Mandatory minimums

Just finished grading a bunch of papers on criminal justice policy reforms for my Criminal Justice Policy class.  Several people wrote on reforming mandatory minimum sentences and they all hit upon this article I had not come across before.  It’s by a federal judge railing against the current system– the title captures the spirit, “How Mandatory Minimums Forced Me to Send More Than 1,000 Nonviolent Drug Offenders to Federal Prison.”  And here’s a nice excerpt:

If lengthy mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug addicts actually worked, one might be able to rationalize them. But there is no evidence that they do. I have seen how they leave hundreds of thousands of young children parentless and thousands of aging, infirm and dying parents childless. They destroy families and mightily fuel the cycle of poverty and addiction. In fact, I have been at this so long, I am now sentencing the grown children of people I long ago sent to prison.

For years I have debriefed jurors after their verdicts. Northwest Iowa is one of the most conservative regions in the country, and these are people who, for the most part, think judges are too soft on crime. Yet, for all the times I’ve asked jurors after a drug conviction what they think a fair sentence would be, never has one given a figure even close to the mandatory minimum. It is always far lower. Like people who dislike Congress but like their Congress member, these jurors think the criminal justice system coddles criminals in the abstract—but when confronted by a real live defendant, even a “drug trafficker,” they never find a mandatory minimum sentence to be a just sentence.

Many people across the political spectrum have spoken out against the insanity of mandatory minimums. These include our past three presidents, as well as Supreme Court Justices William Rehnquist, whom nobody could dismiss as “soft on crime,” and Anthony Kennedy, who told the American Bar Association in 2003, “I can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory minimum sentences.” In 2005, four former attorneys general, a former FBI director and dozens of former federal prosecutors, judges and Justice Department officials filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court opposing the use of mandatory minimums in a case involving a marijuana defendant facing a fifty-five-year sentence. In 2008, The Christian Science Monitor reported that 60 percent of Americans opposed mandatory minimums for nonviolent offenders. And in a 2010 survey of federal district court judges, 62 percent said mandatory minimums were too harsh.

And yet we still have them.  Are too many politicians still afraid of being attacked as “soft on crime”?  Clearly, this calls for some real leadership.  I’m not holding my breath.

Food’s bad, but at least there’s no shankings

Apparently, you can rate prisons on Yelp.  Interesting story about this in the Post.  Much funner is the link to Buzzfeed’s “12 best prisons on Yelp!”

5. You’ll find religious tolerance and one pretty chill Rabbi over at Riker’s Island (3 Stars)

Chart of the day

Came across this really interesting page about race and the death penalty while preparing on the topic for class a couple of weeks ago.  I found this chart particularly compelling:

 

Now, to have a better sense, I would like to know the overall levels of these types of crimes, rather than just the executions.  I suppose it is possible that a Black defendant/white victim is actually 10x more prevalent, but I doubt it.

American public on marijuana: legalize it

Fascinating Pew report on changing public attitudes towards marijuana.  The headline is the 52% majority support, but what I really love is how they break it down by generation so you can see where this change is coming from:

It’s not just that more pro-marijuana young people are replacing anti-marijuana old people, but that among every generation support for legalized marijuana seems to be increasing (though especially so among young people).

Also found the amount of change on the idea of marijuana as a “moral issue” in just 7 years to be pretty amazing:

 

Not surprisingly, some pretty big partisan differences, but independents are pretty much the same as Democrats.  Republicans are all on their own:

I do love, though, that even a huge majority of Republicans think enforcement costs outweigh enforcement benefits, but they still want it illegal.  Actually, the idea of making it illegal but not wasting resources on criminal enforcement is a great argument for decriminalization rather than legalization (which is actually pretty much my position).  I don’t see true legalization anytime soon, but there sure seems to be some fertile ground for decriminalization.

Chart of the day

Been covering the death penalty in class this week.  Came across this cool chart of number of executions and number on death row by state via the Economist:

Not surprising to see Texas with a strong lead.  Though, you want a really cool factoid?  Try and find an entire state with more executions than Harris County (Houston), Texas.

Fewer drug uses; more reckless endangerers

In prison, that is.  Listened to this amazing NPR story earlier this week about the dangers in “walking down the grain” in which workers literally drown to death in corn:

Early the next morning, on a stifling hot day in July 2010, Whitebread joined his buddies Alex Pacas, 19, and Will Piper, 20, at the Haasbach LLC grain storage complex. Piper had begun working there the week before, and it was Pacas’ second day on the job.

The boys carried shovels and picks as they climbed a ladder four stories to the top of the grain bin, which was twice as wide and half-filled with 250,000 bushels of wet and crusty corn. Their job was to “walk down the grain,” or break up the kernels that clung to the walls and clogged the drainage hole at the bottom of the bin.

The work went well at first, with the boys shoveling corn toward a cone-shaped hole at the center of the bin. But around 9:45 a.m., Whitebread began sinking in the corn. He was sucked under in minutes and disappeared. Pacas and Piper also began to sink and desperately struggled to stay on the surface.

