judge in this case ... gave no reason to think that imposing a 37-year sentence on Presley would have a greater deterrent effect on current or prospective heroin dealers than a 20-year or perhaps even a 10-year sentence, or that incapacitating him into his sixties is necessary to prevent his resuming his criminal activities at that advanced age.  Sentencing judges need to consider the phenomenon of aging out of risky occupations.  Violent crime, which can include trafficking in heroin, is generally a young man’s game.  Elderly people tend to be cautious, often indeed timid, and averse to physical danger.  Violent crime is far less common among persons over 40, let alone over 60, than among younger persons....

There needs finally to be considered the cost of imprisonment to the government, which is not trivial.  The U.S. prison population is enormous by world standards — about 1 percent of the nation’s entire population — and prisons are costly to operate because of their building materials (steel especially is very expensive) and large staffs.  If the deterrent or incapacitative effect on criminal propensities fades sharply with time, the expenses incurred in the incarceration of elderly persons may be a social waste....

We are not suggesting that sentencing judges (or counsel, or the probation service) should conduct a cost-benefit analysis to determine how long a prison sentence to give. But the considerations that we’ve listed should be part of the knowledge base that judges, lawyers, and probation officers consult in deciding on the length of sentences to recommend or impose.  There is no indication that these considerations received any attention in this case.  We do not criticize the district judge and the lawyers and probation officers for the oversight; recognition of the downside of long sentences is recent and is just beginning to dawn on the correctional authorities and criminal lawyers.  Neither the Justice Department nor the defendant’s lawyer (or the probation service) evinced awareness in this case of the problem of the elderly prison inmate....

There is much that federal sentencing judges are required to consider in deciding on a sentence to impose — maybe too much: the guidelines, the statutory sentencing factors, the statutory and regulatory provisions relating to conditions of supervised release, presentence reports, briefs and arguments of counsel, statements by defendants and others at sentencing hearings.  But in thinking about the optimal sentence in relation to the problem of the elderly prisoner, probably the judge’s primary focus should be on the traditional triad of sentencing considerations: incapacitation, which prevents the defendant from committing crimes (at least crimes against persons other than prison personnel and other prisoners) until he is released, general deterrence (the effect of the sentence in deterring other persons from committing crimes), and specific deterrence (its effect in deterring the defendant from committing crimes after he’s released).  A sentence long enough to keep the defendant in prison until he enters the age range at which the type of criminal activity in which he has engaged is rare should achieve the aims of incapacitation and specific deterrence, while lengthening the sentence is unlikely to increase general deterrence significantly if the persons engaged in the criminal activity for which the defendant is being sentenced have a high discount rate; for beyond a point reached by a not very long sentence, such persons tend not to react to increases in sentence length by abandoning their criminal careers.

June 13, 2015 in Booker in the Circuits, Drug Offense Sentencing, Examples of "over-punishment", Prisons and prisoners, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Scope of Imprisonment | Permalink | Comments (8)

Monday, February 09, 2015

Briefs seeking SCOTUS review of 15-year mandatory federal sentence for possessing shotgun shells

As regular readers may recall from this post, a few months ago a Sixth Circuit panel rejected an Eighth Amendment challenge brought by Edward Young, who is serving a "mandatory fifteen-year prison sentence for the crime of possessing seven shotgun shells in a drawer."  I helped file an amicus brief on in support of Mr. Young's claim in the Sixth Circuit, and now I have  helped put together another amicus brief in support of his SCOTUS cert petition.  

The SCOTUS cert amicus, which can be downloaded below, makes a number of distinct points based in part on the (little-known) fact that the Supreme Court has never reviewed on the merits a federal term-of-years sentences under modern Eighth Amendment doctrines.  Writing along with Prof Michael J. Zydney Mannheimer, this brief starts and ends this way: 

This Court has never addressed how the Eighth Amendment’s proportionality and procedural safeguards for defendants facing the most serious penalties are to be applied when federal courts consider a challenge to a federal sentence. Both the original meaning of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause and modern Eighth Amendment jurisprudence reasonably suggest that the proportionality and procedural safeguards in the Eighth Amendment should have a more robust application when federal courts are reviewing federal sentences, especially when a severe sentence significantly conflicts with state punishment norms.

These realities call for this Court to take up Mr. Young’s petition for certiorari and declare unconstitutional his fifteen-year mandatory federal prison term based on his harmless possession of shotgun shells in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).  The vast majority of U.S. States do not even criminalize possession of shotgun shells by a convicted felon (surely because mere passive possession of ammunition alone is neither inherently dangerous nor a ready instrument of crime absent possession of a firearm).  The handful of States that do criminalize this possession offense treat the crime as a misdemeanor or set a statutory maximum prison sentence for the offense well below the 15- year mandatory minimum federal term Mr. Young received. Moreover, Amici are unaware of any case from any State or locality in which a defendant received any prison sentence of any duration for offense conduct that involved only the harmless possession of a small number of shotgun shells. Legislative enactments and state practices thus provide in this case potent objective evidence of a national consensus against Mr. Young’s federal punishment....

Perhaps a majority of this Court has come now to the view that the Eighth Amendment functionally and formally provides no restrictions whatsoever on how severe Congress may punish adults through prison terms for conduct it deems criminal, and that only structural provisions like the Commerce Clause “impose[] real limits on federal power” and establish “boundaries to what the Federal Government may do” in the exercise of its police powers through the federal criminal justice system.  Alderman v. United States, 562 U.S. ___ (2011) (Thomas, J., dissenting from the denial of certiorari).  But, as explained above, a sounder originalist and modern understanding of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause is as a constitutional provision that can operate to protect individual Americans from the most extreme application of severe mandatory prison terms for the most minor transgression of federal law.  Indeed, if Mr. Young’s fifteen-year mandatory federal prison term based on his harmless possession of shotgun shells is allowed to remain in place without further review, this Court would essentially signal to Congress that it very well could constitutionally make even “overtime parking a felony punishable by life imprisonment.” Rummel v. Estelle, 445 U.S. 263, 274 n.11 (1980).

  Download Young v US Cert Amicus

Prior related posts:

February 9, 2015 in Examples of "over-punishment", Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Offense Characteristics, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Tuesday, February 03, 2015

A test for the Kochs' influence: seeking justice and freedom for Weldon Angelos

Download (1)If the wealthy truly have extraordinary influence on modern federal politics and policies, a notable defendant serving a mandatory 55-year sentence as a result of a few small marijuana sales ought to be getting out of prison before too long.  I say this because, according to this Daily Beast piece, my former client Weldon Angelos is now a "poster boy" for the latest Koch-brothers-backed political effort.  This piece is headlined "The New Face of the Koch Campaign" and here is its subheading: "A father of two was sentenced to 55 years in jail for selling pot. The Koch brothers want to help set him free and make him the face of their new campaign for criminal justice reform."  Here are excerpts:

Weldon Angelos could have hijacked a plane and spent less time in jail.  But due to mandatory sentencing laws, the father of two was sentenced to 55 years in jail for selling pot — a term so long even the judge who gave it to him protested its injustice.  A group backed by the Koch brothers agrees, and is now fighting to get him out of prison.

Angelos is an extreme case: even though the crime was considered non-violent, Angelos carried a firearm during a series of marijuana sales to a Salt Lake City police informant —  so federal mandatory minimums required that he be put in jail until he’s 80 years old. Judge Paul Cassell protested the sentence when he was forced to make it in 2004, a move he told The Daily Beast he considers “the most unjust, lengthy sentence that I had to hand down.”...

Angelos is now 35 years old and has spent some 11 years behind bars.  He has more than 40 years left to go.  Even though his crime was non-violent, parole is not an option at the federal level.  His only hope for relief from his sentence is an order by the president.

