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individual defendant, and minimize the negative impact of minimum sentencing laws without inherently needing those laws repealed.
“I’ve never seen a prosecutor and a defender unite to pursue a concern about judicial behavior … and I’ve never seen a judge do the things that this judge has been accused of doing, though I can make no judgment about whether these accusations are true or false.“
Seattle Times
April 25, 2019
Read More“Henry Montgomery's victory at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 created a way for hundreds of prisoners like him — those convicted of horrific crimes while juveniles — to earn their freedom by demonstrating their rehabilitation since their youth. Yet on Thursday, Montgomery was again denied his own opportunity at a life beyond bars.“
The Advocate
April 11, 2019
Read More“A recent study we did for the National Institute of Justice was one of the first efforts to look at home visits, quantitatively and qualitatively, to gauge their effectiveness. The evaluation included data analysis, reviews of officer-visit checklists, interviews, and focus-group discussions. The results are promising but quite preliminary. And they raise as many questions as they answer. “
Governing Institute
April 4, 2019
Read More“Veches’ impending release is one of 33 cases in which Newsom, since taking office, has attempted to stop a serious offender from receiving parole, according to documents provided by the governor’s office. Parole hearings usually take place in front of a two-person panel. The governor can’t revoke these paroles but can ask the state’s 15-member Board of Parole Hearings to review them.“
LA Times
March 26, 2019
Read More“The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will reconsider whether felony defendants in state court can be convicted by divided juries, a move that has the potential to rewrite decades of precedent and affect an untold number of cases in the two states that have allowed it: Louisiana and Oregon.“
The New Orleans Advocate
March 18, 2019
Read More“There is no shortage of quality names. High on my list would be Bryan Stevenson, a career death penalty opponent, consummate Supreme Court litigator and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama. Or Michelle Alexander, former law clerk for Justice Harry Blackmun, civil rights lawyer and author of the canonical “The New Jim Crow.” (Ms. Alexander is also an opinion columnist for The New York Times.) Or Sherrilyn Ifill, a voting rights expert and head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the civil rights firm founded by Thurgood Marshall in 1940.“
New York Times
March 10, 2019
Read More“A federal judge on Monday denied a request by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office to vacate the death penalty for a Philadelphia man convicted of the 1984 strangulation and drowning deaths of a prominent pastor’s son and daughter-in-law in their East Mount Airy home.“
Philadelphia Inquirer
March 4, 2019
Read More“If Vermont or Massachusetts adopted such proposals, they would be the first state to effectively bar life without parole sentences. All states but Alaska allow sentences of life without parole, and Alaska’s 99-year sentence is the functional equivalent. Last year, Pennsylvania state Senator Sharif Street launched a similar push by proposing that people serving a life sentence should be eligible for parole, but his bill did not move forward.“
The Appeal
February 28, 2019
Read More‘On paper, a 31-year-old man found to have serious mental illnesses was released from a New York state prison in September 2017 after serving 10 years behind bars for two robberies. But in reality, the man, who asked to be identified by his initials C.J., still wakes up each day inside a maximum-security prison in Stormville. Though he is technically free, he is still confined to a cell because of a Kafkaesque bureaucratic dilemma: The state requires people like him to be released to a supportive housing facility, but there is not one available.‘
New York Times
January 23, 2019
Read More“But because of the anomalous way we select juries in capital cases, greater opposition to the death penalty among Catholics could, counterintuitively, increase the number of death sentences imposed in this country. Such opposition could even solidify judicial support for capital punishment. This paradox is possible because of a process called “death qualification,” in which a judge can disqualify certain prospective jurors who are opposed to executions. The pope’s sharpening of the Catholic position on the death penalty helps reveal the problems with this system.“
Washington Post
January 18, 2019