Six horrific hours later, only Piper was carried out alive.

It turns out that in case after case the employer is basically sending people out to their doom despite plenty of evidence they very well may be doing so.  Reckless disregard for human life at the very least.   Yet, as the story points out, very, very few of these reckless endangerers are ever prosecuted and when they are fined, the fines typically end up dramatically reduced.

It seems to me in story after story of corporate/business malfeasance managers/owners, etc., make decisions which lead directly to either death or completely ruining people’s lives.   And yet they are almost never punished for it.  Meanwhile, if you are caught with a few pills of Ocycontin that don’t belong to you, you could get years in prison.  Quite simply, as a society we go way to easy on corporate crime.  That should change (not that I think it would will).  That said, it would sure make me happy to see more people like the man who sends a 14 year old into an incredibly dangerous corn bin (or mortgage brokers who defraud people out of their life savings, etc.) in prison and fewer drug addicts.

 

Stop snitchin’

Okay, not really.  That’s actually a phrase used in inner-city communities to discourage any cooperation with police.  There was a nice 60 Minutes about it a few years back.

Rather, stop using jailhouse snitches in murder cases.  If you look at cases of wrongful convictions, there’s a huge number of them where the convicted murderer supposedly confessed his crime to some complete stranger in jail and nobody else.  This jailhouse snitch– usually a low-life with a long term– then gets a nicely reduced sentence in exchange for testifying about the “confession” he heard.  The DA gets a conviction in a big murder case.  Win-win.  Except of course for the innocent person who is sent to prison.

Compelling story in the N&O Sunday about just such a case where an innocent man has now spent 34 years in prison.  He should be getting out shortly thanks to DNA evidence that has finally been reviewed.  To add insult to injury, a judge first ordered 10 years ago to review the DNA evidence, but nothing was done about it for the longest time.

What really annoys me about this case was that there’s absolutely no way this guy was ever guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  He was a convicted criminal who had recently escaped a work gang and was in the same vicinity as a murder also committed by a Black person.  That’s the only real evidence.  Until prosecutors convinced some jailhouse snitches to tell about the “confession” they heard in exchange for monetary reward.  Oh, and that was also against their earlier statements.  The idea that somebody is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt when the only evidence is a supposed confession to someone who has a lot to gain from hearing it is preposterous.  Prosecutors and juries just want somebody to pay for a horrible crime and it’s clear that some times they are too willing to just put on blinders to common sense so they can have their conviction.

Very frustrating story and well worth your time to read.

 

IS UNC too friendly to rapists

So, I’ve been half-following the story of a woman at UNC who has been charged with an honor violation for repeatedly, publicly naming a man she accused of raping her, as a rapist.  I.e., he has filed a complaint against her for harassment and defamation, essentially.  Last week, I even walked right by a protest while I was on campus.  Anyway, I listened to this nice, thorough story.  Now, I really do not know if UNC is too accepting of rape (honestly, my inclination given my experience on college campuses is to think otherwise), but the facts as laid out in the story certainly do not suggest that this is the case.  To wit:

Gambill’s case made its way through the UNC-Chapel Hill judicial system at a time of transition. The University had just ended its policy of hearing sexual assault cases in its student honor court and had replaced it on an interim basis with a judicial panel made up of two students, two faculty members, and an administrator. The judicial panel also had a lower burden of proof than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” of criminal courts.

When the interim judicial panel heard all of the evidence in the case, the group of three women and two men unanimously found the accused not guilty of sexual assault.  [emphases mine]

“It was a very thorough hearing,” said John Gresham, the accused student’s attorney. “I’ve had hearings before the administrative office of the court that were certainly no better conducted than this hearing board did.”

Gambill chose not to appeal the judicial panel’s decision, nor did she file a civil or criminal complaint. Gresham says his client, who has not been publicly named, had to withdraw from school. When he came back, Gambill began appearing at multiple public rallies referring to him as a “rapist” – and that led the former boyfriend to file an honor code complaint against her.

Again, I certainly have no way to know whether Gambill was raped and I genuinely feel for her if she was.  That said, the facts of her particular case are that a judicial body of peers and faculty– including a majority of women– unanimously found for the alleged rapist.  And under a lower standard than reasonable doubt.  The facts in this particular case give no indication whatsoever that UNC goes easy on rape.  Maybe they do, but Landen Gambill has given me no reason to believe that.

Pistorious

Alright, I feel a little guilty for writing about this, as celebrity murder trials get way too much attention as actual news.  But, hey, I’m human and have been intrigued by this case.  I love this take from Will Saletan, that even if you entirely buy Pistorious’ own version of events, he’s a dangerous, reckless killer.  Here’s a bit:

On Feb. 14, around 3 a.m., Pistorius was in bed at his house with his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. According to his affidavit,

I woke up, went onto the balcony to bring the fan in and closed the sliding doors, the blinds and the curtains. I heard a noise in the bathroom and realised that someone was in the bathroom. I felt a sense of terror rushing over me. There are no burglar bars across the bathroom window and I knew that contractors who worked at my house had left the ladders outside.