“If we’re going to deprive someone of liberty, and deal with the high cost of incarceration, it better solve a problem.  And in this case, it doesn’t solve any problem,” argued Mark Osler, Angelos’ lawyer, who filed a clemency petition on his behalf in 2012.

This is where the Koch brothers come in.  The case is being highlighted by Koch-backed group Generation Opportunity, which targets millenials, in a broader campaign to press for criminal justice reforms this year.  They will kick off the campaign with a documentary highlighting Angelos’ predicament, premiering at Washington, D.C.’s Newseum next week. “[This year] offers a unique moment in history in which people of different backgrounds and political leanings are coming together to facilitate a substantive dialogue on how to fix [the criminal justice system],” said Evan Feinberg, the group’s president. “We can work towards a more just system that reflects the rule of law without overcriminalizing non-violent offenses.”

The new campaign will target the overcriminalization of non-violent crime, mandatory minimum laws, and helping criminals who have served their sentences reintegrate into society.  The demilitarization of police and the excesses of civil asset forfeiture will also be addressed.

Generation Opportunity worked with Families Against Mandatory Minimums on the documentary.  FAMM founder Julie Stewart was in the room during Angelos’ first sentencing hearing.  It was, she said, a severe example of a worrisome trend in the criminal justice system....

“A lot of people just thought that because of the amount of time my brother was [sentenced to], he had done something terrible, just because of the ignorance that is out there about mandatory sentencing,” said Lisa Angelos, Weldon’s older sister and advocate. “Before the case, I had no idea that this was possible in America.”  The judge who was forced to hand down the sentence, Paul Cassell, said the Angelos case is an example of “clear injustice marring the public perception” of the federal courts — and victimizing taxpayers who have to pay to keep him locked up.

“We have in place in our country today some very draconian penalties that distort our whole federal sentencing scheme,” Cassell said.  “When people look at a case like Weldon Angelos and see that he got 55 years, and they see other cases where victims have gotten direct physical or psychological injuries and don’t see a similar [result] from the system, they start to wonder if the system is irrational.”

When he was sent to prison, Angelos’ children were small, now both are in their teens. Without their father, the family fell on hard financial times.  His children rarely talk to him, Weldon’s sister says, because they can’t afford a cell phone on which they can be reached.  “When I tell him stories about his kids, you can tell how very hard it is for him to hear it… to know that he can’t be here,” Lisa Angelos said. “It’s destroyed him in many ways.”

The Angelos’ have waited for more than two years for word on their executive clemency request.  The average successful clemency request takes approximately four years, according to his lawyer.  Weldon Angelos deserves clemency, Osler said, because his sentencing “doesn’t correlate in this country with what’s wrong, and what those wrongs deserve.”

Long-time readers are likely familiar with the Angelos case, which came to my attention on a few months after I started this blog 11 years ago. I litigated pro bono, unsuccessfully, Weldon's 2255 motion with claims (that I still find compelling) that his prosecution and sentencing involved violations of the Second, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments. I continue to hope Weldon will receive clemency or some other form of relief soon not merely to remedy the injustice of his extreme prosecution and sentencing, but to vindicate critical constitutional principles.

Related prior posts providing some Angelos case history:

February 3, 2015 in Clemency and Pardons, Examples of "over-punishment", Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Scope of Imprisonment, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Monday, September 15, 2014

Effective commentary on Sixth Circuit panel upholding 15-year ACCA sentence for possession of shotgun shells

I am pleased to see that by LawProf Richard M. Re  now has posted on his (wonderfully titled) Re's Judicata blog some new critical thoughts about the Sixth Circuit panel ruling late last week in US v. Young, No. 13-5714 (6th Cir. Sept. 11, 2014) (available here).  Young rejected an Eighth Amendment claim by the defendant by ruling that a mandatory 15-year federal imprisonment term was not grossly disproportionate for a felon's possession of shotgun shells.  I first blogged about the Young ruling here, and I have not (yet) commented further because I was involved in the briefing and argument to the Sixth Circuit as an amicus representing NACDL.

Helpfully, Prof Re's extended post on Young, which is titled "A 'Shell' Game in the Sixth Circuit?", highlights some of my own deep concerns about the ruling. I recommend everyone check out the full post, which gets started this way:

In US v. Young, the Sixth Circuit recently affirmed a startlingly severe sentence for what seems like innocuous conduct, and the blogosphere has taken note.  As Eugene Volokh put it in his post title, the case involved a “15-year mandatory minimum federal sentence for possessing shotgun shells (no shotgun) almost 20 years after past felonies.”  The case might go to the Supreme Court on the Eighth Amendment question it raises.

Viewed from another angle, Young illustrates two reasons to lament the rarity of executive clemency.  First, whether Young’s sentence is just seems to depend on factors that weren’t pressed in court but that executive officials likely know about.  A robust clemency tradition would bring those factors to light.  Second, in the absence of executive clemency, the Sixth Circuit seems to have reached outside the proven record to do the executive’s job for it — and, in doing so, the court relied on allegations and innuendo instead of judicial findings.

Prior related posts on Young case:

September 15, 2014 in Examples of "over-punishment", Gun policy and sentencing, Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Offense Characteristics, Scope of Imprisonment, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Sixth Circuit panel finds mandatory 15-year imprisonment term not grossly disproportionate for possession of shotgun shells

Because I filled an amicus brief on behalf of defendant Edward Young and participated in oral argument as well, I am much too close to the Eighth Amendment issue resolved against the defendant today in US v. Young, No. 13-5714 (6th Cir. Sept. 11, 2014) (available here), to provide any objective analysis and perspective.  And rather than provide my biased analysis in this post, let me for now be content to reprint the start the Sixth Circuit panel's per curiam ruling: 

Edward Young received a mandatory fifteen-year prison sentence for the crime of possessing seven shotgun shells in a drawer.  He came into possession of the shells while helping a neighbor sell her late husband’s possessions. When he eventually discovered them, he did not realize that his legal disability against possessing firearms — resulting from felonies committed some twenty years earlier — extended to ammunition. See 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), Young received a mandatory fifteen-year sentence.

Young now asks this court to conclude that the ACCA, as applied to him, is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment because the gravity of his offense is so low as compared to the harshness of his sentence, and unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment because he lacked notice.  Our precedent compels us to reject these claims and to affirm Young’s sentence.

To its credit, the per curiam decision in Young engages somewhat with some Eighth Amendment principles I sought to stress in my amicus efforts in this case, and Judge Stranch authored an extended concurrence discussing the policy arguments against mandatory minimums. But these aspects of the Young opinion do very little to salve my seething aggravation and frustration with this ruling.

A number of judges on the Sixth Circuit have a (somewhat justified) reputation for going to great lengths to bend and extend Eighth Amendment jurisprudence to block state efforts to execute brutal murderers after a state sentencing jury imposed the death penalty.  Consequently, I was hopeful (though not optimistic) that at least one member of a Sixth Circuit panel could and would conclude the modern Eighth Amendment places some substantive and judicially enforceable limits on extreme application of extreme federal mandatory minimum prison terms.  Apparently not.  Though surely not the intent of this ruling, I think the practical message is that one needs to murder someone with ammunition rather than just possess it illegally for the Sixth Circuit to be moved by an Eighth Amendment claim. (I was hoping to save a screed about this ruling for a future post, but obviously this is already a bit too raw for me to be able to hold my blog tongue.)

I am hopeful that the defendant will be interested in seeking en banc review and/or SCOTUS review, and thus I suspect the (obviously uphill) legal fight against this extreme sentence will continue. I plan to continue helping with that fight, and I would be eager to hear from others eager to help as well.

Prior related posts:

September 11, 2014 in Examples of "over-punishment", Gun policy and sentencing, Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Scope of Imprisonment, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBack

Wednesday, September 03, 2014

"Life sentence for buying marijuana?"

