Source: https://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2018/week46/index.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 16:32:11+00:00

Document:
"Evaluating Intellectual Disability: Clinical Assessments in Atkins Cases"
The intersection of intellectual disability and the death penalty is now clearly established. Both under the U.S. Supreme Court’s constitutional decisions and under the terms of many state statutes, individual defendants who have that disability cannot be sentenced to death or executed. It now falls to trial, appellate, and post-conviction courts to determine which individual criminal defendants are entitled to the law’s protection.
This Article attempts to assist judges in performing that task. After a brief discussion of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Atkins v. Virginia, Hall v. Florida, and Moore v. Texas, it analyzes the component parts and terminology of the clinical definition of intellectual disability. It then offers more detailed discussion of a number of the clinical issues that arise frequently in adjudicating these cases. For each of these issues, the Article’s text and the accompanying notes attempt to provide judges with a thorough survey of the relevant clinical literature, and an explanation of the terminology used by clinical professionals. Our purpose is to help those judges to become more knowledgeable consumers of the clinical reports and expert testimony presented to them in individual cases, and to help them reach decisions that are consistent with what the clinical literature reveals about the nature of intellectual disability and best professional practices in the diagnostic process.
Mr. McConnell, who as majority leader controls the Senate floor, delivered the news in a previously scheduled meeting at the White House convened to discuss the chamber’s legislative agenda for the remaining weeks of the term.
Lawmakers from both parties have been working furiously to build support for the compromise legislation that would begin to reverse some of the tough-on-crime federal policies of the 1980s and 1990s that incarcerated African-American offenders at much higher rates than white offenders.
But Mr. McConnell told the president that the bill would most likely eat up about 10 days on the Senate floor — time that he did not have between now and the scheduled end of the legislative session on Dec. 14, according to the people familiar with the remarks, who were granted anonymity to describe the private meeting. They were not connected to Mr. McConnell. If the bill had enough support, Mr. McConnell said, he would be willing to bring it up next year, after the new Congress is seated.
At the Senate Republicans’ weekly caucus luncheon at the Capitol, Mr. McConnell acknowledged that the changes had influential supporters who had worked hard on the issue, but also invited two of its chief critics, Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and John Kennedy of Louisiana, to deliver remarks, two Republican congressional officials said.
Mr. Cotton, who has been perhaps the loudest critic of the bill’s sentencing changes in the Senate, urged colleagues to slow down the process, saying that the bill’s impact and implications were too expensive to push through without hearings, according to another official familiar with his remarks. He stressed opposition by some law enforcement groups and warned that a draft version of the bill he had seen would lead to the immediate release of thousands of felons onto the streets.
The delay in bringing up the legislation described to Mr. Trump is not the first time that proponents of changes in the sentencing and prison systems have bumped up against Mr. McConnell. A similar coalition of lawmakers and outside groups made a higher-profile and more expansive attempt to overhaul the criminal justice system during the final years of the Obama administration, and had support from Mr. Ryan and other Republicans. But Mr. McConnell did not allow a vote on the bill before the 2016 elections, worried about sowing divisions among Republicans.
This is quite disappointing, but not surprising, and I am now inclined to fear that no significant form of federal criminal justice reform will be completed as long as Senator McConnell is the Senate's majority leader.
"Reentry Matters: Strategies and Successes of Second Chance Act Grantees"
The National Reentry Resource Center and the CSG Justice Center released a new edition of Reentry Matters: Strategies and Successes of Second Chance Act Grantees in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Second Chance Act (SCA). Enacted with bipartisan support, SCA helps state, local, and tribal governments and nonprofit organizations in their work to reduce recidivism and improve outcomes among people who have been in the criminal justice system. Since its passage 10 years ago, SCA has supported more than 900 grants for adult and youth reentry programs, as well as systemwide improvements to help jurisdictions better address the needs of people who are incarcerated. Featuring 21 stories from programs across 19 states, Reentry Matters profiles the impact of SCA grant-funded programs through both the practitioners who run them and the people who are impacted by them.
For analysis of the most up-to-date recidivism data in 11 states, read Reducing Recidivism: States Deliver Results, which profiles states showing significant declines in their three-year return-to-prison rates and details how SCA grant awards have helped the 11 featured states to test recidivism-reduction strategies, invest in evidence-based practices, and increase the capacity and scale of programs.