Pause right there. Pistorius lives in a hyper-secure gated community that advertises a “solid, electrified security wall,” laser sensors, and biometric locks. Wealthy South Africans move to such communities precisely so they can go outside without fear. At last week’s bail hearing, a police officer testified that there were two dogs outside the window where Pistorius claimed an intruder might have entered. The prosecutor also asked why, if Pistorius feared burglars, he slept with his balcony doors open. Pistorius’ lawyer, Barry Roux, didn’t address either point.

There’s no record of any burglary-like incident at Pistorius’ home. The two incidents he has acknowledged were false alarms…

To appreciate the perversity of this story, you have to see the floor plan of Pistorius’ home. His bedroom door wasn’t down the hall, where he’d heard the purported burglar noises. It was in the entryway right next to him. All he had to do was wake Steenkamp and slip out with her. His “limited mobility,” which supposedly prevented him from making it 15 feet to the bedroom door, somehow didn’t deter him from maneuvering 20 feet down the hall toward the danger, and around a corner for another 15 feet to where he thought the intruder was. There, a homeowner ostensibly too terrified to turn on a light in his bedroom, or even unlock his bedroom door and flee, had no trouble firing four shots through the locked toilet door, which offered no escape route. If there really was an armed intruder, this was the course of action most likely to escalate the carnage.

Short version: pretty damning.

Over-reaction

Stuff like this drives me crazy.  Sure, we should all be vigilant to do whatever we can (within reason!!) to prevent violence in schools, but what kills me is that adults some how think the following is a reasonable approach to preventing violence in schools.  From the Post:

The gun came from a dollar store. It was a cheap plastic fake with a bright orange tip that Nakicha Gilbert’s 10-year-old son bought during a visit to a cousin’s house.

“It was a toy,” Gilbert said. “A toy.”

Her son had it in his backpack when he went to Alexandria’s Douglas MacArthur Elementary School on Feb. 4, and he took it out on a bus ride home, placing it in his front pants pocket. He showed one boy, who immediately recognized it was not real, according to his mother.

It is unclear how many other children noticed or talked about the toy gun, but one girl told her mother that the episode frightened her. The girl’s mother called the school immediately and e-mailed school officials that she was uncomfortable sending her children to school until she could be certain the 10-year-old was not armed.

Gilbert said she was told that the principal, that day, examined a video of the bus ride home and saw nothing alarming. But the next morning, the boy’s backpack was searched, the toy gun was found and school officials called police. The 10-year-old was taken into custody. [emphasis mine]  He was not handcuffed, police said.

Oh, that makes me feel so much better that they didn’t bother with handcuffs on the 10-year old who was carrying– in a completely non-threatening way– an obviously toy gun.  Apparently, fingers are quite the danger as well.  In a separate article:

An 8-year-old boy in Prince William County pointed his finger like a gun in a school hallway after a friend pretended to shoot him with a bow and arrow. The class had been studying Native American culture and had just learned a deer-hunting song.

“It was playing — it was cowboys and Indians,” said the second-grader’s father.

The imaginary crossfire on Feb. 8 produced real-life fallout two months after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The boy was suspended for “threatening to harm self or others,” a misdeed on par with bringing an actual weapon to school. He served an in-school suspension Wednesday.

Hooray!!  At least he wasn’t arrested.  You know, if there was some evidence crazed, non-sensical over-reactions actually cut down on school violence, I’d be all for it.  But of course there’s not.  It’s not like we found ourselves wishing, “if only someone had arrested Dylan Klebold for bringing a cap gun to school.”

Americans love their pot

It’s marijuana policy day for my class.  Got this chart from one of the readings.  I’m sure there’s an interesting study in why Americans are so much more likely to use marijuana than residents of other developed countries– or, at least there needs to be. It’s really kind of an interesting question.

Or here’s a nice trivia question– in what way are the United States and New Zealand most alike?

 

Too crazy to be executed?

I could’ve used a streamlined version, but pretty fascinating story of a truly crazy, crazy murdered that Texas is trying to execute.  How crazy you ask?

Perhaps what he did next—the thing that got everybody’s attention again—resulted from a combination of all these things: On December 9, 2008, Andre ripped out his left eye. His only eye. And he ate it.

As he explained some days later, he didn’t want the government to read his thoughts, so he ate the eye because he was certain they would figure out some way to put it back in. He said he had been reading the Book of Revelations, and felt sympathy for the devil because it wasn’t all Satan’s fault. After all, Andre was supposed to have been aborted.

Yeah, that crazy.  And, this being Texas, of course there’s race involved.  But I couldn’t not pass along that tidbit, for which the author cruelly makes you wait for the third page.