CA6K4VHLThe question and title of this post comes from the headline of this new CNN commentary by Vanita Gupta, who is deputy legal director at the ACLU.  An editorial note at the start of this piece provides this background: "CNN's David Mattingly reports on the case of a Missouri man sentenced to life in prison for purchasing marijuana Wednesday at 7 p.m. on Erin Burnett OutFront."  And this companion piece, headlined "The price of pot," provides this additional preview:

Penalties for the personal use of marijuana vary across the country, the most severe standing in stark contrast as more states legalize medical and even recreational use. Possession of an ounce of pot in Colorado is penalty-free, but if you’re in Kansas, that same ounce could land you a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

This week on "Erin Burnett OutFront," CNN's David Mattingly investigates two marijuana cases involving stiff penalties, including one man spending life in prison on pot charges. "OutFront" asks: Does the punishment fit the crime?  Watch the two-part "OutFront" investigation Wednesday and Thursday, September 3-4 at 7 p.m. ET.

  And now here are now excerpts from the commentary by  Vanita Gupta: 

Clearly something is broken when a Missouri man named Jeff Mizanskey can be sentenced to die in prison for purchasing seven pounds of marijuana. With two nonviolent marijuana convictions already on his record, Jeff received life without parole under Missouri's three strikes law.

The punishment of growing old and dying behind bars for offenses like Mizanskey's is extreme, tragic, and inhumane. This should outrage us, but it should not surprise us. This country has spent 40 years relentlessly ratcheting up the number of people going to prison and dramatically expanding the time we hold them there. We've spent decades criminalizing people with drug dependency, passing extreme sentencing laws, and waging a war on drugs that has not diminished drug use. Small wonder, then, that even less serious crimes like Mizanskey's marijuana purchase result in costly and cruel sentences....

While many of the lawmakers who passed harsh sentencing laws thought they were doing the right thing, the results are now in: This approach has devastated families and communities, generated high recidivism rates, drained state budgets from more productive investments, and has reinforced generations of poverty and disadvantage that disproportionately fall on communities of color. There were ways to hold Mizanskey and others like him accountable for their actions short of sentencing them to die in prison.

We can and must do better. It's time for states to end the costly criminalization of marijuana and recalibrate sentencing laws so that the punishment actually fits the crime as opposed to a politician's reelection agenda. Public attitudes toward marijuana are rapidly evolving, and a Gallup poll last year found for the first time that a majority of Americans now favor legalization as a better course than criminalization.

Unfortunately, laws and police practices that enforce them are out of step with public opinion. Nationally, nearly half of all drug arrests are for marijuana offenses. At least one person is arrested for marijuana possession every hour in Mizanskey's home state of Missouri, which also wasted nearly $50 million on marijuana enforcement in 2010. Although black people and white people use marijuana at about the same rate, a black person in Missouri was 2.6 times more likely to be arrested for having marijuana than a white person.

The solution is clear. Instead of taxpayers spending millions of dollars on this unnecessary enforcement and keeping folks like Mizanskey in prison for the rest of their lives, states could follow Colorado and Washington by taxing and regulating marijuana and investing saved enforcement dollars in education, substance abuse treatment, and prevention and other health care.

But even if states are not ready to expand their tax base in this manner, state lawmakers need to take a good, hard look at their sentencing laws and eliminate penalties that far outweigh the crimes they seek to punish. It is tempting to think that Mizanskey's case is an anomaly, but that is not the case.

According to a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union last year, there are currently 3,278 people serving life sentences without parole for nonviolent crimes, including marijuana offenses. Many of them, like Mizanskey, are there because of three-strikes laws and mandatory sentencing regimes. These policies force judges to impose excessively cruel sentences and forbid corrections officials from granting early release or parole, even despite exemplary records in prison.

The good news is that there is a growing bipartisan consensus all over the country that our criminal justice system has gone too far and that we can and must safely downsize our prison population. Missouri recently reformed the three strikes law that sentenced Jeff to prison for life. If he were sentenced today, he could have received a significantly shorter sentence and be eligible for parole.

As states like Missouri make these kinds of reforms, we must not forget the people who languish behind bars because of old sentencing laws now thought to be excessive. Smart reforms that correct past injustice should be made retroactive, and governors must use their clemency powers more frequently. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon should grant clemency to Jeff Mizanskey. Public safety is not served by having him die in prison.

September 3, 2014 in Drug Offense Sentencing, Examples of "over-punishment", Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Offense Characteristics, Pot Prohibition Issues, Prisons and prisoners, Scope of Imprisonment | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Sixth Circuit to hear oral argument on extreme application of ACCA in US v. Young

A number of months ago in this post, titled "A few shotgun shells landed a man 15 years in federal prison," I reported on a remarkable federal sentencing story out of Tennessee involving an extreme application of the 15-year mandatory minimum federal sentencing term set out in the Armed Career Criminal Act.  I am now excited that tomorrow morning, a Sixth Circuit panel is scheduled to hear oral argument in this matter, US v. Young.  I am excited in part because I authored a brief on behalf of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys (NACDL) setting out why this sentencing should be deemed unconstitutional under a proper application/interpretation of the Eighth Amendment.  And the Sixth Circuit has afforded me five minutes of argument time (taken from the Appellant's alloted time).

Notably, counsel for Mr. Young has on appeal has developed a Fifth Amendment challenge to the conviction as well as making Eighth Amendment arguments against the sentence.  And the feds, not surprisingly, contend there is no constitutional problem with the conviction and sentence in this case.  Readers interested in this case and the legal issues on appeal can review the briefs, which I am uploading here:

Download Brief of Appellant in US v. Young

Download Young Amicus FILED

Download Appellee's Briefin US v. Young

Download Reply Brief of Appellant in Young

Related prior posts:

March 12, 2014 in Examples of "over-punishment", Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Offense Characteristics, Sentences Reconsidered | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

New ACLU report spotlights thousands of nonviolent prisoners serving LWOP terms

Lwop-marquee-230x230-v01The ACLU has released a huge new report giving focused attention to the thousands of prisoners serving life without parole sentences in the United States for nonviolent drug and property crimes. This massive new report, which can be accessed at this link, is titled "A Living Death: Life without Parole for Nonviolent Offenses." This related webpage highlights some specific defendants and cases with this introduction:

For 3,278 people, it was nonviolent offenses like stealing a $159 jacket or serving as a middleman in the sale of $10 of marijuana. An estimated 65% of them are Black. Many of them were struggling with mental illness, drug dependency or financial desperation when they committed their crimes. None of them will ever come home to their parents and children. And taxpayers are spending billions to keep them behind bars.

Here is an excerpt from the 200+ page report's executive summary:

Using data obtained from the Bureau of Prisons and state Departments of Corrections, the ACLU calculates that as of 2012, there were 3,278 prisoners serving LWOP for nonviolent drug and property crimes in the federal system and in nine states that provided such statistics (there may well be more such prisoners in other states).  About 79 percent of these 3,278 prisoners are serving LWOP for nonviolent drug crimes.  Nearly two-thirds of prisoners serving LWOP for nonviolent offenses nationwide are in the federal system; of these, 96 percent are serving LWOP for drug crimes.  More than 18 percent of federal prisoners surveyed by the ACLU are serving LWOP for their first offenses.  Of the states that sentence nonviolent offenders to LWOP, Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Oklahoma have the highest numbers of prisoners serving LWOP for nonviolent crimes, largely due to three-strikes and other kinds of habitual offender laws that mandate an LWOP sentence for the commission of a nonviolent crime. The overwhelming majority (83.4 percent) of the LWOP sentences for nonviolent crimes surveyed by the ACLU were mandatory.  In these cases, the sentencing judges had no choice in sentencing due to laws requiring mandatory minimum periods of imprisonment, habitual offender laws, statutory penalty enhancements, or other sentencing rules that mandated LWOP.  Prosecutors, on the other hand, have immense power over defendants’ fates: whether or not to charge a defendant with a sentencing enhancement triggering an LWOP sentence is within their discretion.  In case after case reviewed by the ACLU, the sentencing judge said on the record that he or she opposed the mandatory LWOP sentence as too severe but had no discretion to take individual circumstances into account or override the prosecutor’s charging decision.