"They Battled Over the Supreme Court, but Stuck Together on Criminal Justice Reform"
"Booker throws his weight behind Trump-backed criminal justice deal"
"Cotton, Trump at odds on criminal justice overhaul"
"Whitaker told Trump he has concerns over sentencing reform bill"
I want so very, very badly to be optimistic about the prospects for the FIRST STEP Act, in any form, to become law very, very soon. But the pessimistic bet has been a winning one on the federal statutory criminal justice reform front for the last eight years, as politics and gridlock have trumped effective policy advancement. One would hope that, in a properly functioning democracy, a bill with the support of the President and probably close to 90% of all members of Congress could and would become law. But I am fearful that these reality may still not be enough to get the FIRST STEP Act into law. Time will tell (and likely in the next few weeks).
"Prison Reform Bill ‘First Step Act’ Faces Uphill Battle to Passage Before Year’s End"
"Trump’s backing may not be enough on criminal justice reform"
Here’s what genuine criminal-justice reform would do: reduce arbitrary government power over lives and protect us from the drug epidemic ravaging our community. Congress can take three simple steps to achieve these goals.
First, we need to clean out the federal criminal code. Today, no one even knows for sure how many federal crimes are on the books. One estimate found between 10,000 and 300,000 regulations that can be enforced criminally, in addition to the more than 5,000 federal criminal laws.
Many of those federal crimes would be funny, if they weren’t so dangerous to our liberty. For example, there’s a federal law against selling “Turkey Ham” as “Ham Turkey.” Think such laws are never enforced? Think again. Gibson Guitars was prosecuted under a century-old law at a cost of millions of dollars to the taxpayers and the company because it allegedly transported wood in a way that may have violated laws of India. We should scrub the federal criminal code and remove such outdated and arbitrary laws. And we should create a transparent database of this shorter, more concise criminal code.
Second, many federal crimes do not require mens rea, or a “guilty mind.” Mens rea, a common element of most state crimes, means that the offender must have a certain state of mental culpability to be charged with the crime. Coupled with the vast and confusing criminal code, the lack of mens rea leaves Americans at risk of arbitrary prosecution for trivial conduct. Senator Orrin Hatch has been a champion for mens rea reform to ensure that, at a minimum, a defendant should have known his conduct was wrong before facing criminal charges. Congress should incorporate these concepts into criminal-justice legislation.
Third, the federal criminal code hasn’t kept up with the opioid crisis, allowing the epidemic to spread across the country. For example, current law doesn’t reflect the potency of fentanyl, a highly lethal opioid responsible for killing tens of thousands of Americans each year. A trafficker can carry enough fentanyl to kill 5,000 Americans before the lowest mandatory minimum sentence applies, and these traffickers receive a mere five-year sentence for distributing enough poison to kill more Americans than died on 9/11.
Unfortunately, the legislation moving through Congress includes no mens rea reform, no reduction in the criminal code, and no crackdown on deadly drug traffickers. Astonishingly, the bill goes soft on some of the worst crimes — trafficking heroin and fentanyl — by allowing most traffickers to spend up to a third of their sentence at home, where many of them will no doubt return to dealing drugs.
At this point, it’s best for Congress to pause on criminal-justice legislation and take the time to reform our criminal code, include mens rea as an element of most crimes, and strengthen the sentences for dangerous drug crimes. Congress can also focus on how to rehabilitate felons to help them get off on the right foot after serving their sentence. What Congress ought not do is rush through flawed legislation in a lame-duck session.
I agree with Senator Cotton that we need to reduce the number of federal crimes, include strict mens rea protections in all federal criminal provisions, and better respond to the opioid crisis (although I think history has shown that increased federal mandatory minimums are an ineffective way to respond to drug problems). For that reason, I sincerely hope Senator Cotton is busy drafting bills to address these matters that Congress can and should consider swiftly after the passage of the FIRST STEP Act. But, as the name suggests, the FIRST STEP Act does not claim to fix all the myriad problems of federal criminal law, and so Congress can and should address Senator Cotton's (second step) concerns right after they take a critical first step.
