Sentencing Law and Policy

Highlighting comments, commentary and consequences from state sentencing of mass molester Larry Nassar

The nature of Larry Nassar's crimes and of his victims contributed to his state sentencing earlier today (basics here) garnering lots and lots of attention.  I suspect in days to come we may see continuing commentary about Nassar's crimes and their enduring consequences, and tonight I thought to highlight a few particulars already garnering attention.

First, certain comments made by the state judge at sentencing have prompted an array of reactions, and so I thought it useful to link here to a full transcript of the judge's full comments at sentencing.  I think it is fair to call everything about the Nassar case remarkable, and the judge's sentencing statement also merits that adjective.

Second, and speaking of the judge and her sentencing comments, over at Slate Mark Joseph Stern already has this notable commentary headlined "Larry Nassar’s Victims Deserved a Judge Like Rosemarie Aquilina."  The piece closes with these lines: "The result was impassioned and imperfect.  It was also what Larry Nassar deserved."

And third, this local article reports on a noteworthy consequence of Nassar's crimes: "Michigan State President Lou Anna Simon resigns hours after Nassar sentencing."  I hesitate calling the MSU Prez another victim of Nassar, but I do not hesitate predicting that Nassar's crimes will reverberate in many ways and in many areas for quite some time to come.

Prior related posts:

• Does and should anyone care about just how and where child molester/gymnastics coach Larry Nassar rots in prison?
• Child molester/gymnastics coach Larry Nassar gets maxed-out, 60-year federal prison sentence for child porn offenses
• Child molester/gymnastics coach Larry Nassar gets (only?!?) 40 to 175 years as state prison sentence for mass molestation

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court unanimously rejects constitutional attack on consideration of victim impact statements at sentencing

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court handed down a notable short ruling today in Massachusetts v. McGonagle, SJC-12292 (Mass. Jan. 18, 2018) (available here). Here is how the unanimous opinion starts and ends:

General Laws c. 258B, § 3 (p), permits "victims . . . to be heard through an oral and written victim impact statement at sentencing . . . about the effects of the crime on the victim and as to a recommended sentence."  We transferred this case here on our own motion to answer two questions: first, whether the United States Supreme Court's recent decision in Bosse v. Oklahoma, 137 S. Ct. 1 (2016) (per curiam), precludes a sentencing judge from considering victim impact statements "as to a recommended sentence" under the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution and art. 26 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights; and second, whether the sentencing recommendation provision violates the defendant's constitutional guarantee of due process.  We conclude that a sentencing judge's consideration of victim impact statements "as to a recommended sentence" is constitutional because the concerns underpinning the Supreme Court's treatment of victim impact statements before a jury during the sentencing phase of a capital murder trial differ from those at issue here.  We further conclude that a victim's right to recommend a sentence pursuant to G. L. c. 258B, § 3 (p), satisfies the requirements of due process. We therefore answer both questions in the negative and affirm....

"Few, perhaps no, judicial responsibilities are more difficult than sentencing. The task is usually undertaken by trial judges who seek with diligence and professionalism to take account of the human existence of the offender and the just demands of a wronged society."  Rodriguez, 461 Mass. at 259, quoting Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 77 (2010).  The concerns underlying the Supreme Court's holdings in Booth and Bosse, that sentencing decisions not be made based on emotion, apply in nearly every sentencing decision.  They raise an important caution. When a crime victim recommends a particular sentence to a judge, that judge must dispassionately consider that recommendation, cognizant that the sentencing decision is the judge's and the judge's alone.  We expect judges to make sentencing decisions devoid of emotion, prejudice, and the relative status of a particular crime victim.

We all stand equal before the bar of justice, and it is neither cruel nor unusual or irrational, nor is it violative of a defendant's due process guarantees, for a judge to listen with intensity to the perspective of a crime victim.  We affirm.

UPDATE: Not long after noting this case, it dawned on me that this posting might be a fitting place to link this compelling account from the Washington Post of all the compelling victim impact testimony being offered in a high profile case in Michigan this week.  The extended article is headlined "At Larry Nassar sentencing hearing, a parade of horror and catharsis," and here is the context:

Nearly a year and a half after one woman filed a police report and contacted a newspaper, the criminal cases against Larry Nassar are nearing an end this week with a marathon sentencing hearing — 105 of the more than 130 girls and women who’ve accused Nassar of abuse are expected to speak — that began Tuesday and could end Friday, before a judge levies a sentence for seven sex crimes Nassar has admitted to as part of a plea deal.

Seeking experiences and thoughts on Marsy's Law, especially from prosecutors, as Ohio prepares to vote

My local paper, the Columbus Dispatch, has this new article reporting on the on-going debate over "Marsy's Law," which is due to be considered by voter initiative here in Ohio this Tuesday. The piece is headlined "Victims rights concerns at root of Issue 1," and here are excerpts:

People on both sides of state Issue 1 say they are deeply concerned with victims rights, but some of those who are opposed question its workability and even its necessity.

Also known as Marsy’s Law, Issue 1 would amend the Ohio Constitution to enshrine rights for victims of alleged crimes that supporters say aren’t guaranteed now.  It’s on the ballot Tuesday. The amendment would require that victims be notified of important hearings in criminal cases of such things as prison releases.  It also would give alleged victims standing to intervene in criminal cases to try to protect what they see as their interests.  And it would seek to protect their privacy.

Marsy’s Law is named for Marsy Nicholas, who in 1983 was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in California. Unbeknownst to her parents, Nicholas’s killer was released on bail and her parents ran into him in a store.

The effort to change state constitutions in Ohio and elsewhere is bankrolled by Marsy’s brother, California tech billionaire Henry Nicholas, who was born in a Cincinnati suburb and moved west as a young boy.  His team insists that the constitutional amendment is meant merely to level the playing field for crime victims.  “Criminals get way more constitutional protections than crime victims do,” said Gail Gitcho, national spokeswoman for the Marsy’s Law effort.

But while victims’ rights are an easy sell politically, criminal cases don’t set the rights of the accused against those of an alleged victim, said Ohio Public Defender Tim Young. “The victim doesn’t need rights to keep the government from improperly sending them to prison,” he said.

Gitcho agreed that victims’ interests are different in criminal cases, and she said nothing about whether Issue 1 would limit constitutional protections for criminal defendants. But, she said, it’s high time that victims’ interests are protected in the Ohio Constitution.

Issue 1 has gathered the support of some high-level prosecutors, such as Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien.  But the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association, the Ohio State Bar Association and the Ohio Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys have come out against the ballot initiative.

One concern is that the state Constitution isn’t the appropriate place for the protections. If problems arise with the workability of Issue 1, it would be exceedingly difficult to fix them by amending the Constitution, said Louis Tobin, executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association. Issue 1 supporters say, however, that it’s necessary to put victim rights in the Constitution to ensure they’re protected because a 1994 state statute intended to do so hasn’t been enough.

“In the last several decades since, it has become clear that the rights of Ohio victims are not enforceable, there have been numerous efforts to strengthen those rights in the legislature,” Issue 1 spokesman Aaron Marshall said in an email. “All of those efforts have failed due to pushback from the same groups who are now claiming that they would support victims’ rights legislative improvements.”...

Asked for examples of victims’ rights violations in Ohio that would be helped by Issue 1, Marshall cited the case of a northeast Ohio rape in which the trial was postponed 20 times over more than five years. He also pointed to a Summit County woman’s long fight to keep private her psychological records and social media passwords after her boyfriend was killed and she was beaten, shot and stabbed.

Despite the appeal of Issue 1, Public Defender Young predicts a raft of legal headaches if it passes. “This isn’t about victims’ rights,” he said. “It’s about the Bill of Rights.”

As this article highlights, the vote over Marsy's Law has split the state's prosecutors, with Ohio's Attorney General and some county prosecutors in support, but with the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association (OPAA) against.  (The Ohio AG is already a declared candidate for Ohio governor in 2018, which may have played some role in his thinking on the issue.)  This recent commentary from the executive director of the OPAA explains some of the group's concerns:

Marsy’s Law could negatively impact Ohio communities.  The amendment grants “the victim’s . . . lawful representative” the right to assert a victim’s rights. Courts could determine that this grants the victim the right to an attorney. The victim would then have the right to a court-appointed attorney if indigent.

Taxpayers could be paying for the prosecutor; for counsel for an indigent defendant; and for counsel for an indigent victim. This duplication of responsibilities and costs is bad enough in one case. Multiplied by thousands of cases each year, it could delay justice at best and deny it at worst.

Ohio’s prosecutors applaud advocates for victims.  They deserve praise for raising awareness of the cause and plight of victims of crime, and we stand ready to work with all to improve victim’s rights in a meaningful way.  Enshrining Marsy’s Law in Ohio’s Constitution in response to a problem case in California, however, is not beneficial. Ohioans should be concerned about the consequences for our justice system.

I tend to be a strong supporter of victim's rights in the criminal justice system, while also being a strong supporter of defendant rights.  Because I do not think there has to be or should be a zero-sum quality to defendant/victim rights, I am always inclined to support a proposal that seeks to expanded identified and enforceable rights in our justice system.  For this reason, I am inclined to support Marsy's Laws, and that inclination is enhanced by my extraordinary respect for lawyers and advocates I know who work so hard on behalf of rights of crime victims in a range of settings.

That all said, because Ohio has a number of victims' rights already in place in our Constitution and statutes, I understand the concern that Marsy's Law could end up being a cure worse than the current disease.  For that reason, as the title of this post suggests, I would be especially interested in hearing from prosecutors or others with direct experience with the impact and import of Marsy's Law or with particular concerns as to how the law might play out in Ohio.  I believe this law has been on the books for nearly a decade in California and in a handful of others states, and the debate here in Ohio has seemingly not included any examples of the law causing any big trouble in other jurisdictions.  A little research turned up this recent AP article from North Dakota reporting that law enforcement has described the impact of Marsy's Law there as  "very, very minimal."

So, informed (or uninformed) readers, any sharp thoughts on how the citizens of Ohio should vote on Marsy's Law?

"Is There a ‘Rational’ Punishment for My Rapist?"

The title of this post is the title of this powerful personal article authored by Amber Rose Carlson.  I recommend the piece in full, and I hesitate to reprint excerpts for fear of diluting the potency of the entire piece.  But this excerpt perhaps will help prompt folks to click through to read the full piece:

“Imagine your rapist had been found guilty and sentenced in court. What would you want his sentence to be?” This was the question asked to me in January 2016 by my therapist during a session of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (E.M.D.R.) — a treatment that researchers tout as one of the best remedies for severe trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder.

I was raped repeatedly during a three-year span from age 13 to 16. I was also subject to physical and emotional abuse during that time. I’ve since undergone years of traditional talk and group therapy with trauma specialists, and I am more healed today than I ever thought possible.  Still, recovering from trauma is a serious endeavor, and I hoped for more healing....

I’m not a proponent of the death penalty primarily because the flaws in our criminal justice system are egregious and increasingly well-documented. The thought experiment’s framing, however, circumvented my usual concerns about unjust sanctions. I know what my rapist did to me, so I know he is guilty. Worries about the inhumanity of capital punishment were also blunted in part because this was purely hypothetical and in part because of the inhumanity he exhibited those long years with his penchant for violence.

Although the death sentence seemed wholly appropriate, I still considered how I would feel if a judge gave my rapist a less severe punishment: a natural life sentence — a life sentence with no chance for parole without a successful appeal.  In this scenario, my feelings were just as clear: I would be slightly disappointed, but I would still feel mostly satisfied.  Anything less than a death or natural life sentence, I knew, would seem inadequate....

IN FEBRUARY 2016 — only weeks after the thought experiments with my therapist — the philosopher Jennifer Lackey published an opinion piece in The Stone. In the article, she uses her experience teaching philosophy to inmates to argue for the irrationality of natural life sentences.  Lackey bases her argument against natural life sentences on two reasonable claims: (1) people (criminals, specifically) can and do change in profoundly transformative ways, and (2) we cannot know the future.

For Lackey, the fact that we have good statistical evidence that criminals can and do change is especially problematic given our vast epistemic limitations regarding the future. “Natural life sentences,” she wrote, “say to all involved that there is no possible piece of information that could be learned between sentencing and death that could bear in any way on the punishment the convicted is said to deserve, short of what might ground an appeal.” Citing the possibility of prisoner transformation, Lackey then puts her question about rationality directly: “How is it rational,” she asks, “to screen off the relevance of this information? How, that is, is it rational to say today that there can be no possible evidence in the future that could bear on the punishment that a decades-from-now prisoner deserves?”...

I read Lackey’s article very soon after the thought experiments with my therapist. I noticed that Lackey’s argument easily applied to the death penalty, and I realized that the sentences I desired for my rapist were precisely the ones Lackey condemns as irrational.  Since nothing in her argument prevented me from applying her logic to my own desires, I had to wonder if her argument also concluded that I was irrational for desiring permanent punishments.  If it is irrational for the state to prescribe a permanent punishment given our epistemic limitations and prisoners’ likelihood for change, wouldn’t it be similarly irrational for victims to ignore these considerations?

There are, of course, crucial differences between victim’s desires and punishments carried out by the state. While sometimes the criminal justice system considers the wishes of victims and their families, the criminal justice system’s central aim is to protect the interests of the state and the community.  This aim does not always coincide with the interests or wishes of the victim.  Admittedly, there are often very good reasons for the state to ignore the wishes of victims.  But my concern is less about what the state should do in practice and more about what arguments that prioritize transformation say about victims who desire permanent punishments.

Here I will be blunt: it matters very little to me whether my rapist is transformed at some point in his life. It matters to me only to the extent that I will readily agree that it would be better if he became the sort of person who did not inflict violence upon others.  I would be very happy hearing that no other women would be harmed by him. But in terms of the punishment that he deserves?  Transformation does not matter to me.  And this is not irrational: There are many carefully considered reasons one might want a natural life sentence for perpetrators of egregious and irrevocable harm.

Desiring death or a natural life sentence for those who inflict traumatic violence is a rational response because whether or not my particular rapist transforms is irrelevant to whether or not I will ever have the chance to be the sort of person I might have been.  His transformation is irrelevant to whether or not I will be able to live the sort of life I could have were it not for the injustice done to me. I desire a death or natural life sentence for my rapist because that is what seems appropriate given the amount of damage he wrought in my life....

Although my attitude is in no way representative of all victims, epistemic arguments that prioritize criminal transformation must contend with the implication that they can be used to paint trauma victims irrational when they desire retribution.  It’s certainly important to advocate for prisoners who are wrongly incarcerated and for those who were victims of the overzealous war on crime era.  The injustices in our criminal justice system are too numerous and too serious to ignore. But criminal justice reform should not be so myopic that it compounds trauma survivors’ victimization.  Those who manage to survive traumatic crimes have enough to battle without arguments that undermine their rational considerations. Advocates for criminal justice reform can, and should, do better.

Is it important to have laws barring sex offenders from living anywhere near their victims?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by this new AP piece headlined "Sex offenders can live next door to victims in many states." Here are excerpts:

A convicted sex offender who molested his niece when she was 7 years old moved in next door to his victim nearly a dozen years after he was sent to prison for the crime. Outraged, the Oklahoma woman, now 21, called lawmakers, the police and advocacy groups to plead with them to take action.  Danyelle Dyer soon discovered that what Harold Dwayne English did in June is perfectly legal in the state — as well as in 44 others that don't specifically bar sex offenders from living near their victims, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

"I always felt safe in my home, but it made me feel like I couldn't go home, I couldn't have my safe space anymore," Dyer told The Associated Press, which typically doesn't identify victims of sexual assault, but is doing so in Dyer's case because she agreed to allow her named to be used in hopes of drawing attention to the issue.  "He would mow in between our houses.  Him moving in brought back a lot of those feelings."

Advocacy groups say the Oklahoma case appears to be among the first in the U.S. where a sex offender has exploited the loophole, which helps explain why dozens of other states have unknowingly allowed it to exist. "This is something that I would dare say was never envisioned would happen," said Richard Barajas, a retired Texas judge and executive director of the nonprofit National Organization for Victim Assistance.  "In all the years that I've been involved with the criminal justice system, I've never seen a case like this."

Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Tennessee and West Virginia have laws dictating how far away sex offenders must stay from their victims — 1,000 feet in Tennessee, for example, and 2,000 feet in Arkansas. Other states haven't addressed the issue, though like Oklahoma they have laws prohibiting sex offenders from living within a certain distance of a church, school, day care, park or other facility where children are present.

"You assume it can't happen and then realize there is no provision preventing it from happening," said one Oklahoma prosecutor, Rogers County District Attorney Matt Ballard, whose agency is responsible for keeping tabs on sex offenders in his area. "To have even the possibility of an offender living next to the victim is extremely troubling."