As striking as they are, the numbers documented in this report underrepresent the true number of people who will die in prison after being convicted of a nonviolent crime in this country.  The thousands of people noted above do not include the substantial number of prisoners who will die behind bars after being convicted of a crime classified as “violent” (such as a conviction for assault after a bar fight), nor do the numbers include “de facto” LWOP sentences that exceed the convicted person’s natural lifespan, such as a sentence of 350 years for a series of nonviolent drug sales.  Although less-violent and de facto LWOP cases fall outside of the scope of this report, they remain a troubling manifestation of extreme sentencing policies in this country.

November 13, 2013 in Examples of "over-punishment", Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Offense Characteristics, Prisons and prisoners, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender, Scope of Imprisonment | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBack

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Fascination and frustration with "finality fixation" in en banc Sixth Circuit Blewett arguments

As mentioned in this recent post, I have so far resisted writing up my thoughts concerning last week's remarkable Sixth Circuit en banc Blewett oral argument on crack sentencing modifications.  I have done so in part because I wanted to be able to devote a block of time to the task, and in part because via the Sixth Circuit website folks can (and should) listen for themselves to the audio recording of the hour-long argument via this link.

Now that I have had more time to think about last week's oral argument and the broader issues in Blewett, I continue to find myself (as the title of this post suggests) fascinated and frustrated by what I will call a "finality fixation" in the context of sentencing issues.   A variation of this fixation made me a bit batty in the FSA pipeline debate that culminated in the Supreme Court's Dorsey ruling, and it also comes to play in the on-going dispute over whether the Supreme Court's Miller ruling will apply retroactively to final juve murder sentences.  I am likely fixated on this notion of a "finality fixation"  because I am currently working on a symposium article on this topic.  Still, the tenor of much of the Blewett oral argument, and other arenas where concerns about sentencing finality seem often now to trump interests in sentencing fitness and fairness, have a way of driving me to fits of fascination and frustration.

At the risk of repeating parts of the brief on Eighth Amendment issues which I helped file on behalf of the NACDL (and which is discussed and linked via this prior post), let me try here to explain what still makes me a bit nutty about cases like Blewett.  

Point 1:  Each and every federal criminal justice policy-maker in the three branches of the federal government — Congress, the Prez and his Justice Department, and the US Sentencing Commission — have all expressly and formally declared that all 100-1 ratio pre-FSA crack prison sentences were unfair, excessive and ineffectual, AND Congress enacted the "Fair Sentencing Act" to lower all federal crack sentences by raising the trigger quantity for mandatory minimum prison terms and by mandated that the US Sentencing Commission significantly lower all crack guideline prison ranges.

Point 2: When it reformed modern sentencing rules and eliminated parole release, Congress created a express statutory sentencing modification mechanism — in 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2) — through which offenders still in prison who were "sentenced to a term of imprisonment based on a sentencing range that has subsequently been lowered by the Sentencing Commission [can move for a court to] reduce the term of imprisonment," AND thousands of the most serious crack offenders sentenced before the FSA have had their prison sentences reduced through this stautory mechanism.  (This latest USSC report indicates not only that 7,300+ pre-FSA crack offenders have had their prison terms reduced by an average of 29 months, but also that thousands of these crack offenders got reduced sentences despite having extensives criminal histories and/or having used a weapon in their offense and/or having a leadership role in the offense.  See Table 6 of USSC report.)

Point 3: Congress, the Prez and his Justice Department, and the US Sentencing Commission have all ordered, authorized and/or not objected to thousands of more serious pre-FSA crack offenders being eligble for (and regularly receiving) reduced prison terms via the statutory sentencing modification mechanism of 3582(c)(2).  The Blewetts and other less serious pre-FSA crack offenders whose sentences were impacted by the 100-1 mandatory minimum terms and who are still in federal prison serving (now-repealed) pre-FSA crack sentences that every federal criminal justice policy-maker in each branch of the federal government have expressly and formally declared unfair, excessive and ineffectual are now simply arguing that they, too, should be eligible to use the same statutory sentence modification mechanism that thousands of the most serious crack offenders have already benefitted from. 

Point 4: Nobody has, to my knowledge, even tried to offer a substantive defense or penological justification as to why the Blewetts and only those less serious pre-FSA crack offenders should not even be eligible for the statutory sentencing modification mechanism of 3582(c)(2) and thus must serve the full duration of (now-repealed) pre-FSA crack sentences.  Indeed, it seem to me at least that it is not just unjust, but irrational and cruel and unusual, to require only the least serious pre-FSA crack offenders to serve out prison terms that every federal criminal justice policy-maker in each branch of the federal government have expressly and formally declared unfair, excessive and ineffectual, especially given that thousands of the most serious pre-FSA crack offenders can and have already benefitted from the statutory sentencing modification mechanism of 3582(c)(2).  (Critically, Congress has never stated nor even suggested, either expressly or implicitly, that it wanted the Blewetts and only those less serious pre-FSA crack offenders to be catergorically ineligible for sentence modification.  Indeed, I think the fair implication of the express provisions of the FSA is that all pre-FSA crack offenders should at least have a chance for sentence modification pursuant to 3582(c)(2).)

In light of all these points, in my view the only plausible rationale for denying the Blewetts and other less serious pre-FSA crack offenders a chance for sentence modification is the oft-stated, but rarely thought-through, idea of "finality."  And though I think finality is an important policy concern when defendants are attacking long-final convictions, I do not think this concept of finality historically has or now should be given great weight when a defendant is only seeking to modestly modify a sentence.  Further, when a federal defendant is seeking only a modest prison sentence modification under an express statutory provision created by Congress, the comity and separation of powers concerns that might also give finality interests extra heft are not present. 

Thus my contention that only a "finality fixation" fully accounts for why so many judges seem resistant to the various legal arguments that the Blewetts and other less serious crack offenders are making in these FSA cases.  As I see it, given the text and purposes of the FSA and the text and purposes of 3852(c)(2), the eagerness of judges to deny relief to the Blewetts and other less serious crack offenders reflects a fixation on the notion that, even in this remarkable and unique setting, concerns about sentencing finality should still consistently and conclusively trump the need to achieving sentencing fitness and fairness.  And that reality fascinates and frustrates me.

Am I silly, dear readers, to be so fascinated and frustrated by all this?  I am hoping, especially from those eager to see the Blewett panel decision undone (which I now fear a majority of the Sixth Circuit is planning to do), for responses in the comments that might help me better see what my analysis above is missing and/or why I should not be so nutty about these "finality fixation" matters.

Related posts on Blewett:

October 15, 2013 in Examples of "over-punishment", Implementing retroactively new USSC crack guidelines, Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, New crack statute and the FSA's impact, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender, Sentences Reconsidered | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Sunday, August 11, 2013

New York Times column spotlights extreme application of ACCA in US v. Young

A few weeks ago in this post, titled "A few shotgun shells landed a man 15 years in federal prison," I reported on a remarkable federal sentencing story out of Tennessee involving an extreme application of the 15-year mandatory minimum federal sentencing term in the Armed Career Criminal Act.  I am now pleased to see Nicholas Kristof giving this case some attention via this new op-ed column headlined "Help Thy Neighbor and Go Straight to Prison."   Here are excerpts of a piece about a case that I hope gets lots and lots of attention as it makes its way up to the Sixth Circuit:

If you want to understand all that is wrong with America’s criminal justice system, take a look at the nightmare experienced by Edward Young.

