Former federal judge to President Obama: Free the man I sentenced to 55 years
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Where is the justice? Is there anyone who could argue this is the way we want our judicial system to work? Why can't we fix this already?
It's also not unreasonable to think large disparities in sentencing are fundamentally unfair. The amount of jail time you get is supposed to depend on what you did and not which judge presided over your sentencing.
But along the way mandatory minimums became a way for politicians to project the "tough on crime" image. You'd have a news article about a guy who just got out of jail killing an eight year old in a botched drug deal, then the next day Senator Simpleton is there at a press conference announcing a new bill to add 25 years to everybody caught with a gun at a drug deal.
It's virtually impossible for any politician to stand up at that time and say "That seems like an awfully long sentence for being in possession of a firearm."
Anyway, the law institute of Victoria did a study where they asked members of the public what an appropriate sentence would be for real cases (without telling them the actual sentence). The kicker was this: the survey included much more detail on how the crime occurred. It wasn't just a throwaway line in a paper, but gave context. Turned out that the respondents suggested sentences that were actually shorter than were given in court.
The whole "tough on crime, because votes" is a hideous thing, because most voters don't think about the big picture.
> The amount of jail time you
> get is supposed to depend on
> what you did and not which
> judge presided over your
> sentencing
So yes, whilst judges are supposed to have lots of discretion- there should also be oversight to ensure they're somewhat aligned with each other.
Mandatory minimums are a populist solution to headlines about setencing.
The law however is a lot more sensible. For one it's for repeat crimes, but only of a certain order of the first one. i.e. if the first crime carried a 10 year sentence, then a repeat crime would carry a mandatory minimum of at least half the full sentence on that crime. You wouldn't have the issue of three strikes out for example, because none of those crimes are large enough to fit the mandatory threshold. (Further, while marijuana is illegal in the Netherlands, normal use is never prosecuted anyway, which we call the 'gedoogbeleid', loosely 'tolerance policy'. i.e. it's technically illegal, but it's country-wide policy to ignore it. Like if a police officer catches you walking through a red light on a street that has no traffic for hours because of an accident further down the road.) Still I'm not a fan. Judges are imperfect but I feel they're less imperfect than mandatory minimums. At the end of the day, our judges are independent and highly trained. Further there are various instruments to ensure independence, like appeals or even rejecting the judge and replacing him or her with a different one. (right of substitution).
It's definitely a tricky thing...
In 1970 924(c) was 1 year mandatory and 2 year for subsequent using or carrying a gun during a felony.
In 1984 they changed it to 5 years for carrying a gun during a "crime of violence". 20 for subsequent.
In 1986 they added " during a drug trafficking crime ".
In 1998 in addition to use or carry they added "possesses" "in furtherance of any such crime." And they increased the subsequent minimum from 20 to 25.
Note that these were all Republican congresses so i agree that the anti gun theory doesn't really hold that well, it was mostly just "tough on crime" hysteria. The 1986 drug stuff was in response to some basketball player, Len Bias, that died of an overdose.
Ummm, the House was held by the Democrats for all the dates you mention except 1998, the Senate for the first two https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...). And you're wildly mistaken that party affiliations mapped that closely to official positions on guns till the 1990s, and to this day it's much easier to be an anti-gun Republicans like those now pretty much only found in NY or Illinois than, say, an anti-abortion Democrat.
Some of us were already adults when that occurred. Fuck you, Nancy Reagan.
Prior to the Civil War: bans on concealed carry ostensibly to discourage dueling.
Post-Civil War: bans mostly in the South on carry, or types of weapons allowed to be carried, to keep blacks disarmed.
Early 20ths Century: More widespread bans on carry, and restrictions on handgun ownership, prompted by the waves of non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants. New York's Sullivan Law, named after a gangster politician who disarmed his southern and eastern European rivals with it, is still the law of the land there.
The National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 was the first national level gun control law, which as a "compromise" didn't effectively ban the transfer of handguns.
Lots more where this came from with of course enforcement beyond the initially targeted populations, by the early '60s it was a big thing that Washington State passed a shall issue concealed carry licencing law.
Big push in the '50s and '60s to restrict gun ownership, especially of handguns (I've read many contemporaneous issues of the NRA's American Rifleman membership magazine that covered the Congressional hearings etc. on this, generally lead by the criminal Senator Thomas Dodd, ah, I see he also got LSD banned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Dodd#Congress).
The Gun Control Act (GCA) of 1968 completely changed the way guns were sold in the US, opened the door for massive abuses by the BATF that were well on their way to extinguishing the country's gun culture when party reversed in 1986, etc. etc. etc.
