Judicial Reports: LexPress: Sentencing From Byzantium
By Jesse Sunenblick and Heidi Bruggink
jsunenblick@judicialstudies.com
hbruggink@judicialstudies.com
Posted: 10-17-07
The State Commission on Sentencing Reform releases its preliminary findings to Chief Judge Judith Kaye. In other news, the Albany cops who illegally purchased federally regulated automatic weapons through the Albany Police Department seek to have their names withheld from public scrutiny.
SENTENCING REFORM SOUGHT
Newsday reports that the State Commission on Sentencing Reform, set up last spring by Governor Eliot Spitzer to address inconsistencies in New York’s sentencing structure and practices, has issued its preliminary report to Chief Judge Judith Kaye. Among its findings: the state should eliminate its “hybrid” sentencing system, which employs fixed and indeterminate sentences for 200 violent felonies, making the prediction of release dates difficult; allow judges more flexibility to sentence non-violent felony drug offenders to treatment centers rather than prison; encourage the wider use of milder sanctions like curfews and home confinement to cut down on the reincarceration of certain defendants. “We heard from more than three dozen experts in sentencing,” said Denise O'Donnell, chairwoman of the commission and commissioner of the state Division of Criminal Justice Services. “And we learned quite early on that New York's sentencing laws are confusing and complex, and have resulted in a system that is really a Byzantine sentencing structure.” -J.S.
GUN SHOW
The Albany Times Union reports that the Albany Police Officers Union filed papers yesterday seeking to halt a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the newspaper that asks a judge to reveal the names of cops who used the police department to purchase federally regulated guns at tax-exempt, discount prices. The union has invoked a state civil service law that prevents disclosure of a police officer’s personnel records, if those records are used to assess the performance of an officer. “To the extent that the documents reflecting possession of the weapons pertain to potential misconduct or rules violations, the disclosure of the identities of the officers . . . would expose the [union's] members to the use of this information to degrade, harass, embarrass, or impeach the integrity of the officers,” the officers' motion states. Is that another way of saying the truth hurts? -J.S.
THE NAMES
Newsday reports that Northern District Chief Judge Norman Mordue has ruled that the federal government can legally withhold the names of nearly one million federal employees from Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse company that provides an internet database with names, work locations, salaries and job categories of nearly all 2.7 million federal civilian workers. The data are used by reporters and government watchdog groups to monitor policies and prevent abuse. “It's a bad decision. It flies in the face of 220 years of federal history,” said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “Who is employed by the federal government and what they make has never been kept a secret in this country, unless you're a covert operative. This is an example of privacy interests running amok.” Continued Dalglish, “I just think the court found some legitimacy in the government's arguments and then went too far and accepted them wholesale. What the court should have done is considered the public right to information and the need for accountability about salaries and focused its decision to protect the specific privacy issues OPM raised.” -J.S.
"OBSCENE" GROUND ZERO SETTLEMENT
And after the city announced earlier this week that it plans to seek a settlement in a class action lawsuit filed by thousand of Ground Zero workers who claim air toxins made them ill, The Daily News runs an editorial lambasting the proposed $1 billion deal as “obscene,” in part because attorneys would get 40 percent, and because the remaining $66,000 payouts to each plaintiff are “not nearly enough to cover medical bills and lost wages, particularly in the case of deaths. . . . Nothing more starkly proves the point than the large payments issued by the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, an entity that went out of business before most of the Forgotten Victims of 9/11 realized they were sick,” the piece reads. “The fund made an average payment of more than $2 million to survivors of people killed in the attack, and an average payment of almost $400,000 to the injured or sick.” -J.S.
PROMISING IMPARTIALITY
Newsday also reports that Southern District Judge Loretta A. Preska has nixed a Florida doctor’s efforts to win a new trial on terrorism charges because a jury improperly learned that a co-defendant plead guilty. In May, Dr. Rafiq Sabir was convicted of providing support to terrorists by agreeing to treat injured al-Qaida fighters so they could return to Iraq to battle Americans. During his trial, an Internet-trolling juror found that Sabir’s one-time co-defendant, Tariq Shah, had plead guilty prior to trial and told the rest of the panel, an apparent violation of the standard jury charge: to base decisions exclusively on evidence presented during trial and to avoid reading about the case when outside the courtroom. In her ruling, Preska said she was assured by the juror in front of lawyers on both sides that she could “definitely” decide the case fairly and impartially. -J.S.
AND OVER AT JUSTICE: GOOD TIMES FOR MOB BOSSES, DRUG KINGPINS, AND BANK ROBBERS
And finally, as the Senate Judiciary Committee considers Mukasey's nomination for Attorney General, The Washington Post reports that the Bush Justice Department has shifted its focus from its traditional areas of prosecution to cases concerning immigration and terrorism (and those "important to conservative activists, such as sex trafficking and obscenity"), a move that has "greatly transformed the administration of justice." From 2000 to 2006, the number of defendants in a slew of cases dropped dramatically: defendants in environmental, organized crime, white-collar crime, bank robbery, money-laundering, and bankruptcy fraud all fell between 10 and 46 percent. Meanwhile, prosecutions in immigration, weapons, and official corruption jumped from 15 to 36 percent, and those for child pornography and obscenity both tripled. However, the greatest increase should not be shocking: cases regarding terrorism and national security rose drastically, up 876 percent since the Clinton years, "reflect[ing] the intense Administration efforts to prevent another attack." The actual number of defendants in these such cases, though, have been "relatively small," and the shift in focus has produced "a department far less focused on the mob bosses, drug kingpins and bank robbers who have dominated much of its history, even as new FBI studies show a substantial rise in murders and other violent crimes over the past two years." In fact, earlier this week FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III called for a return to the Department's original focus: "We are realizing that national security is as much about reducing the number of homicides on our streets as it is about reducing the threat of terrorism," he said. "Today, in pockets around the country, we are seeing the first steady increase in street-level crime since 1993. As a result, we must view criminal threats differently than we did in the immediate aftermath of September 11." -H.B.
Posted by Jesse on October 17, 2007 08:52 AM to Judicial Reports