Young, now 43, was convicted of several burglaries as a young man but then resolved that he would turn his life around.  Released from prison in 1996, he married, worked six days a week, and raised four children in Hixson, Tenn.

Then a neighbor died, and his widow, Neva Mumpower, asked Young to help sell her husband’s belongings.  He later found, mixed in among them, seven shotgun shells, and he put them aside so that his children wouldn’t find them. “He was trying to help me out,” Mumpower told me. “My husband was a pack rat, and I was trying to clear things out.”

Then Young became a suspect in burglaries at storage facilities and vehicles in the area, and the police searched his home and found the forgotten shotgun shells as well as some stolen goods.  The United States attorney in Chattanooga prosecuted Young under a federal law that bars ex-felons from possessing guns or ammunition. In this case, under the Armed Career Criminal Act, that meant a 15-year minimum sentence.

The United States attorney, William Killian, went after Young — even though none of Young’s past crimes involved a gun, even though Young had no shotgun or other weapon to go with the seven shells, and even though, by all accounts, he had no idea that he was violating the law when he helped Mrs. Mumpower sell her husband’s belongings.

In May, a federal judge, acknowledging that the case was Dickensian but saying that he had no leeway under the law, sentenced Young to serve a minimum of 15 years in federal prison.  It didn’t matter that the local authorities eventually dismissed the burglary charges.

So the federal government, at a time when it is cutting education spending, is preparing to spend $415,000 over the next 15 years to imprison a man for innocently possessing seven shotgun shells while trying to help a widow in the neighborhood.  And, under the law, there is no early release: Young will spend the full 15 years in prison.

This case captures what is wrong with our “justice” system: We have invested in mass incarceration in ways that are crushingly expensive, break up families and are often simply cruel. With less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States has almost one-quarter of the world’s prisoners.

This hasn’t always been the case, but it is the result of policies such as mandatory minimum sentences since the 1970s.  In 1978, the United States had 307,000 inmates in state and federal prisons. That soared to a peak of more than 1.6 million in 2009. Since then, the number of inmates has declined for three consecutive years to 1.57 million in 2012.  The number of juveniles detained has also begun to drop since peaking in 2000, although the U.S. still detains children at a rate five times that of the next highest country.

In short, there’s some hope that this American experiment in mass incarceration has been recognized as a failure and will be gradually unwound.  Among the leaders in moving away from the old policies are blue states and red states alike, including New York and Texas. But America still has twice as many prisoners today as under President Ronald Reagan.

Almost everyone seems to acknowledge that locking up vast numbers of nonviolent offenders is a waste of money. California devotes $179,400 to keep a juvenile in detention for a year, and spends less than $10,000 per student in its schools. Granted, mass incarceration may have been one factor in reduced crime in the last couple of decades; there’s mixed evidence. But, if so, the economic and social cost has been enormous — including the breakup of families and the increased risk that children of those families will become criminals a generation later....

When almost 1 percent of Americans are imprisoned (and a far higher percentage of men of color in low-income neighborhoods), our criminal justice system becomes a cause of family breakdown and contributes to the delinquency of a generation of children.  And mass incarceration interacts with other government policies, such as the way the drug war is implemented, to have a disproportionate effect on African-Americans.  Black men use marijuana at roughly the same rate as white men but are more than three times as likely to be arrested over it.

Young is particularly close to his children, ages 6 to 16.  After back problems and rheumatoid arthritis left him disabled, he was a stay-at-home dad while his wife worked in a doctor’s office.  When the judge announced the sentence, the children all burst into tears.  “I can’t believe my kids lose their daddy for the next 15 years,” his wife, Stacy, told me.  “He never tried to get a firearm in the 16 years I was with him. It’s crazy. He’s getting a longer sentence than people who’ve killed or raped.”...

I asked Killian, the United States attorney, why on earth he would want to send a man to prison for 15 years for innocently possessing seven shotgun shells. “The case raised serious public safety concerns,” Killian said.  Oh.

The classic caricature of justice run amok is Inspector Javert in Victor Hugo’s novel “Les Misérables,” pursuing Jean Valjean for stealing bread for hungry children.  In that case, Valjean knew that he was breaking the law; Edward Young had no idea.

Some day, Americans will look back and wonder at how we as a society could be much more willing to invest in prisons than in schools. They will be astonished that we sent a man to federal prison for 15 years for trying to help a widow.

Recent related post:

August 11, 2013 in Examples of "over-punishment", Gun policy and sentencing, Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Offense Characteristics, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Scope of Imprisonment | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBack

Monday, July 22, 2013

"A few shotgun shells landed a man 15 years in federal prison"

Young photoThe title of this post is the headline of this remarkable federal sentencing story out of Tennessee.  Here are the details:

In some cases, old mistakes echo across the years. New sins carry the crushing weight of an old life.   In some cases, a criminal past is not forgiven.

Months before he left state prison on burglary convictions in 1996, Edward Lamar Young told his grandmother he was going to be a different man. He would get work, get married and have a family.  The 26-year-old wouldn't steal to get what he needed or wanted.  And soon after he left prison bars behind he fulfilled that promise. He met and married a woman named Stacy.  The couple had four children.

But in late September 2011, he went off track.  He stole tools, tires and weightlifting equipment from vehicles and a business warehouse.  He even had his son with him on one trip, which added a separate charge. A video camera recorded the burglaries. Less than a week later police knocked on the door of his Hixson home. He let them in. They found the tools, but they found something else too, small items inside a drawer that would escalate his punishment far beyond burglary.

Young admits he's done bad things, but he says he's never carried a weapon, never shed another person's blood.  But because of what police found at his house that day -- seven shotgun shells -- his 15-year prison sentence now places him alongside lifelong killers, movie-style gangsters and drug kingpins.  There are homicide convictions that carry sentences half as long in Tennessee state courts. 

Laws designed for the worst of the worst, but written broadly enough to ensnare the less dangerous, subject Young to what even his sentencing judge called a Dickensian penalty. There is a bill in Congress that would give federal judges discretion, untie their hands to ensure punishments fit the crimes.  But that bill is far from passage and would have to apply retroactively, a rarity in many criminal laws, to help Young.

Weeks, maybe months before police came to his home Young had helped a neighbor, a woman named Neva Mumpower.  Her husband had died and she wanted to sell some of their older furniture.  She told Young if he hauled it to the flea market she'd split whatever it sold for.  He did, but kept a chest of drawers at his place. 

A short time later he went through it and found the shells.  Young didn't think much of them.  He put them away so the kids wouldn't come upon them and went on with his day. He'd get them back to Mumpower later or just throw them away.  Except he didn't.

Young confessed to the burglaries and faced state prison time, probably a few years with the likelihood of parole and probation.  Not a proud moment but recoverable.  The 43-year-old man soon discovered that the shotgun shells carried a heavier burden -- a 15-year mandatory federal prison sentence with no possibility of parole.

Standing inside the wood-paneled courtroom in the downtown federal building May 9, Stacy Young knew what was coming but held out a strand of hope.  Mercy, maybe.  She listened as the lawyers droned on about legal definitions, criminal histories and what was right, what was fair. Then the judge told her husband he could speak.

"I just ... I mean, it wasn't ... it wasn't my intent," Ed Young told the judge. "I did find them in the box, and I put them up until I could give them back to her, so my kids wouldn't find them.  I don't think I deserve to grow up without my family, and I don't think my family deserves to grow up without me."  The Youngs' oldest son, who is 16, ran out of the courtroom in tears.  The crying family huddled in the hallway after the sentencing. The youngest son is 6 years old.  He'll be 20 when Ed Young leaves federal prison, a 62-year-old man....