"Eight Keys to Mercy: How to shorten excessive prison sentences"
Approximately 200,000 individuals are in state prisons serving natural life or “virtual” life sentences. And as of year’s end 2015, one in every six individuals in a state prison had been there at least for 10 years.
These are not merely statistics. These are people, sentenced to unimaginably long sentences in ways that do little to advance justice, provide deterrence, or offer solace to survivors of violence. The damage done to these individuals because of the time they must do in prison cells — as well as to their families and their communities — is incalculable.
"The Time Frame Challenge to Retributivism"
Retributivists believe that criminal offenders should suffer or be punished in proportion to what they morally deserve. There is, however, an often-ignored debate as to whether desert should be assessed across a person’s life (the “whole life” view) or only for crimes that are the subject of a current sentencing proceeding (the “current crime” view). Both options are unappealing.
The whole life view may be superior on theoretical grounds but is hopelessly impractical. The current crime view is somewhat more practical but has no solid theoretical foundation. The lack of a suitable time frame in which to assess desert represents an important challenge to retributivist conceptions of proportionality. Even uncertainty about the proper time frame may itself be detrimental to some retributivists’ hopes of justifying the incarcerative sentences of particular offenders.
A Mexican citizen on death row in Texas was executed Wednesday night for the sledgehammer killings of his wife and two children more than 26 years ago.
Roberto Moreno Ramos was condemned for the 1992 deaths of his 42-year-old wife Leticia, 7-year-old daughter Abigail, and 3-year-old son Jonathan at their home in Progreso, located along the Mexico border.
As the lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital began taking effect, the 64-year-old Ramos took a couple of deep breaths, sputtered once and began snoring. Within seconds, all movement stopped. Eleven minutes later, at 9:36 p.m. CST, Ramos was pronounced dead.
He became the 21st inmate put to death this year in the U.S. and the 11th given a lethal injection in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. No friends or relatives of Ramos or his victims witnessed the execution.
Mexican officials had called for his execution to be stopped, arguing he was part of a group of Mexican citizens condemned in the U.S. who were never told when first arrested that they could get legal help from the Mexican government.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday night cleared the way for the punishment when it denied two appeals seeking to halt the lethal injection. Ramos’ attorney on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to stop his execution, arguing that Ramos’ constitutional rights were violated as lower courts refused to fully review his claims that his trial lawyers failed to present any evidence about his mental illness and abusive childhood that could have persuaded jurors to spare his life.
In court documents, Ramos’ appellate attorney, Danalynn Recer, had argued Ramos suffered from bipolar disorder most of his life, including during the time of his family’s killings, as well as brain damage that affected his ability to control his impulses and regulate his emotions. Recer said Ramos was also brutally beaten as a child by his father. Ramos was born in Aguascalientes, Mexico, and grew up in Guadalajara and Tijuana before his family moved to the United States in 1970. “No fact-finder or decision-maker entrusted with Mr. Moreno Ramos’ life has ever been provided with evidence of (his) ‘diverse human frailties’ to assist them in dispensing the most severe punishment under law,” Recer said.
The Death Penalty Information Center reports here that there are three more executions scheduled for 2018, two in Texas and one in Tennessee. Even if these executions all go forward, the total number of executions nationwide in the first two years of the Trump Administration will be less than 50 (47 to be exact), while there were 52 executions nationwide in the very first year of the Obama Administration and 66 executions in the first year of the Bush Administration. Of course, presidents have almost no direct impact on state capital cases and the pace of executions. But given Prez Trump's affinity for talking up the death penalty, this factoid about executions still seems noteworthy.
According to this @POTUS_Schedule tweet, we are this afternoon to hear directly from Prez Trump on criminal justice reform: "4:30PM - Roosevelt Room - Announcement regarding H. R. 5682, the 'First Step Act'." Lots of media are reporting he will endorse reform and push for a bill to be passed ASAP. I am about to watch the Live Stream here or here or here.
UPDATE: Prez Trump announces his support for First Step Act, emphasizing its bipartisan nature and law enforcement's support, as well as asserting it would "roll back some of the Clinton crime law." Trump concludes his remarks by saying, "I'll be waiting with a pen. We will have done something that hasn't been done in many, many years, and it is the right thing to do."