Arkansas passed its provision in 2007. State Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, a former prosecutor, said lawmakers drafted the provision out of "common sense," not as a response to a situation like Dyer's. But Barajas, whose group discussed the loophole with attendees at its annual training event this past week, said support for such laws typically gain traction "when someone who was impacted steps up," like Dyer. "Legislation is never created in a vacuum," he said.

Oklahoma lawmakers have now drafted legislation to close the loophole, using Dyer as their champion.  "Of the 70,000 square miles in Oklahoma, this individual happened to choose a place next door to the victim," said state Rep. Kyle Hilbert, who represents Dyer's mostly rural district and is sponsoring the legislation....

Advocacy groups said most legislatures across the U.S. would be able to close the loophole in their laws relatively easily, and said such measures typically receive strong backing from victims, clergy, parents and police.  "I don't see any legal reason why those statutes cannot be amended to ensure that the actual victims are protected; it's no different than prohibiting sex offenders from living 1,000 feet from a church or school," Barajas said. "It's not that the legislation (already on the books) is anti-victim, it's just that we have lacked the voice. We certainly have a megaphone, but when you talk about victims of (sexual abuse), you can't have a megaphone big enough."

Dyer, who is attending the University of Central Oklahoma in the Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond, said she hopes her story will help other victims who may think they're trapped in similar situations. "I think a lot of people feel like they are alone and that nobody cares," Dyer said. "The biggest thing is that they're not alone."

I fully understand the desire and need to protect victims from those who criminally victimized them, not only in sex offense cases but also in other settings.  But if the problem highlighted in this article is rare, I would urge legislatures to be cautious before passing broad new laws that would impact a broad swath of offenders.  With research suggesting that broad sex offender residency restrictions may be doing much more harm than good, I worry about one disconcerting case prompting states to embrace more broad collateral consequences that could create some unexpected consequences.

Distinct sentencing advice from family members for teen guilty of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging suicide

This local article, fully headlined "Conrad Roy’s aunt: Give Michelle Carter 20 years; Defendant’s dad wants probation," reports in the very different advice being given to a juvenile judge in Massachusetts in a high-profile case due to be sentenced today. Here are the details:

A grieving aunt of teen suicide victim Conrad Roy III is looking for a 20-year prison sentence for Michelle Carter tomorrow on the heels of her conviction in the blockbuster suicide-by-text case — but the girl’s worried dad is pleading for probation. “I believe she should be kept far away from society,” wrote Kim Bozzi, Roy’s aunt, in a statement she said she plans to read at Carter’s sentencing inside Taunton Trial Court.

“Take away the spotlight that she so desperately craves. Twenty years may seem extreme but it is still twenty more than Conrad will ever have,” Bozzi said in the written statement she gave to the Herald.

But David Carter, Michelle’s father, begged for probation and “continued counselling” in a July letter to Judge Lawrence Moniz. “She will forever live with what she has done and I know will be a better person because of it,” David Carter wrote in the signed letter, provided to the Herald. “I ask of you to invoke leniency in your decision-making process for my loving child Michelle.”...

The judge found that Carter caused the death of Roy, who killed himself in a Fairhaven Kmart parking lot in 2014 by filling his truck with carbon monoxide. Carter, 20, of Plainville, who had an almost entirely virtual relationship with Roy, goaded him into killing himself through a series of texts and calls. The Mattapoisett teen left the truck as it filled with deadly fumes, but according to testimony at Carter’s trial, she told him on the phone to “get back in.”

“I’m unsure when she decided to set her sick plan into motion or why, but when she did she did it relentlessly, it was calculated and it was planned down to a T,” Bozzi wrote in the victim-impact statement. “She preyed on his vulnerabilities, he trusted her, which in turn, cost him his life.” Bozzi, who attended every court appearance, told the Herald other family members are prepared to speak as well. She said Carter’s conviction was a relief and that “what happens next is up to God and a judge.”

Prior related post:

• You be the juvenile sentencing judge: what sentence for teen guilty of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging suicide?

UPDATE:  Michelle Carter received a prison sentence of 2.5 years, but only half has to be actually served in prison as explained in this CNN article.  It starts this way:

Michelle Carter, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the 2014 suicide of her boyfriend, was sentenced Thursday to a two-and-a-half-year term, with 15 months in prison and the balance suspended plus a period of supervised probation.

"This court must and has balanced between rehabilitation, the promise that rehabilitation would work and a punishment for the actions that have occurred," said Bristol County Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz.

Making the case for AG-nominee Jeff Sessions as an advocate for crime victims

Paul Cassell and Steven Twist have this notable new FoxNews commentary run under the headlined "Why Jeff Sessions, a conservative attorney general, would be best for crime victims." Here are excerpts:

As two crime victims’ rights advocates and law professors, we welcome the announcement that President-elect Trump will nominate Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to be the next attorney general of the United States.  Senator Sessions has a long and robust record of fighting for justice, and more specifically for enforceable victims’ rights.  If confirmed by the Senate, he will undoubtedly be a powerful voice for crime victims as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States.

Our enthusiasm about Senator Sessions stems from the fact that he was an early supporter of amending the U.S. Constitution to protect rights for crime victims.  This idea was first proposed by a Task Force assembled by President Ronald Reagan and later endorsed by Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.  The Victims’ Rights Amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1996 by Senators Dianne Feinstein and Jon Kyl.  Senator Sessions strongly advocated for the amendment and will be the country’s first Attorney General to cast votes for amending the Constitution to give rights to crime victims....

The Senator’s strong bipartisan record on behalf of crime victims does not end there.  Senator Sessions crossed the aisle to work with Senator Feinstein to preserve restitution rights for crime victims and to provide stronger protections for victims of child abuse.  He joined with the late-Senator Ted Kennedy to reduce sexual assaults in prison. He worked with Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin to address sentencing disparities in federal drug laws and increase penalties for the most serious drug traffickers.  And in many other ways, he fought against weakening the federal criminal laws whenever they posed an undue risk of creating even more victims of crime.

More impressive still is his courage as a prosecutor to take up the cause of pursuing justice for crime victims through the prosecution of their attackers. He stood against headwinds of the Old South to prosecute KKK criminals in Alabama. He prosecuted Klansman Henry Francis Hays, son of Alabama Klan leader Bennie Hays, for abducting and killing Michael Donald, a black teenager.

As a prosecutor, Senator Sessions established a record as aggressive, but fair. He remained focused on the ethical duty to do justice. We are excited about the prospect of an attorney general who sees the need for expanding rights and services for crime victims, and who has demonstrated the heart, the courage, and the leadership to head a Department of Justice that will ensure justice is pursued for all, including and especially for the crime victim.

California judge imposes prison term of 1,503 years(!?!) on father who repeatedly raped daughter

As reported in this local article, a state judge in California gave new meaning to the term "mass incarceration" by imposing a prison sentence on a rapist that will not be completed until the year 3519.  Here are the details:

Fresno prosecutor Nicole Galstan asked a judge on Friday to sentence Rene Lopez to 1,503 years in prison for raping his teenage daughter over a four-year period, ending in 2013.  Judge Edward Sarkisian Jr. agreed, sentencing the 41-year-old Lopez to the longest-known prison sentence in Fresno Superior Court history.

It stands in stark contrast to recent high-profile sentencings in sexual assault cases such as six months for ex-Stanford swimmer Brock Turner and, just this week, 60 days for a Montana man convicted of felony incest for raping his 12-year-old daughter.

In announcing the punishment, Sarkisian told Lopez he violated a position of trust, engaged in violent conduct and is a “serious danger to society.” Sarkisian also noted that Lopez had never shown remorse and has blamed his daughter for his predicament.

Lopez, who sat shackled in the courtroom, sat silently, never acknowledging his daughter, who told Sarkisian that she feared her father. (The Fresno Bee does not name victims of sexual abuse.) “When my father abused me, I was young. I had no power, no voice. I was defenseless,” said the daughter, who now is 23 years old. She also told the judge that her father never has shown remorse for her pain and suffering....

In September, a jury found Lopez guilty of 186 felony counts of sexual assault, including dozens of counts of rape of a minor.  Galstan said the victim was first sexually abused by a family friend.  But instead of the father protecting his daughter, “he chose to turn her into a piece of property and use her to satisfy his sexual needs,” the prosecutor told the judge.

The victim was raped two to three times a week from May 2009 to May 2013.  Galstan said it ended only when the girl got the courage to leave him. Even then, her father would drive by her new home and later leave love songs on her message machine, the judge said....

At Friday’s hearing, Sarkisian read the date of each felony count, which included Lopez raping his daughter on Christmas and other holidays.  Before he announced the sentence, Sarkisian said Lopez turned down two plea deals. Before his preliminary hearing, if he had admitted his guilt, prosecutors would have recommended 13 years in prison. Lopez rejected the offer. Then before his trial, he was offered 22 years in prison if he admitted his guilt. Lopez declined that offer, saying he should be released from jail for the time he already had served, Sarkisian said.

“He ruined her teenage years and made her feel like it was her fault,” Galstan said in arguing for the maximum sentence.

Lopez, who did not testify in his trial, wrote in a letter to the judge that he didn’t get a fair trial and that his daughter lied on the witness stand. “It’s hearsay,” he says in the letter.  But Sarkisian told him that he received a fair trial and that the evidence was overwhelming.  In addition to the victim’s testimony, jurors heard entries from her diary in which she chronicled her father’s crimes against her, Galstan said.  And when she got pregnant from her father, he paid for the abortion, the judge said.

In addition to the prison sentence, Sarkisian said Lopez will have to register as a sex offender.

Though this defendant was convicted of extreme crimes that justified an extreme sentence, the decision of the prosecutor to seek and the judge to impose a term of 1,503 years in prison strikes me as silly and arguably counterproductive to the goal of helping all victims of sexual assault feel vindicated by the criminal justice system.  It is silly, I think, to impose upon a defendant a crazy-long-impossible prison sentence just for symbolic effect, just as a restitution sentence of, say, "one trillion, zillion, billion dollars" would be silly.  And this crazy-long-impossible prison sentence could, at least indirectly, make other victims of sexual assault whose victimizers were given much shorter sentences feel as though their harms were not entirely vindicated in their cases.

UPDATE: Over at his blog Simple Justice, Scott Greenfield has this effective new post titled "Rape, Incest And Retribution" to highlights how this case takes us from "the sublime to the ridiculous" as we reflect on what this case represents against the backdrop of other recent controversial sexual assault cases in California and Montana. In addition to recommending this post in full, I also recommend the comments there (as well as this funny button Scott provides if his post hurts your feelings).

"Victim Impact Statements and Expressive Punishment in the Age of Social Media"

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

Victim impact statements (VIS) are long-disfavored among legal commentators for allegedly injecting unnecessary, negative emotion into sentencing at the expense of the defendant, with ambiguous informational benefits to the sentencing body.  Most traditional arguments both for and against VIS turn on purely retributive or utilitarian grounds.

This essay takes up the Stanford sexual assault victim’s statement to propose an expressive framework for understanding the function of VIS, which resolves much of the theoretical confusion surrounding the traditional justifications.  I show how the expressive goals of criminal punishment have long been distorted by the mediation of traditional news reporting. I then analyze the legal relevance of the particular criminological values expressed in the Stanford statement to show how unmediated victim narratives may counterbalance media distortion, particularly in the age of social media transmission. I conclude that the criminal justice system better serves its expressive function by formally incorporating VIS into sentencing.

Astute recognition that crime victims have to be integral part of effort to address modern mass incarceration

Greg Berman and Julian Adler have this important new commentary at The Crime Report headlined "Finding Common Cause: Victims and the Movement to Reduce Incarceration." Here are excerpts:

After more than a generation of punitive, “tough-on-crime” rhetoric and policymaking, there is now a fairly broad political consensus in the United States that we have gone too far in our use of incarceration.  Indeed, just a few weeks ago, the White House unveiled the Data-Driven Justice Initiative, a partnership of 67 jurisdictions — big and small, conservative and liberal — committed to using data to reduce incarceration.

The efforts to roll back mass incarceration are laudable, but they will not achieve lasting change if they do not figure out how to incorporate the perspectives of the justice system’s most vulnerable constituents: Victims of crime.

Victims of intimate partner violence in particular often feel sidelined by a criminal justice system that focuses almost exclusively on defendants. And make no mistake: Domestic violence represents a significant percentage of the cases in our criminal courts.  Current estimates show that approximately 10 million people are abused by an intimate partner in the U.S. each year — and this is almost certainly an undercount, given the hidden and unreported nature of a lot of abuse.

But it is not just the criminal justice system that pays short shrift to victims. Reformers do it, too. “Victims have been overlooked in this de-incarceration movement,” said Mai Fernandez, executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, in a recent interview with the Center for Court Innovation. Advocates concerned with reducing the use of incarceration typically argue that fewer defendants should be sent to jail or prison, and that there should be more community-based alternatives. Victim support organizations are, by definition, focused on crime victims’ safety. Historically, many have argued for increased accountability — including incarceration — for offenders, particularly in cases involving domestic violence.

Is it possible for victim advocates and jail reduction advocates to find common cause?  To begin to answer this question, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Center for Court Innovation convened a roundtable with policymakers and practitioners from across the country, including judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, victim advocates, and police officials. The roundtable highlighted a number of tensions.

One obvious tension is the potential conflict between protecting the safety of victims and protecting the constitutional rights of the accused. Many advocates believe that to better serve victims, courts should impose conditions of release—including stay-away orders, monitoring, and participation in specialized services — for domestic violence defendants who are out in the community pending trial. This idea runs up against the strong national push to reduce pretrial detention for those who have been accused—but not convicted — of criminal behavior.

As with much of American life, the challenge of racial, ethnic and gender disparity hangs over this conversation. Black and Latino communities have long histories of being over-policed and over-criminalized in the U.S. At the same time, these communities have been under-protected from the threat of victimization. History tells us that women of color are particularly vulnerable.

Many advocates of jail reduction place great faith in actuarial risk assessment instruments to determine who can be safely released while a case is pending.  But victim advocates are asking some hard questions about these tools: How accurate are they? What can a statistical analysis tell us about what any individual defendant might do?  And how well do risk tools take into account potential lethality?

“Domestic violence defendants are different,” argued Idaho judge James Cawthon in the roundtable. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the presence of a specifically targeted victim changes the equation when it comes to looking at the potential risk — and severity — of re-offending. While some jurisdictions have developed special risk assessment tools for domestic violence defendants, many have not.  In the days ahead, jail and prison reformers will have to wrestle with these and other challenges if they are to win the full-throated support of victim advocacy groups....

A strong body of opinion within the victims’ movement agrees the time has come to take a hard look at “right-sizing” incarceration, which involves figuring out who needs to be behind bars and who does not.  “It’s just simply not the case that all victims of violent crimes, and certainly not all victims of nonviolent crimes, seek a punitive punishment for the offender,” University of Miami law professor Donna Coker tells the Center for Court Innovation.  “What they frequently seek is some assurance that it won’t happen to them again and some assurance that it won’t happen to somebody else.”

Victim advocates and jail reduction proponents may not be able to agree on every issue. But in those areas where they have shared goals — improving the quality of risk assessment tools, reducing racial and gender disparities, and promoting trauma-informed care — they can serve as a powerful voice for change within our justice system.

Interesting results from survey of crime victims suggests they support "smart on crime" reforms

This Washington Post article, headlined "Even violent crime victims say our prisons are making crime worse," reports on this results of an interesing survey of crime victims.  Here are excerpts:

A first-of-its-kind national survey finds that victims of crime say they want to see shorter prison sentences, less spending on prisons and a greater focus on the rehabilitation of criminals.  The survey, conducted in April and released Thursday by the Alliance for Safety and Justice, a criminal justice reform group, polled the attitudes and beliefs of more 800 crime victims pooled from a nationally representative sample of over 3,000 respondents....

 "Perhaps to the surprise of some, the National Survey on Victims’ Views found that the overwhelming majority of crime victims believe that the criminal justice system relies too heavily on incarceration, and strongly prefer investments in treatment and prevention to more spending on prisons and jails," according to the report.

By two-to-one, victims said the criminal justice system should focus more on rehabilitating people who commit crimes, as opposed to punishing them.  By similar margins, the victims preferred shorter prison sentences over keeping criminals incarcerated "as long as possible."...

More recent surveys have uncovered overwhelming support for eliminating mandatory minimum sentencing requirements for federal crimes.  But congressional efforts to implement policies like these have often been stymied by "tough-on-crime" senators, including Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who are skeptical of many reform efforts. They often cite the experiences of crime victims and their families in their arguments against reform.  For instance, in 2009 Feinstein and Republican Sen. Jon Kyl argued in an op-ed that "for too long, our court system has tilted in favor of accused criminals and has proven appallingly indifferent to the suffering of crime victims." In 2014, Grassley argued on the Senate floor that "lower mandatory minimum sentences mean increased crime and increased victims.  Why would we vote to increase crime and create more crime victims?"