The anti-gun lobby was very much a thing that very year, the GCA pretty much marked the beginning of their greatest successes in the country. If we "reflexively" vilify the gun grabbers today, it's because it's been such a thing, and so strong for all of our adult lives for the majority of us (those of us less than 65 years old, including all Baby Boomers born starting in 1950, those of us less than 100 years old if you include that Federal effort to effectively ban handgun ownership with a $3,500 transfer tax in 2015 dollars).
I mean, I know this is contemporary America, where taking a considered, nuanced position on any hot-button political issue is just asking to be pilloried by both sides (because somehow, we have this quasi-magical ability to reduce every meaningful question to two antithetical camps who proceed to do nothing but insult one another), but we're supposed to be smarter and better than that here. Isn't that what nerds have prided themselves on for as long as nerds have been a thing, being smarter than everyone else?
That is point is hammered home by your harping on my mild rhetoric compared to your ""Mah cold, dead hands!" crowd reflexively vilifies today", without addressing a single one of my points about how you were wrong on every claimed fact in your posting I was replying to.
Justice strikes me of an area where humans tend to reason intuitively. It's also an area that is extremely difficult to measure in any quantitative way. I would be highly interested in understanding what drives existing criminals--my own intuition tells me these sentences are not very preventative, but allow for the illusion of making progress against crime, particularly violent crime. (These people are monsters! Thank god they're gone for life, or the dangerous part of their life.)
It's not foolproof by any means, but I'm kind of comforted by the fact that the man who deliberately ambushed and murdered mom with a hammer, then later threatened to do something like that to grandma cannot, in fact, pay us a visit barring some failure of the prison system.
This presupposes we catch the criminals. This doesn't really match up with reality—it's actually quite difficult to get any conviction from some murder cases, for instance. In a limited sense, what happens to the individual doesn't matter nearly as much as laws affect crime rates.
I'm not talking about taking limbs and eyes here...
Although I do think 55 years is excessive in this case.
Should having a gun at home get you extra punishment on a speeding ticket? No. But carrying a gun while breaking and entering? Absolutely.
Yes, a drug purchase is a voluntary transaction, and yes, I believe drugs should be decriminalized. However it's undeniable that black markets are violent and that innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire. The sentencing guidelines are there to punish and/or deter that.
> Since the anti-gun lobby cannot outlaw them completely they tack on automatic sentence multipliers for any crime where a gun is found even if the gun was not directly used.
which is about carrying a gun while committing a crime.
In general, I don't think you should get a harsher sentence for having a gun at home, away from the crime scene. However it's a grey area when you're running a continuous illegal operation using your home as a base.
I rarely hear anyone say they want to outlaw guns completely, but perhaps that was meant as hyperbole? In any case, do you have some evidence that the multipliers were a reaction to difficulties in regulating guns?
Most Americans believe guns should be regulated more stringently; I would guess that they believe these laws are just, not a political trick. Also, at least sometimes American law more stringently punishes crimes committed with any weapon, guns or otherwise, than crimes committed without one.
This is one of those topics where US preferences and those of HN (which has drawn a more and more international audience over the years) have been moving in opposite directions.
http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/ABCWashPostPoll_Banning...
http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Prod...
I'm not sure I agree. Many posts that even mention simple facts (not arguments) that might be harmful to the proliferation of guns get immediate arguments and voted down. [EDIT: For example, my post above is down to -2.]
(See my post below for some more polls that might interest you.)
I don't see any evidence this is true on a national basis. The answer to this kind of question depends almost entirely on how you ask it.
Most states seem to be moving in the other direction, loosening restrictions on where and when you can carry a gun legally.
Here's a long list of survey results. It's not 100% in one direction or other, but the overall results are clear.
http://www.pollingreport.com/guns.htm
> Most states seem to be moving in the other direction
I agree, but that may reflect the efforts of special interests and not most Americans.
"Special interests" being the 45% of Americans who don't want stricter gun control? I wouldn't call those people a "special interest group".
I agree, but I don't think state legislatures' actions are very responsive to public opinion: 1) Very few citizens vote in state legislative elections or pay attention to what happens in their state capitals (for example, how many people reading this can even name their state legislators?), and 2) because gerrymandering makes many districts guranteed wins for one party, few legislators' seats are at risk.
In the end, the political parties decide who gets what seat and in many cases I think they are heavily influenced by special interests. Many bills in state legislatures are written by lobbyists, in fact. Look up ALEC, for example, or in this case the NRA.
In the early 1990s, ~70% believed gun laws should be more strict. Today it's ~55%. It's unchanged from ten years ago.
It's extremely clear that American's aren't, and haven't been, in a hurry to further restrict guns in any major way.
You get the same number of votes every election, regardless of how many facts you know or opinions you hold. We really don't want to live in a society where 51 idiots can overrule 49 geniuses. (Insert insult against congresspersons here.)
