Court Opinion

ID: 9440370
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 16:42:11.25269+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:27:34.726885
License: Public Domain

OBERDORFER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
The majority amply establishes that the state-court record affirmatively showed that Ward’s plea entered here was voluntary and legal. I write simply to register my discomfort with the heavy sentences of imprisonment (most recently 10 years mandatory) beginning when he was a 17-*87year-old victim of a flagrantly poisonous environment. Hopefully, the efforts of insightful leaders such as the members of the bipartisan Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons (co-chaired by former United States Attorney General Nicholas de B. Katzenbach and the Honorable John Gibbons, former Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit), will lead to significant improvements in the federal prison environment, including physical, psychological and educational opportunities for young, disadvantaged inmates like Ward. See Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons, Confronting Confinement, at iii (2006) (“A year ago, a group of individuals with little in common promised to recommend strategies for operating correctional facilities that serve our country’s best interests and reflect our highest values. Today, we speak in a single voice about the problems, our nation’s ability to overcome them, and the risks for all of us if we fail to act.”). Should these services materialize and bear fruit in Ward’s case, it would behoove his counsel and his probation officer to pursue executive clemency for Ward before it is too late — if it is not already.