But the new survey suggests that crime victims' interests don't always align with those of the tough-on-crime lawmakers who invoke their names. The survey suggests this may be because many crime victims don't see prison as an effective tool for reducing the crime rate and preventing others from being victimized.

In the survey, 52 percent of victims said that prison makes people more likely to commit crimes again. Only 19 percent said that prison helps rehabilitate people into better citizens.  This skepticism of prisons is in line with most social science research, which has generally shown that mass incarceration causes more crime than it prevents, that institutionalizing young offenders makes them more likely to commit crime as adults, and that spending time in prison teaches people how to be better criminals....

The survey report quotes Judy Martin, an Ohio woman whose son was shot and killed in a parking lot.  "The way our criminal justice system is set up currently doesn’t allow for redemption," Martin says.  "We must treat each other, even those among us who have made serious mistakes, with more humanity.  It’s the only way forward." 

The full report, which is titled "Crime Survivors Speak," is available at this link.

Daughter of mass murder victim explains why she opposes death penaly for Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof

This new Vox commentary authored by Sharon Risher explains a notable person's notable perspective on  forgiveness and the death penalty in a notable capital case. The piece is headlined "My mom was killed in the Charleston shooting. Executing Dylann Roof won’t bring her back." Here are excerpts:

Ethel Lance, my mother, was killed on Wednesday, June 17, 2015, along with my cousins Susie Jackson and Tywanza Sanders, and six other people at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.  It appears to have been a racially motivated massacre plotted by a 21-year-old white man....

A mere 48 hours after the church shooting, millions of Americans watched my sister, Nadine Collier, stand in front of our mother’s accused killer and forgive him at his bond hearing.  The media ran with the forgiveness narrative, praising the ability of the victims’ families for their graciousness and faith.

I didn’t forgive Dylann Roof. And I still don’t forgive him. After I saw my sister address the nation, I thought, This girl has to be crazy! Who’s going to forgive him so quickly?  I was hurt that people thought Nadine’s views reflected the views of the Lance family and the thoughts of all of the Charleston nine’s loved ones.

Don’t get me wrong. I disagreed with Nadine, but I respected her opinion — she’s my sister, and she has a right to her own emotions and grieving process.  Still, after the shooting, there were several articles that exploited our different ways of grieving.  They pitted us against each other in the midst of a horrific tragedy.

I understand that the people of Charleston, and of America as a whole, latched onto the overwhelming message of forgiveness as a coping mechanism.  But the focus on quick forgiveness and the pivot to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse washed away the severity of the larger issues at hand – that the accused killer, because of his hatred of black people, could be so stirred by white supremacist ideology that he would go into that church to kill my momma and all the others.

The man accused of killing my mother did not show any remorse.  Why should I feel the need to forgive him when he has not asked for forgiveness?  I know God commands us to forgive, but there is no time stamp — forgiveness is a journey that you allow yourself to feel because someone has wronged you....

In the months since the shooting, I received a handwritten letter from Lucia McBath, whose son Jordan Davis was killed in 2012 from gun violence. Lucia sent her condolences and told me to reach out to her if I needed to.  On a whim, I did.  From there, I became involved with gun control advocacy, rallying for national gun control organizations....

Despite the anger I am still coping with from my mother’s death, I don’t believe in the death penalty, even for the man who killed her.  That’s my conviction because of my faith.  I’ve said the same thing all along — I don’t believe as human beings that we should take away someone’s life just because we have the power to do so.

God is the only person, the only being who decides our fate.  Still, I will let the judicial system do what they choose. The Department of Justice announced last month that it will seek the death penalty against the shooter.  Whatever the outcome, I will not protest.

This is how my faith carries me. I don’t walk in fear.  I don’t think about Dylann Roof.  All I want to do is do what God has planned out for me.  If I can stop one person from experiencing the pain myself and my family and all the families experienced post-Charleston, then I have done my part.

You be the judge for "sentencing supernova": what punishment for former House speaker Dennis Hastert for structuring (and sex) offenses?

I have decided to call tomorrow's scheduled sentencing for former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert a "sentencing supernova."  As science geeks know, and as this Wikipedia entry explains, a supernova is "an astronomical event that occurs during the last stellar evolutionary stages of a massive star's life, whose dramatic and catastrophic destruction is marked by one final titanic explosion."  I consider any former speaker of the House to be a "massive star" and I look at his coming sentencing as the culmination of a "dramatic and catastrophic destruction" as it was slowly unearthed by federal authorities that he was committing federal banking offenses in order to pay hush money to one (of now it appears many) of Hastert's long-ago sex abuse victims.

I also am thinking of Hastert's sentencing in "supernova" terms because there are so many dynamic and debatable sentencing issues swirling around his case.  This recent Chicago Tribune article, headlined "More than 40 letters in support of Hastert made public before sentencing," reviews just some of the sentencing issues in play (with my emphasis added):

More than 40 letters in support of former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert — including one from his former congressional colleague Tom DeLay — were made public Friday evening in advance of his sentencing next week on hush money charges.

"We all have our flaws, but Dennis Hastert has very few," wrote DeLay, the Texas Republican who served as majority leader under Hastert in the early 2000s. "He doesn't deserve what he is going through.  I ask that you consider the man that is before you and give him leniency where you can."...

Also included were letters from Hastert's wife, Jean, and sons Joshua and Ethan, who wrote of his devotion to his family and his good deeds as a coach, teacher and later as a politician.  They also wrote of concerns over his failing health — Hastert's lawyers have said he suffered a stroke and near-fatal blood infection last year that left him hospitalized for weeks.  "This has taken a terrible toll on our family," his wife wrote. "I am particularly worried that if he is taken from his home and the care he needs, his health will continue to deteriorate."

Hastert, 74, faces probation to up to five years in prison when he is sentenced Wednesday, although his plea agreement with prosecutors calls for a sentence of no more than six months behind bars.  He pleaded guilty in October to one count of illegally structuring bank withdrawals to avoid reporting requirements, admitting in a plea agreement that he'd paid $1.7 million in cash to a person identified only as Individual A to cover up unspecified misconduct from decades earlier.

In a bombshell sentencing memorandum filed earlier this month, prosecutors alleged Hastert had sexually abused at least four wrestlers as well as a former team equipment manager when he was coach at Yorkville [more than 35 year ago]. The abuse allegedly occurred in hotel rooms during team trips and in almost-empty locker rooms, often after Hastert coaxed the teens into a compromising position by offering to massage them, prosecutors said.  The filing also alleged that Hastert set up a recliner chair outside the locker room showers in order to sit and watch the boys....

When he was confronted by FBI agents about the unusual bank withdrawals in December 2014, Hastert lied and said he was just keeping his money safe because he didn't trust security at the banks, according to prosecutors.  Later, he accused Individual A of extorting him by making false accusations of sexual abuse and even agreed to record phone conversations for the FBI — a gambit that fell apart when agents realized it was Hastert who was lying, according to prosecutors.

I have highlighted above the notable fact, thanks to a shrewd plea deal in this case, Hastert's punishment is statutorily limited to a prison sentencing range of zero to five years and that prosecutors are bound to recommend a sentence of no more than six months imprisonment.  Prosecutors cut this deal, I suspect, because they realize that Hastert's old age and poor health and recent history of public service would make unlikely that a judge would sentence him to a very lengthy prison term.

That all said, it appears nearly undisputable that Hastert did sexually abuse numerous boys while serving as a wrestling coach decades ago and essentially got away with these crimes.  (It is my understanding that the statute of limitations has passed so that he could not now be prosecuted for them.)  His more recent bank/money structuring crimes are, of course, connected to these long-ago terrible crimes and Hastert also actively lied to public officials in a manner that could also have readily brought  separate serious criminal charge for obstruction of justice.  

Based on all these facts, I could make reasonabe arguments for sentences ranging from probation to five years, and I also could imagine lots of arguments for creative alternative sentencing terms instead of (or in addition to) a prison stint.  For example, I believe some members of the community have urged the judge to require Hastert to make significant payment to groups that work with sexually abused boys.  And perhaps one could strain to read federal law to argue that all of those abused by Hastert long ago are still technically victims of his more recent offenses and thus should be able to obtain some kind of restitution through his sentencing.  (This would seem to be stretch, but there are reports that some other "victims" are planning to testify at Hastert's sentencing.)

So I sincerely wonder, dear readers, what supernova sentence you think should be impose in this case?

Fascinating issues emerging in run up to federal sentencing of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert

This new Politico article, headlined "New Hastert accuser emerges: Judge acknowledges that the case against the former House speaker involves alleged sex abuse," flags some of the notable issues emerging as the federal sentencing of a notable former member of Congress approaches. Here are the details:

A previously unidentified victim of alleged sexual abuse by former House Speaker Dennis Hastert has come forward to federal prosecutors and may seek to testify next month when Hastert faces sentencing in federal court in Chicago. The new accuser, labeled as "Individual D" in court papers, is not the "Individual A" to whom Hastert agreed to pay $3.5 million, setting off a series of events that led to the former speaker pleading guilty to illegally structuring $900,000 used in payments to the man.

Up until now, public court records and courtroom proceedings in the case have danced around the fact that the case stems from alleged sexual impropriety, reportedly from Hastert's years as a teacher and wrestling coach. But U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Durkin gave up that pretense Tuesday and made clear that the case is linked to the widely reported allegations of sexual misconduct.

"Let's not beat around the bush. If 'Individual D' wants to come in and talk about being a victim of sexual abuse, he's entitled to do so because that informs my decision about the history and characteristics of the defendant. It's that simple," Durkin said, according to a transcript POLITICO reviewed of a brief court hearing.

Hastert entered his guilty plea last October, acknowledging that he withdrew nearly $1 million in cash in increments of less than $10,000 to avoid reporting requirements, paying the money out to a longtime associate. The indictment against Hastert doesn't name the person he was paying, referring to him only as "Individual A."

Durkin agreed Tuesday to delay Hastert's sentencing by about three weeks at the government's request so that a witness who may wish to testify at the hearing can appear. "Individual D" is "not 100 percent certain he wants to [testify] but has been moving in that direction," prosecutor Steven Block told the judge.

The government apparently did not know of "Individual D" when the indictment was filed against Hastert last May. But sources said investigators were aware of at least two living victims at that time. Since the indictment, Hastert has been mum about the sexual abuse allegations that have swirled in the press. However, Hastert defense attorney John Gallo said Tuesday that the former speaker doesn't plan to contest "Individual D"'s claims.

Durkin also said he's willing to hear at sentencing from a Montana woman, Joanne Burdge, who claims her late brother had a sexual relationship with Hastert while her brother was an equipment manager on the wrestling team Hastert coached. "If the sister of a victim of sexual abuse wants to come in and talk about her interactions with her brother and talk about that, that is something that would inform my decisions about the history and characteristics of the defendant," the judge said.

Hastert's lawyers opposed delaying the hearing and said the proposed witnesses aren't victims under federal law because the crime Hastert pled guilty to was a bank reporting violation. "They're not classic victims, and so they have no statutory entitlement to appear," Hastert attorney Thomas Green said during Tuesday's hearing. He also said their submissions should be taken in writing, not through live testimony.

But Durkin rejected that position. "If they want to come in and they're willing to testify as live witnesses, they're absolutely entitled to do so, and the government's entitled to call them as live witnesses," the judge said.

In an interview, Burdge confirmed her desire and plan to speak at the sentencing. "I'm going to it. I feel like it's crossing the finish line and I need to do it," she told POLITICO Wednesday. "I've waited over 30 years for this."

In Hastert's plea deal, the defense and prosecutors agreed that sentencing guidelines call for the former speaker to receive between zero and six months in custody. However, after his guilty plea last year, the 74-year-old Hastert suffered a stroke and sepsis. Given the health issues, it's unclear whether Durkin will sentence Hastert to any jail time at all.

Some prior related posts:

• You be the federal defense attorney: would you urge Dennis Hastert to cut a plea deal?
• Did former House Speaker Hastert get a sweetheart sentencing deal from federal prosecutors? 

Are death penalty advocates troubled by plea deal, presumably urged by families of two slain Viriginia college students, that allows a double murderer to escape any real punishment?

The question in the title of this post is my reaction to this news story about an expected plea deal which seem to allow a high-profile double-murderer in Virginia to, in essence, avoid suffering any real punishment for murdering two college students.  The article is headlined "Report: Matthew to be spared death penalty in Va. student murders," and here are the details (with my emphasis added):

Two remarkably similar murder cases that amplified concerns about campus safety are expected to end when a Virginia man enters a plea deal that will spare him a possible death sentence. Jesse LeRoy Matthew Jr., 34, is expected to enter pleas resolving the Hannah Graham and Morgan Harrington cases Wednesday, according to Albemarle County Commonwealth's Attorney Robert N. Tracci. The prosecutor did not disclose the terms of the plea agreement ahead of the hearing.

Sources told CBS affiliate WTVR Matthew is expected to plead guilty to first-degree murder and intent to defile in both cases.  WTVR reporter Laura French reports via Twitter that Matthew is expected to serve four life sentences with no eligibility for parole. The deal will spare him the death penalty, sources told the station.

The former hospital orderly and cab driver is charged with capital murder in the September 2014 death of 18-year-old University of Virginia student Graham. He also faces a first-degree murder charge in the 2009 death of Harrington, a 20-year-old Virginia Tech student.  He already is serving three life prison terms for a sexual assault in northern Virginia.

According to authorities, Graham and Harrington were young women in vulnerable straits when they vanished in Charlottesville five years apart...

Graham's disappearance, which came at a time of rising national concern about sexual assaults and other crimes on college campuses, prompted a massive search.  Her body was found five weeks later on abandoned property in Albemarle County, about 12 miles from the Charlottesville campus and 6 miles from a hayfield where Harrington's remains had been found in January 2010.

After police named Matthew a person of interest in Graham's disappearance, he fled and was later apprehended on a beach in southeast Texas.  He was charged with abduction with intent to defile, a felony that empowered police to swab his cheek for a DNA sample.  That sample connected Matthew to the 2005 sexual assault in Fairfax, a Virginia suburb of Washington, according to authorities.  The DNA evidence in the Fairfax sexual assault, in turn, linked Matthew to the Harrington case, authorities have said.

The charge against Matthew in the Graham case was later upgraded to capital murder, giving prosecutors the option to seek the death penalty.

Both the Harrington and the Graham families are supportive of the deal, WTVR reports.  Both families requested to give victim impact statements at the Wednesday afternoon hearing.

When I first saw the headline of this local story, I was puzzled by the willingness of Virginia prosecutors to let a defendant who is already serving multiple life sentences for other crimes now avoid any capital prosecution for two horrific murders. But, after reading that "the Harrington and the Graham families are supportive of the deal," I presume that these families strongly urged the prosecutors to take this kind of deal in order to conclude legal proceedings quickly and to allow them to get a measure of closure.

Assuming I am right that this plea deal is at the behest of the families of the victims, I am genuinely interested to hear from death penalty advocates about whether they think this outcome is ultimately a serious injustice. I surmise that some (many? most?) death penalty advocates think it is an injustice anytime a first-degree murderer escapes a capital prosecution and possible execution. In this case, given that the double-murderer is already serving life sentences for other crimes, this plea deal to additional life sentences means, functionally, Matthew is going to receive no real punishment at all for murdering Graham and Harrington.

Because I am a something of a death penalty agnostic, and especially because I am a strong supporter of taking very seriously the sentencing interests of crime victims in all cases, I really am not sure how I feel about this outcome.  But I am sure I would like to hear the opinions of others, especially those who genuinely believe, as did Immanuel Kant, that the "satisfaction of justice" demands the execution of certain killers.

"Accommodating Justice: Victim Impact Statements in the Sentencing Process"

The title of this post is the title of a forthcoming book by Tracey Booth, the introduction to which can be downloaded here via SSRN.  Here is the SSRN abstract:

Prominent criminologist, David Garland, has argued that VISs have led us into “unfamiliar territory where the ideological grounds are far from clear and the old assumptions an unreliable guide”.

A victim impact statement (VIS) is a highly nuanced and individual narrative that can operate as both an informational device in the sentencing process and an expressive mechanism for crime victims.  From the law perspective, VISs provide the court with details of harm caused by the offence and the consequences of the offending in order to further purposes of sentencing.  As an expressive mechanism, VISs offer victims the opportunity and space to express their feelings, tell their personal story of the aftermath of crime, and be heard by the court, the offender, and the wider community.

Though a well-established feature of contemporary sentencing hearings (at least in superior courts) VISs remain controversial in common law jurisdictions.  The ‘non-legal’ nature of VISs has generated uncertainty in relation to the functioning of the sentencing hearing and concerns have been raised that VISs are: inconsistent with established legal values, detrimental to the offender’s entitlement to a fair hearing, detrimental to victims’ wellbeing, and harmful to the integrity of the legal proceedings.