Over the last decade, dozens of states have enacted “second chance” reforms that increase the eligibility of individuals charged or convicted of crimes to, upon application, shorten or downgrade their past convictions, clean their criminal records, and/or regain the right to vote. While much fanfare has accompanied the increasing availability of “second chances,” less is known about their uptake.
This study introduces the concept of the “second chance gap” — the gap between eligibility for and award of certain forms of second chance relief, and sizes it in connection with several initiatives (Obama’s Clemency Initiative, California’s Propositions 47 and 64, and Maryland and Pennsylvania records clearing provisions). It finds approximate uptake rates to be low (less than 20% in most cases) suggesting that among the studied initiatives, the majority of second chances have been missed chances, apparently due to administrative factors like low awareness and high-cost, high-friction application processes and backlog.
To narrow second chance gaps and unlock opportunities and equal access to benefits for individuals with criminal histories, this Essay argues, policymakers should embrace automation, burden-shifting, centralization, and consistency in the implementation of second chance laws. Ensuring that the design and administration of second chance laws reflect their intent can help remove the red tape, not steel bars, that stand in the way of second chances.
President Donald Trump is expected to throw his support behind bipartisan criminal justice legislation during an event at the White House on Wednesday, two sources close to the process said.
Trump is scheduled to announce on Wednesday that he is supporting the latest iteration of the First Step Act, a bill that his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, has been working to craft and build support for alongside a bipartisan group of senators, the sources said. The President will be joined by supporters of the legislation during the White House event, the sources said.
Supporters of the measure expect that Trump's explicit backing will help propel the prison and sentencing overhaul bill through Congress. The President has wavered on whether to throw his support behind the bill in recent months, but the sources said he was swayed to back the bill on Tuesday after meeting with Kushner.
The prosecutors' association's support for the legislation came on the heels of backing from several other law enforcement organizations, including the Fraternal Order of Police, International Association of Chiefs of Police, Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration and the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, which also penned a letter of support to Trump.
The Major Cities Chiefs Association and Major County Sheriffs of America also withdrew their opposition to the legislation, writing in a letter to Kushner dated Tuesday that they "endorse the objectives of the First Step Act" and the legislation "strengthens how Federal prisoners may be integrated into the community and set on a path to live positive and productive lives." Less than two weeks ago, the groups wrote to Kushner to say they could not back the bill.
Opposition from since-ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, in particular, served as key stumbling blocks to advancing the legislation, with both touting opposition within law enforcement circles -- an argument that is quickly fading as groups back the proposal. Sources close to the process said the support from law enforcement associations is key to advancing the measure and securing the President's full-throated support.
Proponents of the bill made several changes to it to win backing from law enforcement groups, including stiffer sentencing guidelines for fentanyl-related offenses and a compromise provision to modestly expand the definition of a serious violent crime.
Now the question is whether enough Democrats will rally to support the compromise package or hold out for a more ambitious overhaul of the nation's sentencing laws. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who had announced his opposition to a previous version of the bill because he felt it did not go far enough, said Tuesday that he is still looking to get more changes to the bill.
Though I am not going to count any sentencing reform chickens until they are hatched and have been signed into law, I am inclined to start predicting that we are on the verge of a remarkable federal criminal justice reform achievement that will be the most consequential statutory reform in nearly 35 years. (I am also inclined to recall pieces from late 2016, like the one blogged here, that astutely suggested federal criminal justice reform might still be a real possibility in the Trump era.) I am not quite yet ready to start patting a whole lot of folks on the back, but I am getting close to wanting to start celebrating the culmination of five years of very hard work by lots of folks inside and outside the Beltway. Fingers crossed.
Could the FIRST STEP Act, with sentencing reforms added, get through Congress in just a matter of weeks?
From the Washington Post, "Trump receptive to compromise criminal justice overhaul backed by Kushner"
From The Hill, "Criminal justice reform faces a make-or-break moment"
Senator Mike Lee makes the "conservative case for criminal justice reform"
Although violent crime rose during the final two years of President Obama’s time in office, it decreased during the first year of Trump’s presidency. We need to keep that momentum going. And criminal justice reform can help us do that in two ways.