Convicted felons are told they no longer can possess firearms.  Having a gun, even if the felony was a white-collar crime such as wire fraud, means prison time.  What some may know but Young swears he did not, is that possessing ammunition, say seven shotgun shells, is just as bad.

There's nothing in Young's criminal record to show he's ever been accused of carrying a weapon, even in the 20-year-old burglary convictions.  But those burglaries are counted as "violent crimes."  And language is important.  Young's criminal past classified him as an armed career criminal under federal law.  That classification means he faces severe penalties for the rest of his life if he breaks any of the rules.

Young's attorney is flabbergasted. "I don't think there's anything like it at all," said Chris Varner.  "Everything went wrong here." As far as his legal research shows, it is only under the Armed Career Criminal Act that Young's distant convictions can count against him, Varner said.  Other federal sentencing guidelines would not have considered the past convictions because they were so long ago.

Once the charges were filed and the federal grand jury indicted Young, nothing could stop the machine that is federal law.  Prosecutor Chris Poole worked the case.  He declined to comment under U.S. Attorney's Office policy not to speak about active cases.  Young's case is on appeal to the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.  But in court documents, Poole explains to U.S. District Judge Curtis Collier that by definition Young's crimes fit the career criminal law and the minimum sentence is 15 years.  The maximum was life.

During the May 9 hearing Collier hinted at his thoughts on the Draconian sentence. "Mr. Young, I don't know if you read a lot, but there was an author who has written a lot of books, and has some overtones here. His name is Charles Dickens," Collier said.

The judge went on to explain the situation and his own lack of power. "This is a case where the Congress of the United States has instructed federal district judges like myself to impose a sentence of at least 180 months, that is, 15 years," Collier said. "... This sentence is not so much a punishment for the present crime as it is a punishment for your history of crimes."

The week after the federal sentencing, prosecutors in state court dismissed the burglary and related charges....

Stacy Young is now a single working mother with a house full of children.  She'll haul them down to Atlanta every other week.  Two of the children will visit the first day, then they'll stay overnight for the other two to see their father the second day.  Ed Young writes letters nearly every day and says he'll keep writing. 

Varner, his attorney, sees the sentence far outweighing the crime and worries what it says about justice. "This is not who we are, we do not do this as a nation," he said.  Stacy, devastated by the outcome, living with the consequences, sees it much more personally. "I don't think he should have 15 years for seven shotgun shells," she said. "I think it's crazy."

July 22, 2013 in Examples of "over-punishment", Gun policy and sentencing, Offender Characteristics, Offense Characteristics, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Scope of Imprisonment | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBack

Thursday, January 10, 2013

"Why Has Obama Pardoned So Few Prisoners?"

The title of this post is the headline of this new commentary by Sasha Abramsky which will appear in the January 28, 2013 issue of The Nation. (Hat tip: How Appealing.) The piece gives particular attention to the sad case of my former habeas client Weldon Angelos, and here are excerpts:

Six and a half years ago, I drove out to Lompoc federal penitentiary in the hills outside Santa Barbara to interview Weldon Angelos, a young man who had received the improbable sentence of fifty-five years without parole for selling marijuana, ostensibly while carrying a small pistol in an ankle holster.

A rap artist from Salt Lake City and friend to Napoleon and other eminences of the hip-hop world, Angelos had been ensnared by an informant in a series of undercover marijuana purchases that reeked of entrapment. What might have been a two-bit state pot case became a high-stakes federal case. When Angelos — who denied carrying a gun when dealing — refused to enter a guilty plea, the feds played hardball, piling more indictments onto the original charge.  In December 2003, more than a year after he had been arrested, Angelos was found guilty on several counts, though he was acquitted on others.  Because of mandatory minimum statutes linked to the firearms charges, the presiding judge — a George W. Bush appointee named Paul Cassell — was left with no discretion at sentencing. After asking the prosecuting and defense attorneys to advise him on the constitutionality of the sentence, a distraught Cassell handed down the fifty-five-year term, a punishment he called “unjust, cruel and even irrational.”  In his opinion, he urged then-President Bush to pardon the young father of three and right a clear judicial wrong.

Angelos was 23 when he was arrested.  He was in his mid-20s when I met him. It was such an obvious injustice that I thought the odds were pretty good he’d be out of prison by the time he was 30.  Surely one or another president would pardon him or commute his sentence, either reducing it or allowing him to be released on time served.

But today Angelos is in his early 30s and fast approaching his ten-year anniversary behind bars. Bush didn’t pardon him.  Neither has President Obama — despite earlier pleas on Angelos’s behalf from several ex-governors, dozens of ex–federal prosecutors and judges, and four US attorneys general; despite growing concerns over mandatory minimum sentences from members of Congress; despite the pledge by onetime Salt Lake City mayor and civil rights lawyer Rocky Anderson to “do anything I can to remedy this unbelievable injustice”; despite The Washington Post and other leading publications urging clemency; despite the fact that, at least rhetorically, the Obama administration has moved away from the sensational, fearmongering tactics of the drug war, and that drug czar Gil Kerlikowske doesn’t even like to talk about a “war on drugs”; despite the fact that in late 2012 Obama said the feds had “bigger fish to fry” than prosecuting marijuana users in states moving toward legalization; despite the fact that one state after another has rolled back its most draconian mandatory minimum sentences for small-time drug users and dealers....

So why hasn’t Obama done the right thing? Could it be that Angelos has just gotten lost in the shuffle? Possibly — but if that’s the reason, there would be evidence that Obama has used his pardon and commutation powers wisely in other cases. Unfortunately, that’s not true....

A president who talks the talk about more sensible, nuanced drug policy, and whose oratory frequently invokes what is best in the American political imagination, has shown himself remarkably reluctant to use one of the most important of presidential prerogatives—the power to right judicial wrongs. “This president,” says Anderson, “has been unbelievably timid and disinclined to do justice in cases that scream out for commutation.  There’s not a lot of moral or political fortitude in play.”...

In the long run, when it comes to preventing future unjust sentences like the one given Angelos, Congress and state legislatures should be the ones to roll back the excesses of the drug war.  And there’s no doubt that Obama, a constitutional law scholar, understands how much more powerful legislation is than the willful, even capricious, pardon function of the president. (After all, Clinton was excoriated for what appeared to be pardons issued in exchange for campaign and other contributions.  And Bush was heavily criticized for commuting the prison term of his disgraced adviser Lewis Libby.)  But when there’s a massive miscarriage of justice — as has happened all too often during the forty years of the “war on drugs” — the president’s ability to pardon or commute sentences is vital.

How does one tell Weldon Angelos’s kids that their father will not only never walk them to school but that he will never walk their children to school?  That if he survives fifty-five years in prison, he might get out just in time to walk his great-grandchildren to school. It’s unconscionable that such a sentence should stand.  If Angelos and other drug war prisoners with absurd sentences remain in prison through Obama’s second term, it will be a stain on the president’s legacy.

January 10, 2013 in Clemency and Pardons, Drug Offense Sentencing, Examples of "over-punishment", Purposes of Punishment and Sentencing, Scope of Imprisonment, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

"Plead Guilty or Go to Prison for Life"

The title of this post is the headline of this new commentary concerning the Chris Williams' case and authored by Jacob Sollum over at Reason.com.  The sub-headline is "The stark choice given a medical marijuana grower highlights the injustice of mandatory minimums," and here are excerpts:

Chris Williams, a Montana medical marijuana grower, faces at least five years in federal prison when he is sentenced on February 1. The penalty seems unduly severe, especially because his business openly supplied marijuana to patients who were allowed to use it under state law.