Accommodating Justice: victim impact statements in the sentencing process explores complex territory where VISs, the law and legal institutions intersect with a focus on the requirements of fairness, most particularly in the courtroom.  And it does so from multiple perspectives: courts, offenders and victims.  The book draws from a range of theoretical and doctrinal sources as well as empirical studies from Australia, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.  An ethnographic study of the performance of VISs in homicide sentencing hearings in the NSW Supreme Court woven through most chapters provides an innovative and evidence-based approach to the issues.

Early accounts of the developing post-Hurst hydra for past and present capital cases in Florida

In this post last week not long after the Supreme Court in Hurst v. Florida declared Florida's death penalty procedures violative of the Sixth Amendment, I coined the term term "post-Hurst hydra" to describe what will likely be multi-headed, snake-like litigation that will develop in various ways in various Florida courts as both state and federal judges try to make sense of just what Hurst must mean for past, present and future capital cases.

Not surprisingly, as reported in these two new local articles, courts, lawyers and experts are already puzzled by the situation that SCOTUS has now handed them:

• From the Orando Sentinel here, "Florida death penalty experts disagree on who will be spared execution"

• From the Florida Times-Union here, "Courts face dilemma with Donald Smith and other death-penalty cases coming up after Supreme Court ruling"

As these capital cases are sure to unfold in hard-to-predict ways in the weeks and months ahead, I cannot help but be especially sympathetic to the difficult position in which Florida's prosecutors and the families of victims of capital murderers now find themselves in.  Until the Florida legislature enacts a Hurst fix, and likely long thereafter, so many of the worst-of-the-worst murder cases are going to be in a legal limbo that will make hard cases for prosecutors and hard times for families only that much harder.  

Prior related posts:

• SCOTUS strikes down Florida's capital sentencing scheme based on Sixth Amendment
• A few (too) quick thoughts on the post-Hurst hydra
• Florida Supreme Court wasting no time trying to figure out impact of Hurst

"Full Restitution for Child Pornography Victims: The Supreme Court's Paroline Decision and the Need for a Congressional Response"

The title of this post is the title of this notable paper authored by Paul Cassell and James Marsh now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:

In this article, we have reviewed the legal issues surrounding restitution for child pornography victims.  In our view, the Supreme Court’s Paroline decision failed to fully implement the congressional mandate that victims receive restitution for the “full amount” of their losses.  Congress should move swiftly to ensure full restitution for child pornography victims by enacting the proposed Amy and Vicky Act — a more rational scheme for awarding restitution.

After the Supreme Court's Paroline ruling in April 2014, a number of reasonable folks reasonably predicted that Congress could and would move quickly to pass legislation to remedy the victim-oriented concerns stressed in this article. But, now nearly two years later, "Paroline fix" legislation seems stuck in Congress while victims like Amy and Vicky and others wait and wait for statutory reforms that, in the words of this article, would create "a more rational scheme for awarding restitution."

"The Armed Career Criminal Act: Imprecise, Indeterminate, and Unconstitutional"

The title of this post is the title of this timely new piece authored by Michael Schearer and available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The Armed Career Criminal Act provides a mandatory minimum fifteen-year sentence enhancement for felons possessing a firearm who have previously been convicted three times of a “violent felony” or a “serious drug offense.” Despite this seemingly clear mandate, the statute has been embroiled in controversy for decades as judges struggle to determine what predicate crimes meet this standard.  The culmination of this battle resulted in the invalidation of the ACCA’s “residual clause” when the Supreme Court found that the clause violated due process in Johnson v. United States.  Nonetheless, the remaining provisions of the ACCA are still problematic.

For example, although burglary is a specifically enumerated offense that constitutes a violent felony, burglary convictions in some states have been held to be violent felonies while burglary convictions in other states have not. Likewise, offenses involving “the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another” have mired the courts in similar difficulties in determining whether the particular offensive qualifies as violent felony.  Perhaps most troublesome, a finding of juvenile delinquency can be considered a criminal conviction that subjects an individual to ACCA enhancement in a subsequent adult proceeding, despite the fact that juveniles do not have the right to a jury trial. This paper argues that the ACCA is imprecise, indeterminate, and insusceptible of principled and predictable interpretation.  Absent a wholesale modification by Congress, the substantive provisions of the ACCA examined in this paper ought to be held by the courts to be unconstitutional because they deprive defendants of due process.

Jared Fogle given (above-guideline and above-prosecutor-recommend) sentence of 188 months in federal prison for sex offenses

As reported in this local article, "Jared Fogle was sentenced to 15 years, eight months in prison Thursday for possession and distribution of child pornography and traveling across state lines for commercial sex with a minor." Here is more about the sentencing:

Judge Tanya Walton Pratt announced the sentence for the former Subway pitchman in federal court in Indianapolis. Fogle was taken into custody of the U.S. Marshal after the four-hour, 42-minute hearing. He was handcuffed behind his back and led out of the courtroom as family members hugged and cried.

Immediately after the hearing, Fogle blew a kiss and waved goodbye to family members in the front row. About a dozen family members and friends attended the hearing. The sentence is more than the 12 1/2 years that prosecutors agreed to seek in a plea deal. Pratt said the advisory sentence range of 135 to 168 months "does not sufficiently account for the defendant's criminal conduct."

Federal prisoners must serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. The judge recommended that Fogle be sent to a prison in Littleton, Colo., because of its program for sex offenders.  "Federal judges do not sentence based on emotion or public sentiment," Pratt said. She added, "The level of perversion and lawlessness exhibited by Mr. Fogle is extreme."

She described Fogle, 38, as having had a "privileged" upbringing before becoming "obsessed" with sex and minors. Pratt talked about Fogle's journey from being morbidly obese while at Indiana University to losing weight and being discovered by Subway.  "What a gift to have such a professional windfall fall in your lap," Pratt said.

Pratt said she believes Fogle is sincere in his remorse and took into account the $1.4 million in restitution he has paid. "This defendant's celebrity cuts both ways," she said. "He will likely get protection when he goes to the Bureau of Prisons."

Prior related posts:

• Subway pitchman and his "Jared Foundation" subject to serious child porn investigation
• What sort of child porn federal plea deal might be in works for Subway pitchman Jared Fogle?
• Even with plea deal, Subway pitchman Jared likely facing at least a decade in federal prison for sex offenses
• Has Jared Fogle gotten a sweetheart plea deal and/or celebrity treatment for sex crimes?
• Federal child porn downloaders complaining to judges about Jared Fogle's (too sweet?) plea deal
• Federal prosecutors seeking plea-deal max sentence of 12.5 years for Jared Fogle

"Sentencing Reforms Need Voices From Victims: Amid the bipartisan effort to fix a broken criminal justice system, a key perspective is missing."

The title of this post is the full headline of this notable National Law Journal op-ed authored by Mary Leary. I recommend the piece in full, and here are excerpts:

The Senate Judiciary Committee last month advanced, on a bipartisan basis, the historic Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015.  This act has been described as the most significant criminal justice reform in decades.  It proposes to drastically alter the sentences of thousands of criminals, recalibrating the entire structure of our criminal justice system.

While the Judiciary Committee's recent move is good news for sentencing reform, the news about the process of this bill is more mixed. It is critical that different stakeholders with distinct perspectives weigh in on this landmark legislation before it is passed.  Yet, guess how many crime victims organizations were called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee?  Zero....

As evidenced by President Barack Obama's recent meetings with the Major Cities Chiefs of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police, some policymakers understand that, to achieve legitimacy, the reforms need to be more than "bipartisan."  They must be a product of dialogue with all stakeholders, not just offenders' organizations.

Yet, apparently no one in the Senate thought it appropriate to hear what victims have to say about criminal justice reform.  Last year, about 1.17 million violent crimes and nearly 8.3 million property crimes were reported to law enforcement.  The victims of that criminal activity are the people who bear the direct and secondary harm.

That is not all. It is not just that victims were not included as witnesses; they were barely even mentioned.  A review of the written testimony of all nine witnesses indicates that the word "victim" or any derivative thereof was used a mere nine times....

And if victim groups have concerns, would not the bill become stronger if they were considered and perhaps included in its drafting?  Although prosecutorial figures did testify, it is a mistake to assume they speak for victims.  Indeed, that is how it should be, as the prosecutor's role is to represent the entire community and do justice, not to act as a victim's personal attorney.

A functioning criminal justice system must have legitimacy and a reformed fair sentencing scheme advances that goal.  But a criminal justice system loses some legitimacy if it does not hear the voice of a major stakeholder — the victims.

The president and Congress need to reach out to victims. The president has gone all the way to Oklahoma to meet with prisoners. Perhaps he should take a walk in Washington and meet with one of the victims of the over 40,000 crimes that occurred there in 2014 or speak to the families affected by a homicide rate that has increased over 47 percent since last year.

Similarly, in 2004, Congress passed the Crime Victims Rights Act. This act afforded victims the right to be "reasonably heard" at public court proceedings.  This same Congress should recognize that right in this context and allow victims to be "reasonably heard" regarding this major legislation.  Not only is it reasonable to listen to crime victims, but it is necessary for any criminal justice reform to be legitimate.

Montgomery wards: certain victims' family members voicing support for juve murderers getting a chance at resentencing

As noted in this prior post, I am doing a series of posts in preparation for the US Supreme Court hearing oral argument in Montgomery v. Louisiana, and I have a terrific research assistant drafting summaries of various amicus briefs submitted in Montgomery (all of which can be found via this SCOTUSblog page).  Here is how he summarized some portions of this Brief of Amici Curiae of Certain Family Members of Victims Killed by Youths in Support of Petitioner:

A collection of people who have lost loved ones, including friends and family, to violent murders submitted an amicus brief in support of the petitioner in Montgomery v. Louisiana. Their argument is both emotional and sensible; it does not appeal to the formalisms of legal argument or precedent.

At its heart, this brief addresses the emotional and personal impact of locking away a person away forever for a crime they committed as a child. This brief pleads the Court to acknowledge the merits of leniency, compassion, and the rehabilitative potential of children. All of the stories contained in this brief are moving and important. Here are a few summarized excerpts.

Jeanne Bishop

“Jeanne Bishop lost her younger sister, Nancy Bishop Langert, brother-in-law Richard Langert, and their unborn child on April 7, 1990.” Brief for Amici Curiae of Certain Family Members of Victims Killed by Youths in Support of Petitioner, Montgomery v. Louisiana, (No. 14-280), at 4. Sixteen year-old David Biro shot and killed the couple in their home after breaking into their home while they were out and lying in wait for their return. After a two-week trial, David was convicted of the murders and sentenced to mandatory life without parole—the only possible punishment for a double-murder committed by a child in Illinois. Neither Jeanne nor anyone else in her family was not allowed to make a victim impact statement during sentencing.

Due to her religious beliefs, Jeanne forgave David, but she was happy that he “would be locked up forever.” Id. at 5. However, over time, Jeanne’s belief that David was a remorseless killer came under question and she decided to write to him. In response, David sent Jeanne a 15-page letter confessing to the crime for the first time and expressing “deep regret.” Id. Jeanne began to visit David in prison after this initial correspondence and has developed a “strong, honest, and respectful” relationship with him. Id. at 6.

“Jeanne knows that many want to write off people like David because, in their mind, people like him can never change. But, she wonders ‘whether what we are truly afraid of is not that they will never get better, but that they might.’” Id.

Linda White

On November 18, 1986, Linda White’s 26 year-old daughter Cathy was murdered by two teenage boys. Id. at 10. The boys asked Cathy for a ride out of town to avoid abusive parents. After Cathy had agreed and driven the boys a distance, the boys brandished guns and ordered Cathy to pull over. After stopping the car, the boys raped Cathy and shot her four times.

After being arrested, one of the boys — Gary — pled guilty to the murder. Gary, who was 15 years old at the time of the murder, was sentenced to 54 years in prison.

Many years after he was incarcerated, Gary agreed to let Linda, his victim’s mother, visit him. “When Linda and Gary finally met, Linda found that he was no longer the child who had callously raped and killed her daughter. Gary was a different person – a remorseful grown man who was desperately seeking both forgiveness and a chance to start making up for all of the hurt that he had inflicted.” Id. at 12.

As of 2015, “Gary has been out of prison for nearly six years. In that time, he has immersed himself in a new community, found and held a job, and begun working with drug and alcohol addicts at his church in a role in which his minister says he has made an incredible difference. Gary has kept himself out of trouble. He and Linda remain in contact, and he never stops apologizing for the pain that he caused. To Linda, Gary is a perfect example for why life sentences are so unjust, especially for children.” Id.

Prior posts in series:

• Montgomery wards: gearing up for SCOTUS juve LWOP retroactivity case
• Montgomery wards: might SCOTUS decide it lacks jurisdiction to resolve juve LWOP retroactivity case?

"Federalism, Federal Courts, and Victims’ Rights"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new article by Michael Solimine and Kathryn Elvey available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:

A striking development in American criminal justice in the past forty years is the widespread adoption and acceptance of the rights of victims, at both the federal and state levels.  A notable exception to this innovation has been the repeated, unsuccessful attempts, continuing to the present day, to pass a Victims’ Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  The considerable scholarly literature on the VRA has not rigorously examined the putative need for the VRA from a federalism perspective, a task this article undertakes.

The article examines the history of the victims’ rights movement, and of the repeated attempts to pass the VRA.  We argue that both supporters and critics of the VRA have not convincingly addressed federalism issues raised by the potential adoption of the VRA.  In contrast, we argue that functional principles of federalism suggest that the VRA and nationalization of victims’ rights is unnecessary.  On the other hand, we argue that there is one way that the federal government can recognize state development of victims’ rights. In habeas corpus actions in federal court, challenging state court convictions, we argue that victims of state crimes should be permitted and encouraged to participate in those proceedings, in ways not generally permitted to date.

"Share Your Grief But Not Your Anger: Victims and the Expression of Emotion in Criminal Justice"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new paper available via SSRN authored by Susan Bandes.  Here is the abstract:

In the recent capital trials of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for the Boston Marathon bombings and James Holmes for the Colorado theater shootings, victims’ families were permitted to give testimony after the sentence had been announced.  Since victim impact testimony in capital cases was upheld by the Supreme Court on the ground that it provides important information to the sentencing jury, hearings after sentencing raise the question of what role the statements are meant to serve.

I argue that although victim impact testimony was originally justified as a means of providing information to sentencing juries, it is now regarded as having two additional purposes.  First, it is widely assumed that the statements serve a cathartic or therapeutic role for victims and their families; that they assist in obtaining “closure.”  Second, there is a growing tendency toward viewing the statements as a means of confronting the perpetrator in order to elicit remorse, or at least impress on him the gravity of the harm he has caused.  Each of these three rationales has different implications for the nature, scope and advisability of allowing victim impact statements.

In this chapter I examine what goals the statements are meant to serve, how those goals should affect the rules governing the statements, and whether the goals are practically achievable or normatively desirable.

How did Boston bombing jurors not get informed some victims did not favor death sentence for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev?

As regular readers may recall from this post back in April, Bill and Denise Richard, parents of 8-year-old Martin who was one of three people killed in the April 2013 explosions at the Boston marathon's finish line, wrote this stirring Boston Globe commentary about their hopes for the outcome in the federal criminal case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  The Richards there expressed disinterest in a death sentence for Tsarnaev because of all the attention and appeals that such a sentence would necessarily bring for the duration of Tsarnaev's life behind bars.  As they explained, in order to be able to "turn the page, end the anguish, and look toward a better future," they were calling upon "the Department of Justice [to take] the death penalty off the table in an exchange for the defendant spending the rest of his life in prison without any possibility of release and waiving all of his rights to appeal."

As regular readers know, federal statutory law gives crime victims an inpedendent right to express their views in federal sentencing proceedings.  For that reason, and especially because the feelings and desires of all victims seems important, relevant and proper evidence for jurors trying to decide on a life/death capital verdict, I took for granted that anti-death-sentence victim views would get relayed in some way to the jurors deciding on the sentence for Tsarnaev.  (Indeed, I had long thought that one of many benefits of the federal Crime Victim Rights Act was to ensure federal court proceedings would regularly incorportate the views and voices of all victims, not just those prosecutors and/or defense attorneys brought forward.)

But this local interview with the first Boston bombing juror to speak publicly suggests that (1) the jurors were unaware of the Richards' perspective on how best to sentence Tsarnaev, and (2) at least one juror might have reached a different verdict if he knew of what the Richards had said.  Here is part of the introduction and transcript of the interview with Kevan Fagan, Juror 83, covering this ground: 

Kevan Fagan, “Juror 83″ in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, sat down for an interview in our studio with WBUR’s Jack Lepiarz and David Boeri, who both covered the trial. The 23-year-old became the first juror to agree to be named, to have his picture taken and to talk about the trial, though he would not discuss the jury’s deliberations.

