Due Process — Judges — Galsworthy Criminal Justice Reform Program

Judges

Defendants are regularly condemned to years, decades, or life in prison for minor infractions because of minimum sentencing statutes. If judges had more discretion in sentencing, then sentences could be more proportional to the crime, more specific to the individual defendant, and minimize the negative impact of minimum sentencing laws without inherently needing those laws repealed.

Very Broad Laws Offend Due Process

"As vague and ambiguous criminal statutes: they fail to give ordinary people "fair notice" of how the legal system is likely to respond to their conduct. This is a due process problem because it frustrates predictability. When people lack a meaningful sense of what conduct invites serious intrusion into their lives — either because criminal statutes fail to convey what conduct they prohibit, or because they sweep so broadly that no one has a clue what the "actual" prohibition is — the rule-of-law is undermined."

Reason Magazine

August 20, 2018

JudgesAnthony BradleyAugust 25, 2018Reason Magazine, Due Process

Judges

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