sentencing « CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

Criminal Law Blog by Defense Lawyer John Floyd and Mr. Billy Sinclair

September 21, 2009

LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE FOR JUVENILES ELIMINATED

Filed under: Houston Criminal Lawyer — Tags: juvenile, Life, parole, sentencing — johntfloyd @ 11:59 am

Texas Takes Small First Step Towards Humane Treatment, Punishment for Youthful Offenders

By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

The Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association (TCDLA) releases every two years after each session of the Texas Legislature a summary of new or amended laws enacted during the legislative session. This year Kristin Etter (TCDLA’s Voice of the Defense) has provided this continuing education service from TCDLA to criminal defense attorneys throughout the state. It is not only a continuing education service but an invaluable research tool as well. This blog over the next couple months will feature in depth articles about the most significant pieces of legislation that emanated out of the 2009 Texas Legislature and their potential impact on the state’s criminal justice system with special appreciation to the TCDLA.

For example, one of the most significant changes in our laws was the Legislature decision to eliminate life without parole for juvenile offenders who are certified as adults under Texas Penal Code § 54.02 and tried for capital murder under Texas Penal Code § 12.31. The Legislature amended the Texas Government Code § 504.145 to allow for parole eligibility for juveniles tried as adults after a period of 40 years.

This legislation is significant because the U.S. Supreme Court in two consolidated Florida cases, Terrance Jamar Graham and Joseph Sullivan, both of whom received life sentences without the benefit of parole, has decided this term to decide the issue of whether life without parole for juveniles tried as adults is unconstitutional as being cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. At age 16, Graham was convicted of being an accomplice to an armed burglary and attempted armed robbery—the only criminal offenses he had ever committed in his life—and sentenced to life without parole. At age 13, Joe Sullivan was convicted of a rape committed following a house burglary and sentenced to life without parole with there being serious doubts about whether Sullivan was the actual rapist.

As of July 2009, the Washington, D.C.-based The Sentencing Project (Nellis, Ashley and King, Ryan S. No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America) reported that there are 140,610 individuals serving a life sentence in the nation’s prison system (one in every 11 prisoners). Of those lifers, 6,807 of them are juveniles tried as adults with 1,755 (or 25.8%) of them being juvenile life sentences without parole (JLWOP). (more…)

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August 3, 2009

SENTENCING ENTRAPMENT: A FALLOUT OF REFORM

Filed under: Drug Defense Attorney — Tags: ACLU, crack cocaine, sentencing, sentencing entrapment — johntfloyd @ 6:56 pm

Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Officials Manipulate Investigations, Defendants Receive Greater Sentences

By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

What is sentencing entrapment?

In a syndicated column that appeared in the Houston Chronicle (July 23, 2009), Larry Frankel, the legislative counsel for the ACLU in Washington, D.C., called sentencing entrapment “a little-known phenomenon in our criminal justice system” and it occurs “when the government through its agents or informants makes a person, who may have a predisposition to engage in one sort of criminal activity, to engage in more serious criminal activity that exposes that person to harsher punishment.”

Frankel illustrated this institutionalized form of governmental misconduct with a series of cases, including the highly-publicized case of Willie M. Aikens. This former major league baseball player recently testified before Congress about his fall from social grace through a debilitating crack cocaine habit. Aikens told the lawmakers he was contacted by an undercover police officer who asked him to “score” some drugs for her. The undercover officer encouraged Aikens several times to cook powder cocaine down into crack cocaine which provides a far more intense “high.”

Aikens’ original criminal predisposition was to provide the undercover officer with “powder” cocaine. The officer, however, kept urging the former World Series hero to cook the cocaine powder down into crack cocaine which ultimately caused him to be charged and convicted of possessing crack cocaine rather than powder cocaine. Under the United States Sentencing Guidelines in place at the time, possession of crack cocaine was considered 100 times more serious than possession of powder cocaine..

In May 2007 the U.S. Sentencing Commission sent a report to Congress recommending that the 100:1 sentencing ratio in crack/powder cocaine cases be reduced to a 20:1 ratio. The 100:1 ratio required federal judges to treat one gram of crack cocaine as the equivalent of 100 grams of powder cocaine. This disparate sentencing scheme created thousands of horrendous miscarriages of justice in the federal sentencing process with serious racial implications. Black crack cocaine offenders, like Aikens, were routinely punished 100 times more severely than white powder cocaine offenders. (more…)

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