Fagan told WBUR that he may not have voted for the death penalty had he known that some bombing victims wanted Tsarnaev to get life in prison. He said he likely would have changed his vote had he been aware of opposition to the death penalty by the parents of 8-year-old Martin Richard, the youngest victim killed in the bombing.

“If I had known that, I probably — I probably would change my vote. But then again, if I knew that I wouldn’t be on the jury either,” he said in the interview. The jurors were ordered to avoid media coverage of the trial.

He is co-authoring a book about his experience titled “Juror 83 — The Tsarnaev Trial: 34 Days That Changed Me” that is expected to be released at the end of September....

DB: What impressed you? Did you find anything persuasive in the defense case?

KF: I think it was a very hard case, and I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know if there have been harder cases to defend. I think they did the best that they could for their client.

DB: You didn’t know at the time that the Richard family and other families had written to the U.S. Attorney and to the Justice Department saying they were opposed to the death penalty?

KF: Oh sure. No, I had no clue about that.

JL: If you had known that, would you have changed your vote?

KF: If I had known that, I probably — I probably would change my vote. But then again, if I knew that I wouldn’t be on the jury either.

DB: What do you mean?

KF: If I went out of my way and disrespected the judge and went against his orders about researching things. That wouldn’t have been very fair or judicious of me.

Because this juror is writing a book about his experience as a juror — and especially because this juror will likely benefit personally from the publicity that provocative interviews will generate — I am a bit suspicious of his suggestion that his sentencing vote would have been different if he had full information about all victim perspectives.  Nevertheless, I now am wondering a lot about (a) whatever legal or strategic or practical issues surrounded decisions to keep jurors unaware of the Richards' (and other victims'?) perspectives on how best to sentence Tsarnaev, and (b) whether this jury unawareness, coupled with this juror's comments about the impact such information could have had, will become a key part of direct and collateral appeals of the Tsarnaev death sentence.

I cannot help but note a particular and particularly sad irony here: the commentary authored by the Richards movingly "urge[d] the Department of Justice to bring the case to a close"; but now this commentary, now combined with its failure to get known to the jury during the sentencing proceedings, seems itself likely to continue to generate legal issues and media attention.  The commentary not only noted, but now adds the reality that, a death sentence for Tsarnaev is all but certain to ensure this case will not be coming to a close for decades. So sad.

A few prior related posts:

• Parent of Boston bombers' young victims: "To end the anguish, drop the death penalty"
• "Sister of slain MIT officer opposes death penalty for Tsarnaev"
• Varied perspectives on the varied challenges facing varied victims
• Capital jury concludes character of crime matters most in death sentencing of Boston bomber

Aurora victims present a "parade of pain" at on-going James Holmes sentencing proceedings

One of many benefits I see in giving crime victims certain rights in the criminal justice system is to ensure their voices are heard and their experiences are memoralized in courtroom proceedings even when those voices and experiences may not directly impact sentencing outcomes. In turn, I think it now worth highlighting the on-going proceedings in a Colorado courtroom that are effectively and potently reported in this CNN piece headlined "A parade of pain at James Holmes sentencing." I recommend reading the whole piece, and here are excerpts:

One by one, the wounded and the grieving are telling a Colorado judge how the Aurora movie theater gunman stripped the normal from their lives. Some are sobbing, some are angry. All are shattered by loss. It is a parade of pain that will not change the sentence for the 27-year-old shooter. James Eagan Holmes will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

But the inevitable outcome didn't stop the grieving grandfather of the gunman's youngest victim from making a suggestion: "I would challenge the murderer to do the right thing for once in this trial and petition the court for execution by firing squad," said Robert Sullivan.

He was the doting grandfather of 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, who had innocent, shining brown eyes. Her pregnant mother, Ashley Moser, was shot and paralyzed.

Moser said she was looking forward to being a mother of two, but now she's nobody's mommy. She needs constant nursing care. She said she wished Holmes could be sentenced to life as a quadriplegic, just as she and two other shooting victims are. More than 40 people gave victim impact statements on Monday, and at least 40 more are expected on Tuesday....

[M]any of the victims say they feel cheated, and they appeared to seek comfort in demonizing a defendant who took so much from them. A man whose son was gunned down in the theater referred to Holmes' schizophrenia as "a mental hangnail" and said he was disgusted during the trial by his "smirk." He called Holmes' attorneys "horrible people" and said they "fabricated a defense" to pad their resumes.

Beth Craft, whose brother John Larimer was killed, said, "The defendant may be mentally ill, but he is more evil than anything else."...

The trial, Kathleen Pourciau said, was like watching someone get away with something. It felt out of whack, unbalanced. It didn't feel like justice.

"When justice isn't served, there's a brutal message delivered to the victims," she said. "When the punishment doesn't fit the crime, the message to the victims is that your loss, your pain isn't important. The message was that the state of Colorado values the life of a mass murderer more than the people he murdered.

"How many people do you have to kill to get the death penalty?" Pourciau asked. "Why do you even have a death penalty if you don't use it? What signal does this sentence send to Bonnie Kate and others? We care, but not that much?"

A sentence of 12 life terms topped by hundreds of additional years behind bars is "absurd," she added, "the judicial equivalent of beating a dead horse."

Father given significant prison term for role in deadly crash by underage daughter

As reported in this local article, sentencing took place yesterday in state case that should be a warning to all parents of teenagers (and also involves facts that would make for a challenging law school exam question in a torts or crim law class).  The article is headlined "Dad sentenced to prison in unlicensed daughter’s crash," and here are the sad details:

An New York man who admitted to handing over the keys to his SUV to his unlicensed teenage daughter was sentenced Thursday to 6 1/2 to 16 years in prison for his role in a car crash that killed three teens.

Michael Ware of Eastchester had faced a maximum of 21 years behind bars and $45,000 in fines when sentenced at the Wayne County Courthouse. In handing down the sentence, Judge Raymond Hamill repeatedly told Ware he was "a failure as a father" and that the crash had been "preventable, irresponsible, reckless, stupid, selfish" and, finally, "criminal."

Ware, 54, addressed the court briefly before Hamill pronounced his sentence. "I will never be able to feel the loss the families will forever feel," Ware said. "I can only say, hopefully, this brings some form of closure for everyone affected by this horrible tragedy. Neither I nor my daughter ... ever meant any harm to anyone that day."

Prosecutors said Ware let his daughter, then 15, drive his Chevrolet Suburban on Aug. 30, 2014, near a Pocono resort community in Paupack Township, where he owns a vacation home. His daughter took the vehicle, with five friends inside, to buy breakfast before speeding down a hill and flipping the SUV several times.

Cullen Keffer, Shamus Digney and Ryan Lesher, all 15-year-old residents of Bucks County, Pa., were killed. Another passenger was seriously injured. Ware's daughter, who lives in Pleasantville, N.Y., and another Westchester County teen were uninjured.  "He basically gave his daughter a gun and put the bullets in it for her," said Wilson Black, Digney's uncle, as he entered court.

The judge, who spoke for 20 minutes, noted Ware initially lied to investigators and, for about 60 days, let his daughter take the full blame for the crash by denying he had allowed her to drive that day.  Hamill also said Ware had failed to convince him that he was a candidate for rehabilitation.  "Not once did you say, 'I'm sorry' " until the sentencing, the judge said. "Not once did you say, 'I'm responsible.' "

The judge characterized Ware as an overly permissive father who failed to set appropriate rules.  He noted Ware's daughter told investigators she had been driving since the age of 14 and had driven from New York to the Poconos that weekend.  "Your failure to be a father and say 'No' caused these tragic deaths," he told Ware.

During the sentencing, relatives of the dead boys, who had waited nearly a year for a resolution, held hands and closed their eyes. Some of the parents sobbed while others sat stoically.  Each of the boys' parents delivered emotional victim-impact statements. As they spoke, the only sound in the room was that of relatives trying to choke back tears....

Ware's lawyer, Robert Reno, said he believed the judge had mischaracterized Ware's remorse and called the sentence "ridiculous." He said they would appeal. Ware pleaded guilty in July to three misdemeanor counts of reckless endangerment and three of involuntary manslaughter. He had initially faced felony charges.

Ware's daughter acknowledged responsibility in juvenile court to vehicular homicide counts and was placed on indefinite probation. She was also ordered to do 300 hours of community service, pay restitution and write a 2,000-word essay on the impact of her crime....

Joe Keffer, father of Cullen Keffer, spoke to reporters at the bottom of the courthouse steps after Ware's sentencing. "I'm satisfied the judge went over and above the recommended sentence," he said. "However, Mr. Ware will not have to endure the lifetime of misery our three families will."

New Hampshire enacts novel law requiring defendant's presence in courtroom for victim impact statements

As reported in this Reuters piece, headlined "New Hampshire to make criminals face victims' families at sentencing," one ugly sentencing case has lead the Granite State to enact a novel sentencing procedure law. Here are the details:

New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan on Tuesday signed a law that requires convicted criminals to appear in court at sentencing when victims’ families and friends are given the opportunity to express their pain. The law, believed to be the first of its kind in the United States, was proposed after a man convicted last year of murdering a 19-year-old college student asked not to attend his sentencing, saying he didn't want to hear the victim's family “yell and whine and bitch and moan.”

In the end, convicted murderer Seth Mazzaglia, 33, dropped the request and attended the sentencing, where family members of his victim, Elizabeth "Lizzy" Marriott, expressed profound grief and anger toward him.

Her father, Bob Marriott, was among several relatives of crime victims who backed the bill. At the bill-signing ceremony, Hassan praised Marriott “for speaking up on behalf of his daughter Lizzy, for his family, and for all families impacted by crime.”...

The signing comes almost a year to the day after Mazzaglia was sentenced to life in prison without parole for first degree murder involving sexual assault, among other crimes. He was accused of having his girlfriend lure Marriott to their apartment so he could have sex with her. Prosecutors alleged Mazzaglia strangled Marriott after she rejected his sexual advances and then raped her lifeless body.

The key text of this new law, which can be found here, provides that the "defendant shall personally appear in court when the victim or victim's next of kin addresses the judge, unless excused by the court." The final phrase of this provision, which allows the court to excuse the defendant, confirms my instinct that this new sentencing law is much more about symbolism than substance. That said, especially because the symbolism of the sentencing process is often quite important to crime vicitms, this novel law strikes me as a beneficial way to give victims that much more respect in a sentencing process that sometimes forgets about their various concerns.

"Should Therapists Have to Report Patients Who Viewed Child Pornography?"

The quesion in the title of this post is the headline of this intriguing new piece from The Atlantic discussing an intriguing legal and policy issue developing in California.  The piece's subheadline highlights one reason the answer to the question should perhaps be no: "A new law meant to protect children could lead to fewer pedophiles getting treatment before acting on their sexual impulses." Here is an excerpt:

Under a California law that went into effect at the beginning of this year, ... any real life therapist who learns that a patient has viewed child pornography of any kind would be required to report that information to authorities.  The requirement applies to adults who admit to having viewed explicit images of children.  And it even applies to teenage patients who tell their therapists about having viewed images sent to them by a peer engaged in sexting.

Over four decades, “California has expanded the scenarios under which therapists are legally required to break their clients' confidentiality and report to authorities a patient's criminal confessions or threats to hurt someone else,” the L.A. Times reports. “Requirements include disclosing confidential information if patients are an imminent danger to themselves or others; if a patient is a child who is the victim of a crime and reporting is in the best interests of the patient; and if the therapist learns that a child is the victim of neglect or abuse or is in imminent danger.”

Under the old standards, therapists also had to report patients who “knowingly developed, duplicated, printed or exchanged child pornography,” the article notes. “But the statute did not mention viewing or downloading material from the Internet.”

Sean Hoffman, who works for a group that represents Golden State district attorneys, told the newspaper that the law can help police to identify people who view child pornography and create a massive market for material produced through the abuse and exploitation.  “If we don't know about it,” he said, “we can't prosecute it."  The effect would ostensibly be fewer victims of an abhorrent industry.

But it seems to me that this new standard is likelier to make California more dangerous for children, an unintended consequence some therapists are warning against in a lawsuit they’ve filed in hopes of forcing a return to the previous standard.

You be the judge: what federal sentence for evil cancer doctor?

A few weeks ago, I was discussing with my kids whether they thought some humans were innately evil.  In any such discussion, it might make sense to bring up the story of the Michigan oncologist who pleaded guilty to mistreating cancer patients and bilking the government through false Medicare claims.  The doctor's federal sentencing began this week, and this AP story provides an overview of the proceedings and basic information to enable any would-be judges to suggest sentences for the doc in the comments:

Patients of a Detroit-area doctor received "stunning" doses of a powerful, expensive drug that exposed them to life-threatening infections, an expert testified Monday as a judge heard details about a cancer specialist who fleeced insurance companies and harmed hundreds of people.

Dr. Farid Fata is headed to prison for fraud and other crimes. But U.S. District Judge Paul Borman first is hearing from experts and former patients about the extent of his scheme to reap millions of dollars from Medicare and other health programs.

Nearly three dozen ex-patients and family members, many dressed in black, chartered a bus to attend the hearing, which could last days. Some will testify Tuesday."This is a small fraction of the people this guy has hurt," said Terry Spurlock, 52, of Holly, who had three more years of treatments after a tumor on his neck disappeared. "He gave me so much treatment, it stopped my immune system."

Fata, 50, pleaded guilty last fall to fraud, money laundering and conspiracy. The government is seeking a 175-year prison sentence, while the Oakland County man is asking for no more than 25 years.

The government said 553 people have been identified as victims, along with four insurance companies. There were more than 9,000 unnecessary infusions or injections. "There is an aggressive approach to treating cancer. This was beyond. This was over the top," said Dr. Dan Longo, a Harvard medical professor and deputy editor at the New England Journal of Medicine, who testified Monday as a $400-an-hour expert for prosecutors after examining 25 patient files, a tiny portion of Fata's practice.

Longo was asked about patients who were given a drug called Rituximab, which can weaken the immune system if overused. It is typically given eight times for aggressive lymphoma, but one patient got it 94 times. Another got it 76 times.... Later, he told the judge that "all the files I looked at had problems, but I would not say all the treatment was inappropriate."

It was the first time that many former patients had seen Fata in months, if not years. He has been in custody since his 2013 arrest. He wore a white dress shirt and dark suit in court.

"I wanted to knock that smirk off his face," said Geraldine Parkin, 54, of Davison, who[se] husband, Tim, has survived non-Hodgkin lymphoma but has other chronic problems because of excessive treatments. "He has a lot of anger," Parkin said.

Varied perspectives on the varied challenges facing varied victims

I am sometimes inclined to say to my sentencing students that crime victims, especially victims of violent crimes, are often the most important and least understood players in the criminal justice system.  Helpfully, these two new lengthy and very different pieces about different violent crime victims can help enhance our understanding:

From the New York Times here, "Full Toll From Aurora Theater Shooting Goes Untold at Trial"

From Slate here, "He Killed Her Daughter. She Forgave Him. Linda White believes in a form of justice that privileges atonement over punishment. She practices what she preaches."

Many bombing victims scheduled to speak at formal sentencing of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

This AP article, headlined "More than 30 victims to speak at Boston bomber's sentencing," provides a preview of a high-profile formal sentencing scheduled to take place today in Massachusetts federal court.  Here are excerpts:

More than 30 victims of the Boston Marathon bombing and their family members are expected to describe the attack's impact on their lives before a judge formally sentences bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death.

In May, a federal jury condemned Tsarnaev to die for bombing the 2013 marathon with his brother. Three people were killed and more than 260 were injured when the brothers detonated two pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line. Under the federal death penalty law, Judge George O'Toole Jr. is required to impose the jury's sentence. Tsarnaev's sentencing hearing is scheduled for Wednesday morning in U.S. District Court.

Among those expected to speak are Rebekah Gregory, a Texas woman who lost a leg in the bombings, and Liz Norden, the mother of two Massachusetts men who each lost a leg. Tsarnaev, 21, also will be given a chance to speak if he chooses.

You be the judge: what sentence for Georgetown's video voyeur Rabbi?

This Washington Post article provides background on a notable sentencing in a DC local court today in which, as highlighted below, the prosecution and defense have radically different sentencing recommendations.  Here are the details:

Sentencing for Barry Freundel, the once-influential Orthodox rabbi who pleaded guilty to secretly videotaping dozens of women as they prepared for a ritual bath, is scheduled for Friday in D.C. Superior Court. The hearing is expected to be an emotional one as many of the victims are expected to speak to Senior Judge Geoffrey Alprin on the impact of Freundel's crime on their lives.

Freundel, 64, was arrested in October on charges that he videotaped six women in the nude while he was at Kesher Israel synagogue in Georgetown.  Prosecutors said a review of his computer equipment revealed that many more women had been recorded by Freundel as they prepared for the bath known as a mikvah — used as part of a purification ritual.

