From Inquest:
In 2011, when I retired from the United States District Court in the District of Massachusetts, I started writing a book. My idea was to write about sentencing, not in law review articles, or academic commentary. I wanted to write for a lay audience about the actual work of sentencing the human beings who had appeared before me — what I knew of them, the decisions I made, how they should have been treated in a humane criminal legal system, and how they were not. Not even close.
All judges say sentencing is the hardest part of their job. For those few of us, like me, who had been criminal defense or civil rights lawyers, it was simply excruciating. I was a judge at a time when the American criminal justice system went off the rails. We became more punitive than we had ever been in our history, when we imposed punishments harsher than any other country in the Western world, when we were mired in what some have called our failed experiment in mass incarceration. It was a time of mandatory minimum sentences and mandatory “guidelines,” when pretty much all that mattered was what fit within the guideline categories — boxes, really — about the crime, such as how much drugs or how much money, and a person’s criminal record. There was no consideration given to addiction, trauma, mental health, the impact of imprisonment on families, on communities, or much of anything else. This was when Congress stopped asking what works to deter crime and literally picked round numbers out of the air — sentence lengths 5, 10, 15 years. And if we are really mad, life. Indeed, the very year I became a judge, the federal death penalty roared back from the brink of extinction, revived by 1994 legislation. From the moment I ascended to the bench to my very last day, I could not shake my horror at the laws I was obliged to apply, even as I was applying them.
Of course, it is easy to rail against these laws — in an article, or a well-placed opinion piece — but then wring your hands in each and every case. “I have no choice,” you might say, as you brought down the hammer over and over again. I wasn’t satisfied with that. There was always choice — from the procedural (how much time to give the lawyers to make their case) to the substantive (how to interpret vague rules, or apply general laws to specific facts). There had to be a way to reconcile my oath to enforce these laws, and the demands of humanity, even empathy. Continue reading >>>
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