When the public sees judges handing out unfair punishments, it undermines trust in the entire justice system. This makes it harder for police to do their job. As Ronald Reagan explained when he was Governor of California, “[w]ithout respect for the law, the best laws cannot be effective. Without respect for law enforcement, laws cannot be carried out. We must have respect, not only for the law, but also for the many who dedicate their lives to the protection of society through enforcement of the law.” Fairer sentencing laws will increase respect for police, especially in many communities where such respect is currently lacking.
Second, excessive prison sentences break apart families and weaken communities -- the building blocks of American civil society. Incarceration is tough on any marriage. Few can survive the loss of marital love and financial strain that happens when a spouse is behind bars. And the longer the sentence, the more likely a marriage will end in divorce. One 2011 study found that each additional year behind bars increases the likelihood of divorce by 32 percent. This has real costs for the families -- and especially the children -- of offenders.
Incarceration is an essential law enforcement tool that protects communities and keeps families safe. But it also inflicts costs on communities and families, and at some point the negative impact of incarceration on marriage and family can become too stark to ignore. And for non-violent offenders, especially those with no prior criminal history, excessive sentences often do far more harm than good.
We now have a rare opportunity to pass criminal justice reform that will help restore trust in law enforcement and protect American families. In May of this year, the House of Representatives passed the First Step Act, which includes some much-needed prison reform measures that would reduce recidivism. Unfortunately, it did not include any reforms to address manifestly unjust sentences for non-violent offenders.
The Senate now has a chance to add some of those much-needed prison reform measures into the bill. We won’t get everything we want, but we have an incredible opportunity to reach a compromise that includes meaningful, commonsense reforms to our nation’s mandatory-minimum drug sentencing laws.
It is unlikely we will get another opportunity to enact meaningful reform anytime soon. President Obama failed to accomplish criminal-justice reform during his eight years in office. But President Trump and the Republican Congress can get the job done now. It would be another big step toward making America great again.
From The Brennan Center, "The Big Winners in DA Races: Women and Black Candidates"
From The Brennan Center, "What Does Sessions' Departure Mean for Criminal Justice?"
From The Crime Report, "Post-Midterms Forecast for Justice Reform: Cloudy, But Encouraging"
From The Crime Report, "Are Americans Finally Turning Away From ‘Tough-on-Crime’ Era?"
From The Fix, "Drug Policy and Criminal Justice Reform at the 2018 Midterm Elections"
From The Hill, "The results are in: How the nation voted on criminal justice issues that impact our youth"
From Marijuana Moment, "What The Loss of Marijuana-Friendly Republicans Means For Federal Legalization"
From Marijuana Moment, "Marijuana Got More Votes Than These Politicians In The Midterms"
From The Marshall Project, "Voters Want Criminal Justice Reform. Are Politicians Listening?"
In this post last week, I noted that the Supreme Court had relisted a slew of older Florida death penalty cases in which a death sentence had been imposed using procedures that the Supreme Court in the 2016 Hurst decision said violated the Sixth Amendment's requirement that a jury rather than a judge must find all facts necessary to sentence a defendant to death. This morning, via this new order list, the Supreme Court appears to have denied cert in all of these Florida cases, and three Justices with well-earned reputations for having a lot to say in capital cases all had something to say about this decision through statements in the case of Reynolds v. Florida.
This case, along with 83 others in which the Court has denied certiorari in recent weeks, asks us to decide whether the Florida Supreme Court erred in its application of this Court’s decision in Hurst v. Florida, 577 U. S. ___ (2016). In Hurst, this Court concluded that Florida’s death penalty scheme violated the Constitution because it required a judge rather than a jury to find the aggravating circumstances necessary to impose a death sentence. The Florida Supreme Court now applies Hurst retroactively to capital defendants whose sentences became final after this Court’s earlier decision in Ring v. Arizona, 536 U. S. 584 (2002), which similarly held that the death penalty scheme of a different State, Arizona, violated the Constitution because it required a judge rather than a jury to find the aggravating circumstances necessary to impose a death sentence. The Florida Supreme Court has declined, however, to apply Hurst retroactively to capital defendants whose sentences became final before Ring. Hitchcock v. State, 226 So. 3d 216, 217 (2017). As a result, capital defendants whose sentences became final before 2002 cannot prevail on a “Hurst-is-retroactive” claim.