Freundel ultimately pleaded guilty to videotaping 52 women, and the punishment proposed by prosecutors would translate to four months for each victim.  The longtime rabbi had recorded about 100 additional women, prosecutors have said, but those alleged crimes occurred outside the three-year statute of limitations.  The videotaping occurred between 2009 and 2014....

On Thursday, the judge sent out a procedures memo in which he said alerted prosecutors, Freundel and his attorney and victims, as to how the hearing will be conducted.  Each victim who wishes to speak will be allowed only five minutes.  To ensure anonymity for the victims, each woman will be identified by an alphabetical or numerical identifier. Some victims are scheduled to fly in from Israel to speak.

Prosecutors have asked the judge to sentence Freundel to 17 years in prison. Freundel’s attorney, Jeffrey Harris, urged against prison and instead asked the judge to sentence Freundel to community service.  Alprin can adopt either recommendation, or craft another punishment.

Freundel has not spoken publicly about the charges.  He is also likely to speak and because he pleaded guilty, he waived his chance to appeal.  In the memo his attorney wrote to the judge, Harris said Freundel “recognizes and regrets” his actions.  “His conduct has brought shame upon Judaism, the synagogue he once served, his family, and himself,” Harris wrote.

Among the many interesting aspect of this sentencing is whether and how a judge ought to consider the impact of this Rabbi's crimes on those whom he served over many years as a religious leader. This prior Washington Post article, headlined "For those who revered him, D.C. rabbi’s sentencing for voyeurism will not bring closure," highlights their stories. It starts this way:

This week, a D.C. Superior Court judge is scheduled to hand down a penalty for Barry Freundel, a powerful Orthodox rabbi who for years secretly videotaped his female followers as they prepared to submerge in the mikvah, a ritual bath.  But in the Orthodox world where Freundel was once a giant, the fallout of his crimes will continue unspooling.

Some of the hundreds who studied or worshiped with Freundel have stopped going to the mikvah, a ritual that is considered so important in Judaism that women are commanded to use it monthly before sharing any physical intimacy with their husbands.  Others who converted with Freundel are terrified that their status as Jews will forever be in question in their law-focused communities.  Some people have stopped going to synagogue.  Others suffer nightmares in which they are spied upon — and feel complicit.

Anyone have predictions for the penalty phase of the Boston Marathon bombing trial?

As highlighted by this new AP article, headlined "Bombing trial enters penalty phase amid life or death debate,"the real legal intrigue surrounding the capital trial of the Boston Marathon bombing is about to begin:

The guilt phase of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's trial was considered a slam dunk for prosecutors, especially after his lawyers bluntly admitted during opening statements that he participated in the deadly 2013 attack. But the outcome of the next phase of the trial is much more difficult to predict. The same jury must decide whether Tsarnaev, 21, should be put to death or spend the rest of his life in prison. The penalty phase begins Tuesday in U.S. District Court.

Debate over whether Tsarnaev should get the death penalty intensified recently after the parents of Martin Richard, an 8-year-old boy who was killed in the bombings, urged federal authorities to consider taking death off the table in exchange for Tsarnaev spending the rest of his life in prison and giving up his rights to appeal....

A married couple who lost limbs in the attack also asked the U.S. Justice Department not to pursue the death penalty. "If there is anyone who deserves the ultimate punishment, it is the defendant. However, we must overcome the impulse for vengeance," Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes said in a statement to the Globe Sunday....

Others have said they favor the death penalty for Tsarnaev. Liz Norden, whose two adult sons each lost a leg in the bombings, said nothing short of execution is warranted. "He destroyed so many families that day," she said. "I want the ultimate justice."

Legal experts differ on whether the pleas from victims will persuade the federal government to drop its bid for the death penalty. "If the Justice Department seriously takes into consideration the feelings of the family members in this case, they have every justification to take death off the table," said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

But New York Law School professor Robert Blecker said the Justice Department has to consider the larger question of denouncing terrorism. "They'll go forward with it. It will not change the decision. Denunciation is a legitimate purpose," Blecker said....

During the penalty phase, the defense will continue to portray Tsarnaev's brother, Tamerlan, 26, as a domineering follower of radical Islam who convinced his then 19-year-old brother that America had to be punished for its wars in Muslim countries. Tamerlan died four days after the bombings when he was shot during a firefight with police and run over by Dzhokhar during a getaway attempt.

Prosecutors are expected to emphasize the brutality of the bombings by calling more survivors to testify. During the first phase, several survivors testified about devastating injuries, including lost limbs....

If even one juror votes against the death penalty, Tsarnaev will get a life sentence.

Parent of Boston bombers' young victims: "To end the anguish, drop the death penalty"

The title of this post is drawn from the headline of this remarkable new Boston Globe commentary authored by Bill and Denise Richard, parents of 8-year-old Martin who was one of three people killed in the April 2013 explosions at the marathon's finish line. The full piece is a must read, and I will quote it all here to help ensure these victims' voices get heard in full:

The past two years have been the most trying of our lives. Our family has grieved, buried our young son, battled injuries, and endured numerous surgeries — all while trying to rebuild lives that will never be the same. We sat in the courtroom, day after day, bearing witness to overwhelming evidence that included graphic video and photographs, replicated bombs, and even the clothes our son wore his last day alive. We are eternally grateful for the courage and life-saving measures of first responders, Boston Police, the Boston Fire Department, and good Samaritans on April 15, 2013. We also thank the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, the Department of Justice, and the Massachusetts US Attorney’s Office for leaving no stone unturned during the investigation and trial.

But now that the tireless and committed prosecution team has ensured that justice will be served, we urge the Department of Justice to bring the case to a close. We are in favor of and would support the Department of Justice in taking the death penalty off the table in exchange for the defendant spending the rest of his life in prison without any possibility of release and waiving all of his rights to appeal.

We understand all too well the heinousness and brutality of the crimes committed. We were there. We lived it. The defendant murdered our 8-year-old son, maimed our 7-year-old daughter, and stole part of our soul. We know that the government has its reasons for seeking the death penalty, but the continued pursuit of that punishment could bring years of appeals and prolong reliving the most painful day of our lives. We hope our two remaining children do not have to grow up with the lingering, painful reminder of what the defendant took from them, which years of appeals would undoubtedly bring.

For us, the story of Marathon Monday 2013 should not be defined by the actions or beliefs of the defendant, but by the resiliency of the human spirit and the rallying cries of this great city. We can never replace what was taken from us, but we can continue to get up every morning and fight another day. As long as the defendant is in the spotlight, we have no choice but to live a story told on his terms, not ours. The minute the defendant fades from our newspapers and TV screens is the minute we begin the process of rebuilding our lives and our family.

This is a deeply personal issue and we can speak only for ourselves. However, it is clear that peace of mind was taken not just from us, but from all Americans. We honor those who were lost and wish continued strength for all those who were injured. We believe that now is the time to turn the page, end the anguish, and look toward a better future — for us, for Boston, and for the country.

"Sister of slain MIT officer opposes death penalty for Tsarnaev"

The title of this post is the headline of this notable new Boston Globe article, which gets started this way:

The sister of murdered MIT Police Officer Sean A. Collier opposes the death penalty against one of the men responsible for his death, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, because it would not bring “peace or justice” to her.

In a posting on Facebook and on her Twitter account, Jennifer L. Lemmerman wrote that she continues to mourn the loss of her younger brother, who was widely hailed after his murder as a person of integrity, compassion, and curiosity who was dear to the MIT community.

Lemmerman, a graduate of Boston College School of Social Work and an alderman in Melrose, wrote that she will never forgive Tsarnaev for ending her brother’s life. But, she also wrote, she does not believe in the death penalty even after what has happened to her and her family. “Whenever someone speaks out against the death penalty, they are challenged to imagine how they would feel if someone they love were killed. I’ve been given that horrible perspective and I can say that my position has only strengthened,’’ she wrote on her Facebook account.

“It has nothing to do with some pursuit of forgiveness. I can’t imagine I’ll ever forgive him for what he did to my brother, to my family, and I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life, whether he is on this earth or not,’’ Lemmerman wrote of Tsarnaev.

She added, “But I also can’t imagine that killing in response to killing would ever bring me peace or justice. Just my perspective, but enough is enough. I choose to remember Sean for the light that he brought. No more darkness.’’

Considering one defendant getting a second look due to Miller retroactivity

One big reason I believe the Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment ruling in Miller v. Alabama ought to be fully retroactive is because doing so will not be any kind of windfall for juve murderers given a mandatory LWOP.  Rather, as this new New York Times article highlights, all that Miller retroactivity entails is that an offender get a new sentencing hearing in which a judge will consider whether an LWOP sentence was truly justified in light of the nature and circumstances of the offense and the full history and characteristics of the defendant.  The article, headlined "A Murderer at 14, Then a Lifer, Now a Man Pondering a Future," merits a full read, and here is a teaser from the start of the piece:

Adolfo Davis admits he was a swaggering thug by the age of 14 as he roamed and dealt drugs with a South Side gang.

He also describes a childhood of emotional and physical deprivation: a mother fixated on crack, an absent father, a grandmother’s overflowing and chaotic apartment.

From the age of 6 or 7, he often had to buy his own food or go hungry, so he collected cans, pumped gas for tips and shoplifted. At 10, he went to juvenile hall for wresting $3 worth of food stamps and 75 cents from a girl. At 12, he fell in with the Gangster Disciples. “I loved them, they protected me, they were my family,” Mr. Davis said in a recent interview.

At 14, in 1990, he was out with two gang members when they robbed a rival drug house and shot the occupants, leaving two dead.  Now 38, he has spent the last 24 years in prison on a mandatory sentence of life without parole.

But his future will be reconsidered in a new sentencing hearing here on Monday. It is one of the first such proceedings in Illinois to result from the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Miller v. Alabama that juvenile murderers should not be subject to mandatory life without parole....

The 2012 decision did not say whether the new rules should apply retroactively, to cases long closed. Since then, state and lower federal courts have disagreed, creating drastic differences for prisoners depending on where they live.

Ten states, including Illinois, are applying the standard to pre­2012 cases and have started the process of resentencing. Four states — Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania, with about 1,130 prisoners who could be affected — have declined to make the ruling retroactive.  The Supreme Court is expected to clarify the issue next fall, when it hears the appeal of a convict in Louisiana....

Here and around the country, victim rights groups have strongly opposed the reopening of past sentences.  “The families of the victims will suffer the most,” said Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, a co­founder and board member of the National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Murderers.

She became a champion of victim rights 25 years ago when her pregnant sister and her sister’s husband were murdered in Winnetka, Ill., by a 16­-year-old who received a mandatory life sentence. “When I started thinking of the possibility that we’d have to go back to court, I couldn’t sleep for four months,” she said.  “Our mother was devastated.”

A new sentencing hearing in that case is scheduled for this month. While Ms. Bishop­-Jenkins feels confident that the killer, because of the particulars of his acts, will have the life sentence renewed, she noted that the transcript of his original sentencing hearing was missing and that key witnesses were dead or gone. 

Re­creating a fair sentencing process is often impossible in old cases, she said, and there are ample existing ways to pursue what seem to be unwarranted life sentences, such as executive clemency or other petitions.

Mr. Davis’s supporters said they had not been able to find any relatives of the two murder victims in his case; none have come forward to comment on his resentencing....

Before the hearing on Monday, Mr. Davis’s lawyers — Patricia Soung of the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and Rachel Steinback, a lawyer with the civil rights law firm Loevy & Loevy in Chicago — prepared a sentencing memo calling for his release because of his remorse, his growth and his mentoring of others while in prison.

The Cook County prosecutors have not prepared a written statement, but they are expected to argue for a new life sentence.  Opposing the 2012 clemency bid, the prosecutors said young Adolfo had been “an active and willing participant in the murders” and “was not simply a naïve child being led astray by older friends.”...

The two sides will present their cases orally before Judge Angela Petrone of the Cook County Circuit Court.  During or after the hearing, the judge could order anything from a new life term to an immediate release for time served.

Can we save thousands of innocent lives from serious crime through . . . a tax increase?

Those who vigorously oppose various modern sentencing reform proposals are often quick to suggest that any efforts to save taxpayer monies by reducing excessive prison terms could with the potential costs of increased crime and increased victimization.  I tend to resist (as does most sophisticated research) the assertion that there is a zero-sum reality to incarceration rates and crime rates, but I do share a concern that any budget-driven criminal justice reforms need to keep a close watch on what evidence and research suggests is the public safety impact of reform.

With those thoughts always in mind, I am especially encouraged by this report about new research suggestion we might be able to successfully reduce serious crimes and innocent victimization through a tax increase that could be good for state budgets.  The report is titled "Researchers see significant reduction in fatal car crashes after an increase in alcohol taxes," and here are the highlights: 

Increasing state alcohol taxes could prevent thousands of deaths a year from car crashes, say University of Florida Health researchers, who found alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes decreased after taxes on beer, wine and spirits went up in Illinois.

A team of UF Health researchers discovered that fatal alcohol-related car crashes in Illinois declined 26 percent after a 2009 increase in alcohol tax. The decrease was even more marked for young people, at 37 percent. The reduction was similar for crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers and extremely drunken drivers, at 22 and 25 percent, respectively. The study was released online in the American Journal of Public Health in March and will be published in a forthcoming issue.

“Similar alcohol tax increases implemented across the country could prevent thousands of deaths from car crashes each year,” said Alexander C. Wagenaar, a professor in the department of health outcomes and policy at the UF College of Medicine. “If policymakers are looking to address dangerous drivers on our roads and reduce the number of fatalities, they should reverse the trend of allowing inflation to erode alcohol taxes.”

Alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes account for almost 10,000 deaths and half a million injuries every year in the United States. Alcohol is more affordable than ever, a factor researchers say has contributed to Americans’ widespread drinking and driving. Drinking more than 10 drinks per day would have cost the average person about half of his or her disposable income in 1950 compared with only 3 percent in 2011. Alcoholic beverages have become so inexpensive because alcohol tax rates have declined substantially, after taking inflation into account....

The research team defined an impaired driver as having a blood alcohol level of less than .15 percent and an extremely drunken driver as having a blood alcohol level of more than .15 percent, which translates to roughly six drinks within an hour for an average adult. To control for multiple other factors that can affect motor vehicle crash rates, such as traffic safety programs, weather and economic conditions, the researchers compared the number of alcohol-related fatal crashes in Illinois with those unrelated to alcohol during the same time period as well as alcohol-related fatal crashes in Wisconsin, which did not change its alcohol taxes. Results confirmed that the decrease in crashes was due to the tax change, not other factors.

The larger-than-expected size of the effects of this modest tax increase may be because the tax change occurred at the same time as the Great Recession -- a time when unemployment was high and personal incomes lower, according to the study. “While our study confirms what dozens of earlier studies have found -- that an increase in alcohol taxes reduces drinking and reduces alcohol-related health problems, what is unique is that we identified that alcohol taxes do in fact impact the whole range of drinking drivers, including extremely drunk drivers,” Wagenaar said. “This goes against the conventional wisdom of many economists, who assert that heavy drinkers are less responsive to tax changes, and has powerful implications for how we can keep our communities safer.”

"Victim's wife: Keep me out of death penalty fight"

The title of this post is the headline of this notable new article out of Philadelphia which highlights how victims often can and will get victimized again by the political debates over the death penalty.  Here is how the piece starts:

Since Gov. Wolf declared his moratorium on the death penalty last month, proponents of capital punishment have rallied around one case to push their cause - the scuttled execution of Terrance Williams, a Philadelphia man sentenced to die in 1986 for the beating death of a Germantown church volunteer.

But on Thursday, the widow of Williams' victim had a message for critics of the governor's action: Leave me out of it. In a publicly circulated letter, Mamie Norwood, whose husband, Amos, was killed by Williams in 1984, accused State Rep. Mike Vereb (R., Montgomery) and Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams of using her husband's slaying for political gain.

"You have never spoken to me and do not speak for me," Norwood wrote, adding that she had forgiven Terrance Williams long ago and did not want to see him put to death. She added: "Please don't use me . . . to get your name in the news. You should be truly ashamed of yourselves."

Norwood's letter was distributed by a group of Terrance Williams' supporters who run the website www.terrywilliamsclemency.com.

Norwood's letter is available at this link.

Victims and law enforcement assail Gov Wolf's execution moratorium in Pennsylvania

As reported in this local article, folks in Pennsylvania unhappy with "Gov. Tom Wolf's moratorium on the death penalty gathered at the state Capitol on Wednesday to criticize that decision that they say was reached without input from crime victims or law enforcement officers." Here is more:

They came together on the day that death row inmate Terrence Williams was scheduled to be executed; his being the first death sentence to be reprieved as a result of the moratorium.