The polling numbers only tell the more spineless representatives how much risk they will take with regard to reelection if they choose to act with due consideration of all parties' interests rather than pander to their base or log-roll with their peers.
If for no other reason than that they total 43, and out of the 7 restrictive states, only those two are "high population", the others being Hawaii (40th in population), Maryland (19th, ~1/3 of NY), Massachusetts (15th, ditto), New Jersey (11th, ~1/2 of NY), Rhode Island sort of (43rd).
And you have to go down to 29th ranked Connecticut before you get to a de facto shall issue state. California and Massachusetts are also de facto shall issue in many counties/towns, although obviously not most of the high population ones.
Pretty disingenuous for the lede to lay this all on the war on drugs when the real reason for the long sentence in this particular case is the war on guns.
> His case has been widely championed, including by Utah’s Republican Sen. Mike Lee, former FBI Director Bill Sessions, the group Families Against Mandatory Minimums and conservative billionaire Charles Koch.
Food for thought for those who think the drug war was/is driven by the "establishment" rather than by the grass roots of ordinary voters.
924(c).Federal drug laws require 5- to 30-year mandatory minimum sentences for possessing, brandishing or discharging a gun during a drug-trafficking crime.
By my reading of that, this applies even if the gun itself was entirely legal.
So if you're a "smart" drug trafficker, you'll forego the weapons. Distributing drugs doesn't seem to be a good risk-reward choice IMO. Maybe these dealers/distributors should evaluate their possible outcomes if they don't like 55 year sentences.
That depends, the laws are so wildly varying that there are many states that allow concealed carry while at a bar, see e.g. the 2010 chart here: http://www.2acheck.com/but-you-cant-carry-a-gun-into-a-bar/ and as the article noted, states have been loosening their restrictions since then. Separately I noticed that includes Ohio as of a few years ago, and many of the in-between states have a "51%" law where it's OK if the establishment earns less than the majority of its income from alcohol. Virginia was in a weird state for a while, requiring you to unconceal while at one, a loophole in a poison pill added to the law that finally made it shall issue in the state.
Being "intoxicated" is a lot more complicated: certainly, in any jurisdiction where you come to the attention of the police while being both there are general laws that'll get you. But I seem to remember that at least one state, maybe my Missouri, allows even being intoxicated (as I recall, that was due to police arresting someone in his home where he had some guns while he was intoxicated). Many states allow carrying with a degree of alcohol in your blood short of legal intoxication (which can be below the statutory norm of 0.08%).
That's not so clear (to me, at least). Those outrageous 25-year sentences are specifically for having a gun during a drug-trafficking crime.
That's not one he had during the transactions. Unless all three are the same one? The article doesn't seem to have anything that rules that out.
"[Count #1:] ... observed Mr. Angelos' Glock pistol by the center console of his car. [Count #2:] .... Mr. Angelos lifted his pant leg to show him the Glock in an ankle holster.... [Count #3:] The search revealed a briefcase which contained ... a handgun .... also recovered two other guns in a locked safe, one of which was confirmed as stolen. .... two more guns ..."
In short, five guns were found under Angelos's control. The two possessed during transactions are perhaps the same, but may or may not be one of the three found in his home. I believe the sentence "Officers later searched his home and found a gun." from the original article is misleading; officers found three.
In any case, the government charged Angelos with five §924(c) counts: two counts for the one during transactions, one count for the three guns found at his home, and two more counts for the two guns found at his girlfriend's. The jury found him not guilty of the last two counts.
Are you implying that grassroots voters have been dictating drug policy despite the concerns of the "establishment"?
I'm curious to hear more about this history.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/14/6-facts-abou...
"A slim majority (53%) of Americans say the drug should be made legal, compared with 44% who want it to be illegal. Opinions have changed drastically since 1969, when Gallup first asked the question and found that just 12% favored legalizing marijuana use. Much of the change in opinion has occurred over the past few years — support rose 11 points between 2010 and 2013 (although it has remained relatively unchanged since then)."
Actual support for long prison terms for 'minor' crimes has always been fairly low. But, you can get wide swings based on how you phrase the question. Remember people say tough on crime, not here is what I want to do and this is how much it's going to cost.
Out of interest, why do you think this?
I would be in favor of limiting how strong you can make alcohol without paying a prohibitive tax. AKA, buying higher proof should not be the cheaper way to drink.
[0]: http://www.gallup.com/poll/8038/seventytwo-percent-americans...
Unfortunately, the weed legalization movement has been succeeding with the "weed isn't that bad for you" message, which is a half-truth that will undermine further liberalization, and has failed to shift the debate regarding the War on Drugs overall.