Many of the Florida death penalty cases in which we have denied certiorari in recent weeks involve — directly or indirectly — three important issues regarding the death penalty as it is currently administered.
JUSTICE BREYER’s final (and actual) concern is with the “‘death penalty itself.’” Ante, at 4. As I have elsewhere explained, “it is clear that the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit the death penalty.” Baze v. Rees, 553 U. S 35, 94 (2008) (opinion concurring in judgment); see Glossip, supra, at ___–___, and n. 1 (THOMAS, J., concurring) (slip op., at 1–2, and n. 1). The only thing “cruel and unusual” in this case was petitioner’s brutal murder of three innocent victims.
Today, this Court denies the petitions of seven capital defendants, each of whom was sentenced to death under a capital sentencing scheme that this Court has since declared unconstitutional. The Florida Supreme Court has left the petitioners’ death sentences undisturbed, reasoning that any sentencing error in their cases was harmless. Petitioners challenge the Florida Supreme Court’s analysis because it treats the fact of unanimous jury recommendations in their cases as highly significant, or legally dispositive, even though those juries were told repeatedly that their verdicts were merely advisory. I have dissented before from this Court’s failure to intervene on this issue. Petitioners’ constitutional claim is substantial and affects numerous capital defendants. The consequence of error in these cases is too severe to leave petitioners’ challenges unanswered, and I therefore would grant the petitions.
A bipartisan group of senators has reached a tentative deal on the most substantial rewrite of the nation’s sentencing and prison laws in a generation, giving judges more latitude to sidestep mandatory minimum sentences and easing drug sentences that have incarcerated African-Americans at much higher rates than white offenders. The lawmakers believe they can get the measure to President Trump during the final weeks of the year, if the president embraces it.
The compromise would eliminate the so-called stacking regulation that makes it a federal crime to possess a firearm while committing another crime, like a drug offense; expand the “drug safety valve” allowing judges to sidestep mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug offenders; and shorten mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, according to draft text of the bill obtained by The New York Times.
Lawmakers may have also gotten a boost with the departure of Jeff Sessions as attorney general last week. Mr. Sessions had used his post to order federal prosecutors to pursue the toughest possible charges and sentences for crime suspects, reversing Obama-era efforts to ease such penalties for some nonviolent drug offenders. And he vigorously opposed legislative compromise, going head-to-head not only with Mr. Grassley but also with Mr. Kushner.
Mr. Kushner has had several meetings with Matthew G. Whitaker, the new acting attorney general, who has signaled that he is open to the changes. The effort could be revived in the next Congress if he and allies are unable to succeed in the short term. Mr. Kushner has also traveled with Vice President Mike Pence in recent days to brief the vice president on the latest developments, the administration official said.
White House officials and a bipartisan group of senators are mounting an ambitious effort to push criminal justice legislation through Congress by the end of the year, four sources close to the process told CNN.
One person close to the matter said that while the prospects for the measure several weeks ago seemed glum, its odds of passing now are above 50%. The White House and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill agreed in August to postpone the legislation until after the midterm elections.
One source close to the process said that after the midterms -- which will bring shifting partisan dynamics to Congress in January -- White House officials working on the effort recognized they needed to move forward now. "It's the lame duck or never strategy," one source close to the process said.
"The Effects of Holistic Defense on Criminal Justice Outcomes"
Heaton and his co-authors compared holistic representation — wherein an interdisciplinary team that includes a lawyer working alongside other advocates such as a social worker, housing advocate, investigator, etc. addresses the wider needs of the client enmeshed in the criminal justice system — to the more traditional public defense model focused around criminal attorneys and criminal case advocacy. They found that the holistic approach reduced the likelihood of a prison sentence by 16 percent, and actual prison sentence length by 24 percent.
Debates over mass incarceration emphasize policing, bail, and sentencing reform, but give little attention to indigent defense. This omission seems surprising, given that interactions with government-provided counsel critically shape the experience of the vast majority of criminal defendants. This neglect in part reflects our lack of evidence-based knowledge regarding indigent defense, making it difficult to identify effective reforms.