"Pennsylvania crime victims deserve justice. What they are receiving from the governor is politics," said Rep. Mike Vereb, R-Montgomery, at the news conference. "He could approach the Legislature to try to get the law changed or he could have filed a lawsuit in court and seek an injunction in death penalty cases. The governor chose to pursue neither of those options."

Instead, with the stroke of his pen on Feb. 13, he signed an executive order to put capital punishment in Pennsylvania on hold until he reviews a Senate-ordered study of the issue that is due later this year....

Many are awaiting the outcome of the lawsuit filed by Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams challenging Wolf's authority to impose the moratorium. The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear the case.

In the meantime, Vereb has introduced a resolution calling on the governor to reverse his decision and obey the law that now exists in Pennsylvania allowing for capital punishment. While he admits that won't carry the force of law, Vereb said it at least sends a message to the governor.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Ron Marsico, R-Lower Paxton Twp., said he plans to have at least two committee hearings on the issue of capital punishment, starting with one in Philadelphia on March 26 and the other scheduled for June. This month's hearing will focus on testimony from family members of murder victims.

Throughout the news conference, legislators along with the crime victims and district attorneys standing in front of a line of photos of murder victims criticized Wolf for failing to seek their input....

York County District Attorney Tom Kearney said victims are best suited to explain the impact of Wolf's actions. He then proceeded to read a letter from Pauline Smith, whose mother June Rose Ohlinger, was murdered in 1995 in Schuylkill County by serial killer Mark Spotz who is among the 186 inmates now on death row. In her letter, Smith described the governor's decision as "a slap in the face to all of the victims of heinous crimes."

Prior related posts:

• Pennsylvania Gov declares moratorium on state death penalty
• Philadelphia DA sues Pennsylvania Gov asserting execution moratorium is "lawless" and "flagrantly unconstitutional"
• Pennsylvania Supreme Court to review, slowly, Gov Wolf's execution moratorium

Victim rights' back-story at heart of new Cassell-Dershowitz blood feud

Lots of criminal justice folks are buzzing about the extraordinary spitting match that has broken out between notable criminal law professors Paul Cassell and Alan Dershowitz.  Helpfully, Jacob Gershman has this effective Wall Street Journal posting which explains the interesting criminal justice issues that got this heavyweight fight started.  The piece is headlined "Behind Epstein Suit, a Tussle Over Due Process and Victims’ Rights," and here are excerpts:

The salacious allegations against Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz that surfaced in a federal lawsuit involving convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have generated international attention.  Drawing less coverage is the lawsuit itself — a case with the potential to expand the rights of crime victims during federal investigations.

The lawsuit centers on a 2007 agreement the federal government made with Mr. Epstein, a Florida financier suspected of sexually abusing multiple underage girls.  Under its agreement with Mr. Epstein, who had been the target of an FBI probe, federal prosecutors promised not to bring charges against him in Florida if, among other conditions, he pleaded guilty to a state felony charge of soliciting an underage prostitute.  Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty to the state charge in 2008 and served about 13 months behind bars.

Two of Mr. Epstein’s alleged victims then filed suit against the U.S. government in 2008, claiming federal authorities violated their rights under a 2004 law by keeping them in the dark about the non-prosecution deal.  They want a federal court to invalidate the agreement, a position fiercely contested by the government.  The law in question is the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, a statutory bill of rights for victims of federal crimes.  Among other things, the law grants victims a “reasonable right to confer with the attorney for the Government in the case.”

The case exposes tensions between the due-process rights of the accused and the rights of victims.  Attorneys representing the plaintiffs, former federal judge Paul Cassell and Florida lawyer Bradley Edwards, say at stake “is whether a federal statute protecting crime victims rights can be ignored with impunity or, as we argue, whether instead real remedies exist for its violation.”

U.S. prosecutors say the government had no obligation to confer with the alleged victims. Since they never charged Mr. Epstein with a crime, they argue, the plaintiffs don’t qualify as victims under that 2004 law.  And even if that right existed, the government argues, the Constitution’s due-process guarantees bar prosecutors from reneging on their agreement with Mr. Epstein.

In making their argument, prosecutors have cited a Dec. 2010 opinion issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice to the president and executive-branch agencies.  The opinion states that the “rights provided by the CVRA are guaranteed” only after “criminal proceedings are initiated through a complaint, information, or indictment.”

In a 2011 ruling, the federal judge presiding over the case, Kenneth A. Marra, sided with the plaintiffs’ interpretation of the law, writing that the CVRA “clearly contemplates pre-charge proceedings.”  And in a 2013 order, rejecting a motion by the government to dismiss the case, the judge wrote that a non-prosecution arrangement may be “re-opened” if it were reached in “violation of a prosecutor’s conferral obligations under the statute.”

The plaintiffs’ lawyers allege that the government failed to meet those obligations. In court documents, they accuse the U.S. attorney’s office of concealing the agreement “to avoid a firestorm of public controversy that would have erupted if the sweetheart plea deal with a politically-connected billionaire had been revealed.”

Former District Judge Paul Cassell at center of two big new victim-rights stories

Long-time readers of this blog are surely familiar with the name Paul Cassell, perhaps primarily for his notable sentencing rulings back when he was a federal district judge concerning mandatory minimums and the impact of Blakely on the federal sentencing guidelines.  Long-time criminal justice academics are familiar with his long-ago scholarly work on Miranda and related police-practices jurisprudence and modern victim-rights advocates know Paul as one of the leading modern (court-focused) advocates for the interests of crime victims.  

With all that background (and the disclaimer that I have worked with Paul on various issues over the last decade and greatly respect his talents, energies and perspectives), I am now fascinating to see Paul Cassell's name at the forefront of two big new victim-rights stories.  Here are links and the start of articles about these stories:

From the Washington Times here, "Loretta Lynch questioned over secret deal depriving fraud victims of $40M":

More than a year before President Obama nominated federal prosecutor Loretta Lynch to be attorney general, a former federal judge quietly called on Congress to investigate her U.S. attorney’s office for trampling on victims’ rights.

Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah, said Ms. Lynch’s office, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, never told victims in a major stock fraud case that a culprit had been sentenced — denying them a chance to seek restitution of some $40 million in losses. Mr. Cassell, in written remarks to a House Judiciary Committee panel in 2013, said if prosecutors were using secretive sentencing procedures to reward criminals for cooperating with them, it could violate the Crime Victims Restitution Act.

From the Salt Lake Tribune here, "Utah law professor claims British prince, well-known attorney had sex with teen ‘sex slave’":

University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell has come under fire for filing a motion in a victims’ right suit that claims a client was forced as a girl to be a "sex slave" who allegedly was made available to a well-known attorney and a member of the British royal family.

The motion filed Friday in a federal court in Florida alleges that a woman identified as Jane Doe #3 was sexually exploited beginning at age 15 by billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein, who also loaned her for sex to politically connected and powerful people — including Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew, a son of Queen Elizabeth II.

Both men have denied the allegations, and Dershowitz is threatening to initiate disbarment proceedings against Cassell and Bradley Edwards, a Florida attorney who also represents Jane Doe #3, according to The Wall Street Journal.

For lawyers and politicians, the story about criticisms of the Attorney-General-nominee is much more important and consequential.  But the teen sex slave story is sure to get a whole lot more attention — and that story could, I think, end up making it difficult for Paul Cassell to be called to testify or otherwise be a visible voice in AG-nominee Lynch's upcoming confirmation hearings.

Victims often left behind as states get tough on sex trafficking

This new AP article, headlined "Funding sometimes lags for sex-trafficking victims," highlights that legislators are often much better at slamming criminals than at supporting crime victims. Here are excerpts:

As awareness of America's sex-trafficking industry increases, state after state has enacted new laws to combat it.  But while a few have backed those get-tough laws with significant funding to support trafficking victims, many have not.

In Michigan, for example, a cluster of legislators beamed with pride as Gov. Rick Snyder recently signed a package of 21 anti-trafficking bills.  For a state ranked by advocacy groups as woefully behind in addressing the problem, the package was touted as a huge step forward, making Michigan, in Snyder's words, "one of the leading states in fighting this tragic crime."  Yet the bills contained virtually no new funding, even though a high-powered state commission had reported a serious lack of support services and specialized housing for victims.

"For all the hoopla, it's blatantly not true that we're now at the forefront," said professor Bridgette Carr, a member of the commission and director of the Human Trafficking Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School.  "For many of these victims, there's often no place to go."...

Without such services, advocates say, many victims are less useful as witnesses against their traffickers and more vulnerable to being forced or lured back to the sordid underworld that exploited them.  "We are seeing some states stepping up, but the majority don't have anything specific in their budgets," said Britanny Vanderhoof, policy counsel for the Polaris Project. "There's an idea that once someone is rescued, they're fine," Vanderhoof said. "There's a disconnect with the level of trauma the victims have suffered and the incredible need for services at every level."

Arizona was among the latest states to board the bandwagon, enacting a bill in April that toughens sentences for traffickers of children and stipulates that being a trafficking victim is a defense in prostitution cases.  As in Michigan, however, Arizona's bill did not include funding for victim services....

In Oklahoma, several experts met with a legislative panel in September to discuss the growth of sex trafficking, including a boom in the child sex trade linked to the convergence of major trucking routes near Oklahoma City.  The legislators "were very receptive, and very shocked," said Kirsten Havig, a professor of social work at the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa who was among the speakers.

Yet Havig said the legislators, who have voted to punish traffickers more severely, balked at suggestions that the state spend more on victim services.  "The second I start talking about resource allocation, it's, 'We can't do that,'" she said.  For now, Havig said, Oklahoma lacks a residential facility suited to care for young sex-trafficking victims and has sent some youths to a facility in Houston.  She hopes more state funding might come eventually if advocates can document how many victims need help, "but it's going to be a long haul."...

The Michigan commission's report noted that some states have appropriated significant funds for victim services.  It cited a $2.8 million allocation in Minnesota, which is widely considered the national leader in the field.... Florida is another that state that has stepped up with significant funding for victim services — $3 million in the 2014-15 budget.

Yet Florida and Minnesota, with their seven-figure allocations, are exceptions; many states have invested little or nothing from their general funds for victim services.  Several states have created funds to be financed with fines and forfeitures from traffickers, but advocacy groups say this method can be an unreliable.

Detailing the dysfunction of Pennsylvania's death penalty system

This lengthy local article, headlined "Capital punishment in Pennsylvania: When death means life: Commonwealth's death penalty system called expensive and dysfunctional," provide a review of how the Keystone State has a capital punishment system that seems to function as if it were operated by the Keystone Cops. Here are excerpts from the article, which is the first is an extended series:

Pennsylvania's death penalty has cost taxpayers more than $350 million for a dysfunctional system that has sentenced hundreds but hasn't executed anyone in 15 years, a Reading Eagle analysis has found.  The newspaper analysis comes three years after state lawmakers called for an intensive report on Pennsylvania's death penalty, and as a Montgomery County lawmaker maps out a proposal to abolish the system.

The long-overdue report is at least several months away from being issued. There still has been no reckoning of the system's massive financial or psychological cost — including the immeasurable agony of justice-seeking family members and the pain of families waiting for condemned relatives to be executed. "My sister didn't have a choice about when her life ended. Why should he?" said Diane Moyer of Robesonia, referring to convicted killer Glenn Lyons of Reading.

Lyons is one of 185 condemned inmates, making Pennsylvania's death row the fifth largest in the nation.  He's also one of 12 death row inmates prosecuted for murders committed in Berks County, which along with York County has the second-highest number of death row inmates in the state behind Philadelphia's 69.  It was 1937 when Pennsylvania last executed someone for a murder that took place in Berks.

Observers of the state's system both locally and nationally agreed it is deeply flawed. It is likely to get even more scrutiny as prosecutors move ahead with a death penalty case against Eric Frein, accused of ambushing and murdering a state trooper this year....

The newspaper's cost estimate is likely a conservative number.  That's because the estimate, which relies on a 2008 Maryland study by the Urban Institute, was calculated using the Pennsylvania inmates now on death row.  The estimate does not account for unsuccessful death penalty cases tried by prosecutors, nor does it include death row inmates whose sentences were overturned on appeal.

The 2008 study — which produced findings similar to other state studies — found that Maryland spent an average of $1.9 million more on cases that led to death sentences than on cases where the death penalty could have been sought but was not.  At least two experts, including the researcher of the Maryland report, said the study was a fair comparison for estimating the cost to Pennsylvania taxpayers.  Applying the Maryland per-case figure to Pennsylvania's current 185 death row inmates yields a Pennsylvania cost of $351.5 million....

The state has executed three men, all of whom gave up their appeals, since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.  But with so few executions among the 429 death warrants Pennsylvania governors have signed since 1985, experts say it's critical lawmakers know the cost to justify budget expenses with a projected $1.85 billion state shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year.  So far, the death penalty hasn't been part of the budget debate.

For the loved ones of the victims, like Moyer, the financial cost of the death penalty is outweighed by the emotional toll of likely never having the killer's execution carried out. Lyons used two kitchen knives to stab Leibig, 45, of Millcreek Township, Lebanon County, again and again, investigators said.  The brutal attack lasted up to 15 minutes.  Lyons, now 49, was convicted and sentenced to death by a Berks jury, but claims he didn't kill Leibig.

The state Supreme Court denied his appeal in 2013, and his execution was set for August, but a federal judge granted him a stay in July, and his appeal process continues.  Leibig's family is frustrated and disappointed, knowing the state may never follow through with his execution.  "He'll keep fighting and playing the system," Moyer said.  "He had a fair trial, and he was guilty.  Put him to death. Give him the injection."...

A death penalty that doesn't actually execute people frustrates those on both sides of the debate.  Death penalty proponents blame an endless and costly appeals process.  Opponents criticize a system with too little funding for poor defendants....

At least one Berks judge who once supported the death penalty has had a change of heart. The judge, who asked not to be identified, had thought execution was a just punishment for the state's worst offenders and a deterrent to others.  But after seeing how cases continuously circle the courts, the judge now thinks the death penalty is a waste of time and money and is unnecessarily difficult on the victim's loved ones holding out hope for an execution.

"It's horrible for the families," the judge said.  Death penalty rulings aren't foolproof and should be scrutinized, but there should also be a limit on appeals, the judge said. "Now there is hearing after hearing.  It never ends," the judge said....

"There is a problem with a law that is never carried out," he said. State Rep. Thomas R. Caltagirone, a Reading Democrat, said he's heard from victims' families how hard it is to sit and wait for the death penalty to be carried out.  "They say: 'We lost a loved one. Why is he still living? Where is the justice?'" Caltagirone said.  "And victim's rights groups are livid about the endless appeals."  But Caltagirone also said he wonders whether it's appropriate for the state to execute someone.  "I'm kind of torn on it," he said.

More than a dozen states have analyzed death penalty costs.  Some states found the costs nearly 50 percent to 70 percent higher than non-death penalty cases.  While the costs vary across the U.S., all found capital trials more expensive.  The reason?  Mostly because the process is more complicated at every point in the case.  A death penalty case involves more attorneys, witnesses and experts.  Jury selection is long, as are the trials.  Also the cases usually have more pre-trial motions and require a separate trial for sentencing.

Incarcerating death row inmates in solitary confinement is also expensive — about $10,000 more a year than inmates serving a life sentence, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.  And, the majority of death penalty trials on appeal are found to be flawed, some significantly, and must be redone, adding to the price tag.

The state has been studying a laundry list of issues since 2011 when lawmakers directed the Joint State Government Commission to research capital punishment.  Berks officials did not know what the costs of trying capital cases are to taxpayers. "Definitely, the death penalty extremely strains our resources," Adams said.  "There's no way that we can put a financial number to that."...

"You can't choose to do it and not pay for," said Marc Bookman, a former public defender and director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation in Philadelphia, a nonprofit resource center.  "It's really expensive to do it properly and it's even more expensive to do it incorrectly," he said.

Last year, Maryland became the 18th state to abolish capital punishment.  Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley cited the cost — roughly three times as much as life without parole — as one of the factors for repealing the death penalty.  John Ramon, author of "The Cost of the Death Penalty in Maryland," said the costs to Pennsylvania taxpayers are likely comparable, assuming trial and incarceration expenses are similar. "It's not as big as an assumption as it sounds," Ramon said....

Knowing the cost, Ramon and others said, changes the conversation on a very polarizing issue. "I think it changes the nature of the debate because what it's saying is let's not just ask if the death penalty is better than not having the death penalty," Ramon said. "It's saying, given the death penalty is far more expensive, is it still worth having?"