The good arguments for ending the drug war, which the general public is not aware of, are: 1) Prohibition empowers violent criminal organizations domestically and internationally, 2) People should be free to put whatever they want in their own body and earn the consequences, and 3) Prohibition of popular drugs puts otherwise law-abiding people in contact with the criminal underworld.
Try this at home. Tell your friends "I think all drugs should be legal". My experience is that you're going to get strong disagreement from the vast majority of people, even the more liberally-minded ones. Decades of propaganda have been effective.
Federal sentence ranges are computed using a grid system. Different "facts" adjust the row or column of the eventual range of months a judge legally has to sentence a person within. Probation officers can be extremely thorough and throw in all kinds of things, or can omit things in the sentence computation.
If a person makes a plea agreement with the Prosecutor, they are essentially saying that such and such facts are relevant and these other ones don't apply to the sentence. If there are any possible enhancements not nailed down in the agreement, the Probation Officer can come in and say these are relevant and surprise! Your 5 year plea just became a 15 year sentence.
(edit) Also, multiple convictions for crimes typically have the sentences run consecutively.
Besides, the reasonable doubt part only applies to a conviction.
Edit: I was not fair to Trump on this. He apparently isn't a drug warrior. Still gonna be an easy vote for me though!
(Edited to remove sarcasm. That wasn't really necessary.)
The OP is probably referring to Sanders, but Trump has said let the states do whatever they vote for.
Not just that, but Trump supported marijuana legalization as far back as 1990. That was right around the height of the war on drugs, in between "Just Say No" of the Reagan years and the anti-drug, tough-on-crime propaganda of the Clinton years.
I can't really endorse pretty much anything else Trump says, but it really can't be overstated how rare it was for anyone to be standing up for marijuana legalization (publicly) 25 years ago.
In oti's collection of quotes shows that he's personally anti-drug but believes it is a states issue.
Yep. Gary Johnson.
1) The minimum sentence was exceptionally harsh. 2) Because of the guns, it makes it somewhat of a political hot potato since it looks like he "could" be violent.
This guy sells marijuana 3x, $350 each, to a narc. He gets 55 years.
Jeffrey Keith Skilling, poster child for white collar crime, convicted of conspiracy, insider trading, making false statements to auditors, securities fraud, and insider trading, gets 14 years.
The justice system in this country is more fucked up than I could have thought possible.
Skilling was a noob. The current US Secretary of the Treasury is a better example.
Basically, if he didn't follow the guidelines and went lenient, the Prosecutor would appeal the case and get the sentence into the guideline range.
If the judge went over the maximum guideline amount, the Defendant could appeal the case.
No judge likes having his rulings overturned because he didn't follow the law.
That is at least $1,500,000 million dollars. Very expensive.
So the sentence potentially gets overturned on appeal, great. The appellate judges should refuse to apply the sentence.
So they get overturned on appeal to the Supreme Court, great. The Supreme Court should refuse to apply the sentence. Or, I guess they can spend their time overturning thousands of decisions per year.
Burn it down.
https://popehat.com/2013/12/23/burn-the-fucking-system-to-th...
Now if you had said, appeal the case all the way to the Supreme Court in the hopes of getting the mandatory sentencing law in question declared unconstitutional, that would be fine. But that isn't what you said.
Famously, it's too early to tell.
This is a far cry from the guillotine (some might say the opposite).
Not if he wants to uphold the law. As soon as you replace the law with personal whim, you could end up anywhere, including the guillotine. There is a way within the law to challenge it; but that way is not to just refuse to apply it if you don't like what it says.
That's not to say that I'm a fan of our current legal system; I'm not. It is highly unfair and does a very poor job of getting justice done. But it's still better than what we would have if everybody could disobey all laws they didn't like with impunity. (If people disobey laws and then take the consequences, that's different--if the judge had refused to impose the sentence required by law, and then had accepted being fired for failing to uphold the law, that would be civil disobedience, and sometimes that's necessary. But that's not what you're advocating, as far as I can tell.)
Exactly--which means those actors are not exercising "naked personal power"; they are exercising the power as state actors that we gave to them. So if we don't like what they're doing with it, we need to take it away.
We have sentences for crimes that are way too extreme in many cases because we told lawmakers with our votes that we wanted them to be "tough on crime" and that we wanted them to wage war on drugs. We have prosecutors and cops who have essentially unlimited discretion for the same reasons. We have a legal system that favors the rich because incumbent politicians who favor their rich donors have a re-election rate in the high 90's even though their approval ratings are in the single digits. The system we have is not "naked personal power"; it's the system that we, the voters, voted for. Democracy is working exactly the way it was designed to work. Burning it to the ground would not make it work better; it would make things worse. The way to make it better is to change the incentives of those who make the laws, by telling them different things with our votes.