Yet five years is a cakewalk compared to the sentence Williams originally faced, which would have kept the 38-year-old father behind bars for the rest of his life. The difference is due to an extremely unusual post-conviction agreement that highlights the enormous power prosecutors wield as a result of mandatory minimum sentences so grotesquely unjust that in this case even they had to admit it....

For a while it seemed that Williams, who rejected a plea deal because he did not think he had done anything wrong and because he wanted to challenge federal interference with Montana's medical marijuana law, also was destined to die in prison. Since marijuana is prohibited for all purposes under federal law, he was not allowed even to discuss the nature of his business in front of the jury, so his conviction on the four drug charges he faced, two of which carried five-year mandatory minimums, was more or less inevitable.

Stretching Williams' sentence from mindlessly harsh to mind-bogglingly draconian, each of those marijuana counts was tied to a charge of possessing a firearm during a drug trafficking offense, based on guns at the Helena grow operation that Williams supervised and at Flor's home in Miles City, which doubled as a dispensary. Federal law prescribes a five-year mandatory minimum for the first such offense and 25 years for each subsequent offense, with the sentences to run consecutively.

Consequently, when Williams was convicted on all eight counts, he faced a mandatory minimum sentence of 80 years for the gun charges alone, even though he never handled the firearms cited in his indictment, let alone hurt anyone with them. This result, which federal prosecutors easily could have avoided by bringing different charges, was so absurdly disproportionate that U.S. Attorney Michael Cotter offered Williams a deal.

Drop your appeal, Cotter said, and we'll drop enough charges so that you might serve "as little as 10 years." No dice, said Williams, still determined to challenge the Obama administration's assault on medical marijuana providers. But when Cotter came back with a better offer, involving a five-year mandatory minimum, Williams took it, having recognized the toll his legal struggle was taking on his 16-year-old son, a freshman at Montana State University.

"I think everyone in the federal system realizes that these mandatory minimum sentences are unjust," Williams tells me during a call from the Missoula County Detention Facility. But for prosecutors they serve an important function: "They were basically leveraging this really extreme sentence against something that was so light because they wanted to force me into taking a plea deal." Nine out of 10 federal criminal cases end in guilty pleas.

The efficient transformation of defendants into prisoners cannot be the standard by which we assess our criminal justice system. If the possibility of sending someone like Chris Williams to prison for the rest of his life is so obviously unfair, why does the law allow it, let alone mandate it?

I am glad to see the Williams' case continuing to get attention and criticism, but this commentary overlooks what strikes me as one of the worst parts of the deal with federal devil that Williams was forced to accept: in the deal, Williams waived all of his appeal rights to challenge his convictions so that he would not be able to continue with his lawful and courageous challenge to the federal laws with which he was prosecuted.

Prior posts on Williams case and related prosecutions:

January 2, 2013 in Drug Offense Sentencing, Examples of "over-punishment", Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Pot Prohibition Issues, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Sentences Reconsidered, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack

Monday, November 26, 2012

Spotlighting connection between mental illness and extreme three-strike sentences

Yesterday's New York Times ran this interesting editorial by Brent Staples concerning the impact and import of the recent reform of California's three-strikes law.  The piece has a particular focus on the role mental illness may play in many of the most troubling sentencing outcomes resulting from extra tough recidivism sentencing enhancements.  The piece is headlined "California Horror Stories and the 3-Strikes Law," and here are excerpts:

Californians brought a close to a shameful period in the state’s history when they voted this month to soften the infamous “three strikes” sentencing law.  The original law was approved by ballot initiative in 1994, not long after a parolee kidnapped and murdered a 12-year-old girl.  It was sold to voters as a way of getting killers, rapists and child molesters off the streets for good.

As it turned out, three strikes created a cruel, Kafkaesque criminal justice system that lost all sense of proportion, doling out life sentences disproportionately to black defendants.  Under the statute, the third offense that could result in a life sentence could be any number of low-level felony convictions, like stealing a jack from the back of a tow truck, shoplifting a pair of work gloves from a department store, pilfering small change from a parked car or passing a bad check.  In addition to being unfairly punitive, the law drove up prison costs.

The revised law preserves the three-strikes concept, but it imposes a life sentence only when the third felony offense is serious or violent, as defined in state law.  It also authorizes the courts to resentence thousands of people who were sent away for low-level third offenses and who present no danger to the public.

The resentencing process is shaping up as a kind of referendum on the state’s barbaric treatment of mentally ill defendants, who make up a substantial number of those with life sentences under the three-strikes rule.  It is likely that many were too mentally impaired to assist their lawyers at the time of trial.

Mentally ill inmates are nearly always jailed for behaviors related to their illness. Nationally, they account for about one-sixth of the prison population.  The ratio appears to be higher among three-strike lifers in California.  According to a 2011 analysis of state data by Stanford Law School’s Three Strikes Project, nearly 40 percent of these inmates qualify as mentally ill and are receiving psychiatric services behind bars....

Asked about the relationship of mental illness and three-strikes prosecutions, Michael Romano, director of the Stanford project, responded, “In my experience, every person who has been sentenced to life in prison for a nonserious, nonviolent crime like petty theft suffers from some kind of mental illness or impairment — from organic brain disorders, to schizophrenia, to mental retardation, to severe P.T.S.D.,” or post-traumatic stress disorder. Nearly all had been abused as children, he pointed out.  All had been homeless for extended periods, and many were illiterate. None had graduated from high school.

In other words, these were discarded people who could be made to bear the brunt of this brutal law without risk of public backlash.... And as more cases unfold in court, judges, lawyers and Californians should look back with shame at the injustice the state inflicted on a vulnerable population that often presented little or no danger to the public.

Some recent related posts:

November 26, 2012 in Campaign 2012 and sentencing issues , Examples of "over-punishment", Offender Characteristics, Prisons and prisoners, Scope of Imprisonment, Sentences Reconsidered | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Another obvious mandatory sentencing injustice in Florida "warning shot" case

As reported in this CNN story, headlined "Florida woman sentenced to 20 years in controversial warning shot case," another high-profile shooting case in Florida has produced a different kind of criminal justice controversy.  Here are the details:

Saying he had no discretion under state law, a judge sentenced a Jacksonville, Florida, woman to 20 years in prison Friday for firing a warning shot in an effort to scare off her abusive husband.

Marissa Alexander unsuccessfully tried to use Florida's controversial "stand your ground" law to derail the prosecution, but a jury in March convicted her of aggravated assault after just 12 minutes of deliberation.

The case, which was prosecuted by the same state attorney who is handling the Trayvon Martin case, has gained the attention of civil rights leaders who say the African-American woman was persecuted because of her race.

After the sentencing, Rep. Corrine Brown confronted State Attorney Angela Corey in the hallway, accusing her of being overzealous, according to video from CNN affiliate WJXT. "There is no justification for 20 years," Brown told Corey during an exchange frequently interrupted by onlookers.  "All the community was asking for was mercy and justice," she said.

Corey said she had offered Alexander a plea bargain that would have resulted in a three-year prison sentence, but Alexander chose to take the case to a jury trial, where a conviction would carry a mandatory sentence under a Florida law known as "10-20-life." The law mandates increased penalties for some felonies, including aggravated assault, in which a gun is carried or used.

Corey said the case deserved to be prosecuted because Alexander fired in the direction of a room where two children were standing. Alexander said she was attempting to flee her husband, Rico Gray, on August 1, 2010, when she picked up a handgun and fired a shot into a wall.  She said her husband had read cell phone text messages that she had written to her ex-husband, got angry and tried to strangle her.

She said she escaped and ran to the garage, intending to drive away.  But, she said, she forgot her keys, so she picked up her gun and went back into the house. She said her husband threatened to kill her, so she fired one shot. "I believe when he threatened to kill me, that's what he was absolutely going to do," she said.  "That's what he intended to do. Had I not discharged my weapon at that point, I would not be here."...