Can and should out-going Maryland Gov commute death sentences to ensure LWOP after state's capital repeal?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by this Baltimore Sun article discussing the interesting procedural and practical issues now surrounding the fate of Maryland's death row prisoners and the decisions facing the out-going Maryland Governor who signed the law repealing the state's death penalty.  Here are excerpts from the article:

A western Maryland woman whose parents were killed by a man on death row urged Gov. Martin O'Malley in a phone conversation Monday not to commute the man's sentence. The conversation came days after The Baltimore Sun reported that O'Malley had reached out to two relatives of people killed by men on death row — moves that fueled speculation that, with two months left in office, the governor may be poised to take action on the death penalty cases.

"I said, 'Don't touch this [case], let it go back to court, let the judges decide,'" said Mary Francis Moore, 71, whose father and his wife were killed in 1995 by Heath William Burch. Moore said that in their roughly 15-minute phone conversation, O'Malley did not say what his plans were. But they discussed what might happen to Burch in light of another inmate's appeal. Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler has joined the appeal, arguing that the state no longer has the authority to execute anyone.

O'Malley "talked about the possibility that if it did go back to court, that these guys would get out, that they would only get life," not life without possibility of parole, Moore said. Moore said she concluded the conversation by asking O'Malley "to pray about it." The governor told her, she said, "I hope we meet some day."...

O'Malley has largely refused to discuss the fate of the men who were already sentenced to death when he and the General Assembly repealed the death penalty last year. The repeal did not apply to them.

Maryland's governor has broad power to pardon or reduce an inmate's sentence, but the authors of the death penalty repeal law included language spelling out that he could change a death sentence to life without parole — even if that sentence did not exist when the inmate committed his crime. Two men on death row commited their crimes before 1987, when Maryland lawmakers established the sentence of life without parole.

Sen. Brian E. Frosh, a proponent of repeal and the attorney general-elect, said Monday that a court would not be able to resentence an inmate to a penalty that did not exist at the time he was convicted, but the governor can.

Advocates on both sides of the issue have been watching to see whether O'Malley might commute the sentences of the four men remaining on death row....

Moore said she "begged" O'Malley not to grant Burch clemency, though he never clearly said he was considering that. She thinks Burch should be put to death. "I asked him, 'What are you going to do, governor?' I asked him two or three times, 'What are your plans?'"...

"The last thing I said to him was, 'I want you to really think about this, and I want you to pray about it, because I want you to do the right thing,'" she said. "The right thing to me is leave it alone."

Even before the death penalty repeal, the status of Maryland's death row inmates had been up in the air since 2006 when the state's regulations for executions were thrown out by a court. They were never replaced. Lawyers from the attorney general's office are scheduled to argue Dec. 8 before a state appellate court that Maryland can't issue new regulations now that capital punishment has been abolished.

An appeal by another death row inmate, Jody Lee Miles, faces an uncertain outcome in the courts. But Gansler has noted O'Malley's authority to commute death sentences to life without parole. Governors in Illinois and New Jersey commuted the existing death sentences in their states after the repeal of capital punishment....

Dorothy Atkinson, whose son was killed by Miles in 1997, said she, too, was contacted by the governor's office about a meeting.... Though Atkinson believes Miles deserves to be executed, she submitted a letter to O'Malley two weeks ago, asking him to commute Miles' sentence to spare her family from the ordeal of further legal wrangling.

I believe that, at least in some jurisdictions, convicted defendants are able to formally refuse to except a grant of clemency. Consequently, I am not entirely sure Gov O'Malley can ensure through a commutation decision that some of the death row prisoners get an LWOP sentence nor that a commutation decision will ensure there is no further legal wrangling over these cases. That said, the procedural and practical issues arising in this setting perhaps provide a strong reason for the out-going Gov to do exactly what the victims' families now request in each case whether that involves a request for commutation or a request to leave this matter to the state courts.

Perspective on victims' perspectives on the death penalty

Today's Washington Post has this intriguing new commentary headlined "Death penalty debate isn’t simple for families of victims." Here are excerpts:

Botched executions in Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona and continuing problems with lethal-injection drugs have put the death penalty back in the news.  After a brief moratorium following Oklahoma’s debacle, my state, Missouri, has resumed executing its death-row prisoners. One of the condemned men there murdered the wife of the man I would later marry....

For most people, the death penalty debate falls along ideological lines — liberals are opposed and conservatives are in favor.  But for the families of victims, the debate is not so simple and the solution is not so clear.  They cringe when they hear left-leaning commentators repeatedly describe the chilling details of a botched execution without repeating the far more chilling details of the crime the condemned man committed.  But they also cringe when they hear right-leaning commentators who promote the sanctity of life but do not question state-sanctioned death.

The killing that forever changed my husband’s life is the kind of crime that reinforces the beliefs of both sides.  Advocates of the death penalty see an unspeakably brutal murder, committed with no known motivation against a woman alone in her upscale home. Opponents see an African American male suspect convicted by a white jury and sentenced to death for the murder of a white woman, with no eyewitnesses, no DNA evidence and no confession.  They are both right.  The murder cried out for justice, but the conviction and sentencing fit a disturbing pattern of racial bias and rush to judgment....

Families of the victims, for the most part, do not weigh in on the debate.  For them, it is not a question of politics or policy.  It is personal, and whether the condemned killer dies alone in his cell or suffers an excruciating death at the hand of the state, their pain will not be erased by his.

Death penalty supporters talk of closure.  That may work as a matter of process — execution rids the state and the justice system of any further involvement — but it is much more complicated for families of victims.  Each envelope from the Department of Corrections, each anniversary when the crime is recounted in the paper, every discussion about the death penalty on TV — those are reopenings, not closings.  Our excruciatingly slow justice system has put my husband through more than 15 years of this. The killer may be getting what he deserves, but my husband will not be getting what he deserves: an end to the horrific memories that haunt him day and night.

As Missouri moves methodically through its backlog of condemned men and the killer’s last day is finally set, the crime will be back in the headlines.  Reporters will be calling my husband for comment, the condemned man’s lawyers will be interviewed, last-minute appeals on other grounds will be filed.  In the end, we can only hope that the execution drugs will be swift and effective, that the person administering them has been properly trained and that this will finally bring an end to killing in our lives.

Third Circuit finds "reprehensible" conduct regarding victim restitution not grounds for revoking supervised release

A Third Circuit panel yesterday handed down an interesting ruling in US v. Bagdy, No. 13-2975 (3d Cir. Aug. 21, 2014) (available here), reversing the revocation of supervised released despite calling the defendant's conduct "reprehensible." Here is how the Bagdy opinion starts:

At issue on this appeal is whether supervised release may be revoked and an offender sent to prison based upon a District Court’s finding that the offender acted in bad faith in relation to his obligation to make restitution to the victims of his criminal conduct.  In this case, although Appellant David Bagdy complied with the letter of the District Court’s restitution order by ultimately paying more than one-third of a $435,000 inheritance he had received while on supervised release, he engaged in a lavish spending spree that dissipated the balance of the inheritance while delaying the proceedings intended to modify the restitution order.  Like the District Court, we find Bagdy’s conduct reprehensible.  We conclude, however, that the District Court could not revoke supervised release for such bad faith conduct because Bagdy did not violate a specific condition of supervised release in relation to the restitution obligation.  Accordingly, we will vacate the judgment and remand for further proceedings.

Intriguing sparring over victims' rights in Colorado massacre capital case

This local article from Colorado, headlined "James Holmes case: Death penalty foe Bob Autobee's letter to victims stirs controversy," reports on a notable fight which has broken out concerning victims and victims' rights in high-profile capital cases.  Here are excerpts:

Does the father of a victim in one death-penalty case have the right to contact family members in another capital case?  And, under Colorado law, do prosecutors have any obligation to facilitate that conversation — even if the discussion isn't going to help their cause? The questions are key to a new controversy in the case of accused Aurora theater shooter James Holmes.

The current subject of raging debate in local criminal justice circles is DIVO — not the pioneering weird-rock band, but an acronym for Defense Initiated Victim Outreach, a program that's assuming a growing role in high-stakes cases.   As Melanie Asmar recently reported, the defense team representing Holmes has accused prosecutors of impeding their attempts to contact victims of the 2012 Aurora theater shootings, while prosecutors have claimed that the defense is improperly using the DIVO process to try to sway victims to oppose the death penalty.

But what hasn't been publicly disclosed — thanks largely to Judge Carlos Samour's insistence on redacting the blank out of public pleadings in the Holmes case — is that one of the people seeking to reach out to victims is Bob Autobee, whose own views on the death penalty underwent a dramatic reversal as the effort to execute his son's killer dragged through the courts for almost twelve years.

In 2002, Autobee's son Eric, a 23-year-old correctional officer, was fatally attacked in the kitchen of the Limon prison by inmate Edward Montour Jr., who was already serving a life sentence for killing his eleven-week-old daughter.  Montour pleaded guilty to murder, but the Colorado Supreme Court threw out his death sentence in 2007 because it hadn't been imposed by a jury.  Bob Autobee, initially a strong supporter of the death penalty, gradually became disheartened by the numerous delays in the case and began to push for a life sentence instead.

After meeting with Montour in a restorative justice session, Autobee began picketing the Douglas County courthouse to protest Eighteenth Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler's insistence on pursuing Montour's execution; Brauchler's office even filed a motion in the case seeking to prevent Autobee from addressing the jury at trial.  But the case never got that far.  Last March, just as the trial was starting, startling new evidence suggested that Montour may have been wrongly convicted in the infant death that put him in prison in the first place.  Shortly thereafter, prosecutors agreed to let Montour plead guilty to first-degree murder and receive a life sentence.

A few weeks ago, Montour attorney David Lane, an outspoken opponent of the death penalty, forwarded a letter from Autobee to one of the victims in the Holmes case, urging the victim to distribute it to others.  In the letter, Autobee invites victims to meet with him so he can "offer my insights into this emotional roller coaster in hopes that it may help you to both understand the process you are going through with the prosecution and trial of James Holmes, and to share with you how I finally came to a place of peace and tranquility after fighting the pain and torment I was undergoing for ten years." See the letter below.

Lane says the first victim he contacted evidently decided not to distribute the letter.  A second contact sent the letter to a victim's advocate in the DA's office, "who never distributed it to anyone," Lane says. And that, the attorney suggests, is part of a deliberate effort by prosecutors to squelch DIVO efforts in the Holmes case.

"There's a statute in Colorado that says victims must be informed of their right to participate in restorative justice processes," Lane notes.  "The DAs never tell victims that they have that right or explain what the process is. They're doing everything in their power not to expose any of the [theater shooting] victims to DIVO — because they saw what happened in the Montour case. When Bob Autobee was exposed to DIVO, he did a complete turnaround on the death penalty."

Intriguing new report on "Compensating Victims of Crime"

The folks at Justice Fellowship have just released an interesting new report titled simply "Compensating Victims of Crime" as part of its advocacy for restorative justice programming. This report's Executive Summary includes these passages: 

Restorative Justice recognizes that crime harms people. Though most people affected by crime are never able to fully reclaim what was taken, victim compensation funds are a tool used within our criminal justice system to advance the much needed value of assisting victims and survivors of crime. Unfortunately, very little of the billions of dollars placed within these funds goes directly to victims and survivors of crime.  This report is an extensive overview of victim compensation funds and highlights some concerns and provides some suggestions for reform.

Victim compensation funds are funded by criminal fines and taxpayer dollars and offer monetary assistance to victims and survivors of violent crime.  Though similar in concept to restitution, they differ in eligibility requirements, funding sources, and distribution. Currently, victim compensation funds only provide monetary assistance to a small number of victims and survivors of violent crime. Of the approximately 7 million victims of violent crime per year, only 200,000 receive assistance from a compensation fund. Even more disturbing is the ratio of money spent on compensation compared to that which is spent on corrections. In 2012, federal, state, and local governments spent approximately $85 billion on corrections. In the same year, victim compensation funds paid out approximately $500 million dollars—less than 1% of what was spent on corrections.

This disparity cannot be blamed on a lack of funds.  The Crime Victims Fund — a hybrid system funded jointly by federal and state dollars, but administered at the state level —currently retains a balance of almost $11 billion, while some states have additional balances that approach $10 million. Congress, however, has capped the total annual Crime Victims Fund spending at $745 million dollars despite the large pool of victims who are eligible to receive funds.  Further, the average maximum amount that victims and survivors can receive from a victim compensation fund is $26,000.

Because victim compensation funds are administered on the state level, states differ in the eligibility requirements. All states compensate for medical expenses, mental health counseling, lost wages, funeral costs, and travel.  Many states compensate for crime scene cleanup, attorney fees, rehabilitation, replacement services, and relocation services. Few states compensate for things like pain and suffering, property loss, stolen cash, transportation, return of an abducted child, guide dog expenses, domestic services, home healthcare, and forensic exams in sexual assaults.

Unfortunately, many victims do not receive any compensation. This often occurs simply due to a lack of knowledge about the compensation fund. However, there are numerous other reasons, including the fact that there are fairly stringent requirements that one must satisfy to receive funds.  Half of all states require victims or survivors to report the crime to law enforcement within 72 hours.  12 states require a police report to be filed within 5 to 10 days. A majority of the states require victims and survivors to file a compensation claim within one to two years, and several states restrict compensation to victims who have a prior felony conviction in the last 10 years. While these requirements may not seem stringent at first glance, consider that many crimes are not ever reported for fear of retribution, continued victimization, or the stigma that comes with being a victim. Forty-two percent of victims do not report serious violent crimes to law enforcement officials.  As a result, they are denied access to compensation funds....

The system currently in place can be vastly improved. The federal cap on the dispensing of funds should be raised to $1 billion.  Awareness of these funds must be increased through additional community infrastructure and advocacy.  Overly restrictive requirements must be relaxed so that people have a chance to qualify for compensation once they know it is available. Finally, stringent oversight and transparency of state funds for victims is necessary to ensure that the money is being used properly. Increasing awareness, access, and availability of compensation funds will prioritize victims and survivors in the criminal justice system and advance the values of restorative justice.

The full text of Compensating Victims of Crime is available here.

Should I be hopeful Amy can now recover more restitution after major child porn bust in NYC?

The question in the title of this post is my (perhaps weak) effort to put some kind of positive spin on this depressing new story from CNN headlined "Cop, rabbi, scoutmaster among arrests in child porn bust."  Here are just some of the ugly basics:

They are people children are supposed to trust: A New York Police Department officer, a Fire Department of New York paramedic, a rabbi and a scoutmaster were among more than 70 people arrested in a major child porn bust, authorities said Wednesday.

One of those arrested -- a supervisor with the Transportation Security Administration -- allegedly traveled to the Dominican Republic to have sex with children, a law enforcement official said. He allegedly made more than 50 trips there.

The investigation, involving agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as New York authorities, began as part of an undercover operation into peer-to-peer networks, authorities told reporters Wednesday.  The suspects, who do not appear to know one another, were able to search files using graphic terms and descriptions. Software continuously scanned files and automatically uploaded images to personal computers, laptops and mobile phones.

Special Agent in Charge James Hayes, head of Homeland Security Investigations New York, called the arrests the largest enforcement operation in New York "targeting predators (who) possess, produce or distribute sexually explicit images of children." The activity, he said, has "reached epidemic proportions."

"The backgrounds of many of the individuals ... is shocking," Hayes said. "These defendants come from all walks of life ... This operation puts the lie to the classic stereotypical profile that child predators are nothing more than unemployed drifters. Many of the defendants are, in fact, well-educated and successful in private and professional lives. They work as registered nurses, paramedics, caretakers for mentally ill adults, computer programers and architects."

The continuing operation resulted in 71 arrests -- including one woman -- and the seizure of nearly 600 devices, including desktop and laptop computers, tablets, smartphones and thumb drives with tens of thousands of sexually explicit images and videos of children, Hayes said.

The pornographic images of children were shared at no charge, authorities said. About a third of the suspects remain in custody, and the others were released on bonds ranging from $30,000 to $500,000. Hayes said the January arrest of Brian Fanelli, chief of the Mount Pleasant Police Department in upstate Valhalla, New York, on child pornography violations helped lead to the other defendants.

A few months ago, I asked in the title of this post a serious question that comes to mind now again: "Just how many prominent, successful men are child porn fiends?".  As the title of this post suggests, following the Supreme Court's messy "split-the-difference" approach to child porn restitution in its recent Paroline ruling (basis here), I am hoping a silver lining to this dark cloud might be that CP crimes committed too often by persons "well-educated and successful in private and professional lives" might now mean more restitution getting paid to the unfortunate victims of these crimes.

A few (of many) prior posts on Paroline and child porn issues:

• SCOTUS splits the difference for child porn restitution awards in Paroline
• Will Congress fix (quickly? ever? wisely?) the "puzzle of paying Amy" after Paroline?
• Fascinating NY Times magazine cover story on child porn victims and restitution
• "Pricing Amy: Should Those Who Download Child Pornography Pay the Victims?"
• Explaining why I am rooting so hard for "Amy" in Paroline
• Just how many prominent, successful men are child porn fiends?