Read More“That is why we are supporting the Less Is More Act, recently introduced by Assembly member Walter Mosley, to increase public safety and reduce unnecessary incarceration. And it's why we earlier this year were among 45 current and former prosecutors in calling for making probation and parole less punitive and more rehabilitative, coming together with probation and parole administrators and their national organizations to declare probation and parole "a significant contributor to mass incarceration" that should be substantially downsized.“
New York Daily News
December 28, 2018
Read More“Throughout the entire Anglo-American legal tradition, the independence of citizen juries has been understood to be an indispensable structural check on executive and legislative power. This independence has traditionally implied that jurors would both understand the consequences of a conviction, and that they would possess the power of conscientious acquittal, or “jury nullification”—that is, the inherent prerogative to decline to convict a defendant, even if factual guilt is shown beyond a reasonable doubt, when convicting would work a manifest injustice.“
Cato Institute
December 20, 2018
Read More‘Today, 126 positions on the U.S. District Court and U.S. Court of Appeals are vacant. In fact, we’re in the longest period of triple-digit vacancies in 25 years. But the raw numbers don’t tell the full story, so, since the partisan environment is so bitter, let’s apply some standards advocated by Democrats to put these numbers in perspective.‘
Washington Times
December 13, 2018
Read More“At the end of the day, encouraging or discouraging cooperation is not the business of federal judges. That is the executive branch’s role. Judges constitute an independent branch of government with distinctive responsibilities. Our charge is to sentence convicted defendants fairly, based on all the facts and circumstances and the law, and to explain as clearly as possible to the public, the defendant and the victims how we reach the sentence we pronounce.“
American Bar Association
December 12, 2018
Read More“Florida was the only state with a constitutional ban on reducing past criminal sentences, until Tuesday, when voters approved Amendment 11 by 62 percent, just over the 60 percent threshold for ballot measures in the state. The measure contained three bundled constitutional amendments, one of which repealed an 1885 provision in the Florida constitution known as the "Savings Clause" that banned the state legislature from making retroactive changes to criminal sentencing laws.“
Reason Magazine
November 9, 2018
Read More“Lawmakers plan to introduce two bills in 2019 in an effort to overturn Oregon's non-unanimous jury law, Jennifer Williamson, D-Portland, told The Oregonian/OregonLive. The first would seek a legislative fix to the law that allows juries in most felony cases — aside from murder — to convict defendants with a 10-2 vote, she said. The second would refer the issue to voters, who would then decide whether to overturn an amendment in the state constitution enacted more than eight decades ago.“
The Oregonian
November 8, 2018
Read More“The judicial races likewise were a Democratic rout. The party won each of 23 seats on the district judge bench, all 13 on the family court, all four for county civil judge, all 15 county misdemeanor judges and all four county probate judges. The sweep of the misdemeanor bench, which was dominated by Republicans, could have huge ramifications for the future of the federal lawsuit, brought by poor defendants, challenging Harris County’s cash bail system. Each of the 16 jurists are defendants, including some who have pushed the county to continue fighting the case, though it already has cost taxpayers more than $6 million.“
Houston Chronicle
November 7, 2018
Read More“Louisiana is one of only two states -- the other is Oregon -- that don’t require unanimous juries for all felony convictions, and it’s the only state where a jury that isn’t unanimous can send a person to prison for the rest of their life.“
NOLA News
November 5, 2018
Read More“New York needs to do better; aging and elderly people shouldn’t be left behind as younger people continue to benefit from the state’s overall decline in incarceration. The state can begin by making these further changes:
Seat more people on the board to combat understaffing and dismissing those who abuse and misuse their positions
End the use of the “nature of the crime” as a factor in parole decisions
Give more weight to people’s accomplishments while incarcerated
Institute a meaningful presumption of release at first eligibility
Acknowledge the fact that elderly people pose no substantial risk to public safety.“
Prison Policy Initiative
November 1, 2018
Read More“Atlanta defense attorney Don Samuel, who has written books on Georgia criminal case law, said Motes’ decision to grant a new trial based on the judge’s own court motion was highly unusual. ‘But it doesn’t strike me as being problematic,” Samuel said. “One of the grounds for granting a new trial can be that the judge was unhappy with the verdict. And the judge does indeed sit as the 13th juror’.“
Atlanta Journal Constitution
October 30, 2018
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