One newer model gaining support is the holistic defense model, in which public defenders work in interdisciplinary teams to address both the immediate case and the underlying life circumstances — such as drug addiction, mental illness, or family or housing instability — that contribute to client contact with the criminal justice system. This holistic model contrasts with the traditional public defense model which emphasizes criminal representation and courtroom advocacy. Proponents contend holistic defense improves case outcomes and reduces recidivism by better addressing clients’ underlying needs, while critics argue that diverting resources and attention from criminal advocacy weakens results. Although widely embraced, there is no systematic evidence demonstrating the relative merits of the holistic approach.
Nearly two dozen offenders were recommended for clemency Wednesday, the first wave of hopefuls for early release from lengthy felony prison sentences for simple drug possession two years after voters approved turning that crime into a misdemeanor. State Question 780 isn’t retroactive, so Project Commutation sought deserving prisoners who were considered ideal candidates to have their sentences drastically shortened in line with the sentencing reform measure.
Kris Steele, chairman of Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform, is spearheading the movement and a member of the board voting on the commutation requests. Steele said a governor’s staff member was present for Wednesday’s all-day proceedings and expressed to him that Gov. Mary Fallin is committed to signing off on the cases before the new year.
The commutations modify sentences but don’t erase convictions. Fallin has final authority to approve, deny or modify the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board’s recommendations within 90 days. “Gov. Fallin has been monitoring these cases closely and has taken an interest in trying to expedite the process of the governor’s approval, with the intent, as I understand it, to get these individuals home together with their families by the end of the year,” Steele said.
Twenty-three offenders had their cases for commutations heard Wednesday by the five-member pardon and parole board. Only one offender failed to garner a simple majority vote, with concerns about misconduct in prison perhaps influencing decisions. Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform launched Project Commutation in partnership with the Tulsa County Public Defender’s Office. Another eight applicants — the final ones in this commutation campaign — will be on the docket in December.
University of Tulsa law students helped to interview and whittle down a field of 700 applicants to 49 for the first stage of the commutation process. There are 31 who made it through to the second and final stage before the governor’s desk.
During commutation hearings last week, offenders offered numerous reasons for why they were unable to succeed in alternative drug courts. Failing stuck them with lengthy prison sentences for possessing drugs.
Project Commutation has been an opportunity for a handful of convicts to earn another shot at a new life, advocating for clemency after State Question 780 turned simple drug possession into a misdemeanor rather than a felony. But Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform wants more — the advocacy group intends to encourage lawmakers in the upcoming legislative session to apply the law retroactively.
Although the wisdom of mass incarceration is now widely questioned, incarceration rates have fallen far less than what would be predicted on the basis of crime trends. Informed by institutional studies of path dependence, sociolegal scholarship on legal discretion, and research suggesting that “late mass incarceration” is characterized by a moderated response to nonviolent crime but even stronger penalties for violent offenses, this article analyzes recent sentencing‐related reforms and case processing outcomes. Although the legislative findings reveal widespread willingness to moderate penalties for nonviolent crimes, the results also reveal a notably heightened system response to both violent and nonviolent crimes at the level of case processing.
These findings help explain why the decline in incarceration rates has been notably smaller than the drop in crime rates and are consistent with the literature on path dependence, which emphasizes that massive institutional developments enhance the capacity and motivation of institutional actors to preserve jobs, resources, and authorities. The findings also underscore the importance of analyzing on‐the‐ground case processing outcomes as well as formal law when assessing the state and fate of complex institutional developments such as mass incarceration.
Five years ago in this post, I noted that on Veterans Day I often find myself thinking about veterans who, after serving our country in the military and thereby supporting of our nation's commitment to liberty and freedom, return home and discover the hard way that these constitutional values are not always paramount in our modern criminal justice systems. This 2015 report on "Veterans in Prison and Jail, 2011–12" found that in "2011–12, an estimated 181,500 veterans (8% of all inmates in state and federal prison and local jail excluding military-operated facilities) were serving time in correctional facilities."
In my Veterans Day 2013 post, I asked "How about a few clemency grants, Prez Obama, to really honor vets in need on Veterans Day?". Five years later, especially after Prez Trump talked up possibly granting thousands of clemencies earlier this year, it seems fitting to pose the same question to Prez Obama's successor. It also seems worthwhile to link to posts from the summer and thereafter highlights reports and comments by Prez Trump which generated lots of clemency optimism on which he has yet to deliver.

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