A jury convicted Alexander in March and Judge James Daniel denied her request for a new trial in April.  Daniel handed down the sentence Friday after an emotional sentencing hearing during which Alexander's parents, 11-year-old daughter and pastor spoke on her behalf.

Several people had to be escorted from the courtroom after breaking out singing and chanting about a perceived lack of justice in the case, but Daniel made a point to say that he had no choice under state law. "Under the state's 10-20-life law, a conviction for aggravated assault where a firearm has been discharged carries a minimum and maximum sentence of 20 years without regarding to any extenuating or mitigating circumstances that may be present, such as those in this case," Daniel said.

Brown, the Jacksonville congresswoman, told reporters after the sentencing that the case was a product of "institutional racism."

"She was overcharged by the prosecutor.  Period," Brown said.  "She never should have been charged."  Brown has been more complimentary about Corey's work in the Trayvon Martin case, where her office filed second degree murder charges against neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in the February 26 death of the unarmed African-American teen-ager.

It is sad, very disappointing and ultimately quite harmful that Rep. Corrine Brown is apparently so eager to assert that the injustice in this case reflects "institutional racism" and misuse of prosecutorial discretion.  It seems far more appropriate to complain that the injustice in this case reflects structural flaws in Florida's sentencing laws and mistakes by the state legislature to fail to provide a safety-valve from the application of broad mandatory sentencing provisions.

As the CNN story reveals, the prosecutor apparently had the ability and authority to prevent application of Florida's "10-20-life" sentencing law if Marissa Alexander had been wiling to forgo her constitutional right to trial to have the judicial system consider her self-defense claims.  But after Alexander decided to exercise her trial rights, then her conviction apparently deprived a judge or any other authority the ability and authority to sentence her to anything less than 20 years in prison.  Without knowing more about the case, I am not sure if the three-year term offered in the plea or even a lesser sentence would have been appropriate, but it seem obvious to me that a 20-year term is grossly excessive for Alexander's offense conduct.

Bemoaning this case as a reflection of "institutional racism" brings far more heat than light to this dark (but not uncommon) example of mandatory sentencing injustice.  A focus instead on the problems with letting only prosecutors and not judges decide if a case merits an exception to strict sentencing rules could help this case engender needed structural reforms rather than more racial polarization.  Helpfully, the folks at FAMM are effectively using this case to bring attention to these critical sentencing matters, but I fear that the eagerness of Rep. Corrine Brown to play the race card will eclipse FAMM's efforts to use this kind of case to foster sober and needed sentencing reforms.

Though I am not certain of the sentencing commutation authority of Florida's Governor, this case seems to cry out for executive clemency.  Though involving a very offense environments, I am reminded of the high-profile "border agent" case from a few years ago in which two federal border agents got saddled with a sentences of more than a decade after failed self-defenses claims due mandatory federal gun sentencing provisions.  On his last day in office, as detailed here, President George W. Bush justifably commuted the sentences of these border agents.  I hope Florida's Governor has both the power and the wisdom to use the same means to undue an obvious sentencing injustice in this case.

May 12, 2012 in Clemency and Pardons, Examples of "over-punishment", Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Race, Class, and Gender, State Sentencing Guidelines, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (34) | TrackBack

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Notable recent state child porn sentencing developments in South Dakota

Thanks to this brief new AP article, which is headlined "South Dakota child pornography convict gets 100-year prison sentence cut about in half," I learned about a fascinating ruling from last year by the South Dakota Supreme Court in South Dakota v. Bruce, 2011 S.D. 14 (SD April 6, 2011) (available here).

Working backwards, here is the latest sentencing news in this notable case:

A 100-year prison sentence handed down to a Pierre man convicted of possessing child pornography has been cut about in half.  The South Dakota Supreme Court last year ruled that the initial sentence for 48-year-old Troy Bruce was excessive and ordered a new sentencing.

KCCR radio reports that Judge Mark Barnett on Tuesday sentenced Bruce to a total of 55 years in prison.  Bruce will be eligible for parole after serving one-fourth of the sentence. He also was given credit for about two years he already has served behind bars.

This report prompted me to wonder if the South Dakota Supreme Court had actually deemed a child porn sentence to be unconstitutional, and the Bruce ruling nearly does.  Here are notable snippets from the majority opinion in Bruce:

Bruce was convicted of possessing one DVD containing fifty-five videos of child pornography.  He received the ten-year maximum sentence on all fifty-five counts.  Forty-five of the sentences were suspended, but the sentences on the remaining ten counts were to be served consecutively resulting in a total sentence of 100 years.  Bruce contends that this sentence was cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment....

When such statutory ranges are established, the legislative intent is that "the more serious commissions of [the] crime . . . deserve sentences at the harsher end of the spectrum.... Imposing the maximum possible term where the circumstances of the crime only justify a sentence at a lower range violates legislative intent to reserve the most severe sanctions for the most serious combinations of the offense and the background of the offender.” Bonner, 1998 S.D. 30, ¶ 25.   Further, we now adopt Justice Konenkamp’s recommendation “that courts look at two additional determinants when assessing the seriousness of a child pornography offense: (1) the specific nature of the material and (2) the extent to which the offender is involved with that material.” Blair, 2006 S.D. 75, ¶ 83....

With respect to the seriousness of this offense, the pornography involved much more than lewd images but less than the worst possible material covered by the statute....

With respect to Bruce’s involvement, he was convicted of possessing the one DVD containing fifty-five images. Although thirty other discs containing child pornography images were found, the court “consider[ed] Counts 1 through 10 as one act” for the purpose of determining parole eligibility. Additionally, there was no evidence that Bruce manufactured or distributed child pornography. Finally, there was no evidence suggesting that Bruce had ever sexually abused a child, had sexual contact with a child, or solicited a child for sexual images. This was a case of simple possession of images.

Bruce’s character and history reflect that he was a divorced forty-eight year old with three children, one who was still a minor. Other than a careless driving offense, Bruce had no prior criminal history. He was a former member of the National Guard and a veteran who had served in Saudi Arabia and Iraq during Operation Desert Storm....

Bruce’s maximum sentences were not reserved for the most serious combination of criminal conduct and background of the offender. We therefore conclude that this is the exceedingly rare case in which Bruce’s sentence was grossly disproportionate to the “particulars of the offense and the offender.” See Bonner, 1998 S.D. 30, ¶ 25. Because Bruce did not present comparative information with which to conduct an intra- and interjurisdictional analysis, we reverse and remand to the circuit court to consider that evidence on resentencing.

A concurring opinion in Bruce adds these notable observations:

In South Dakota, gross disparity in the sentence length for possession of child pornography exists.  For example, in State v. Martin, 2003 S.D. 153, 674 N.W.2d 291, the defendant’s sentence for possession of child pornography was a term of two years in the penitentiary with all but forty-five days in jail suspended subject to additional conditions. In the present case, the aggregate sentence is a term of 100 years in the penitentiary. Yet the facts of the two cases are similar: both involve the possession but not the manufacture or distribution of multiple computer-based images of child pornography. The difference in the length of the sentences for these similar crimes is shocking.

I think it is safe to assert that, not just in South Dakota, but all across this great nation, "gross disparity in the sentence length for possession of child pornography exists."  I have seen and heard of many state (and few federal cases) in which a child porn possession conviction results in only months in prison, and yet a few months ago in Florida (as reported here) Daniel Enrique Guevara Vilca received a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for mere child porn possession!  What a sad and disturbing mess.

February 1, 2012 in Examples of "over-punishment", Procedure and Proof at Sentencing, Sex Offender Sentencing, State Sentencing Guidelines, Who Sentences | Permalink | Comments (29) | TrackBack