The Law and Policy of Sentencing and Corrections in a Nutshell
Author:
Branham, Lynn S.
Edition:
11th
Copyright Date:
2022
31 chapters
have results for The Law and Policy of Sentencing and Corrections in a Nutshell
Preface 5 results
- The book is not confined to a discussion of current law and policy. Also interwoven into the book are some key proposals to make sentencing and corrections systems more cost-effective, equitable, and just and to integrate processes into those systems to enable people to understand the harm their crimes have caused and take steps to remedy it. Some of these proposals include the incorporation of restorative-justice practices into jurisdictions’ sentencing and corrections systems, the adoption of a “problem-solving model” of probation in contrast to a “supervision model,” and the integration of evidence-based practices into community sentencing and corrections systems.
- I am grateful for this opportunity to share insights about sentencing and correctional law and policy with the readers of this book. And I remain thankful for the unfailing commitment of those who work tirelessly to improve the nation’s sentencing and corrections systems and to effectuate what can sometimes seem the elusive goals of justice, accountability, reconciliation, and healing.
- Readers of this Nutshell should, of course, be mindful that the law in the areas of sentencing and corrections is ever changing. I encourage you to monitor, for example, pertinent decisions rendered by the Supreme Court after the date of this book’s publication.
- I have written a Nutshell geared to the needs of students who must assimilate an extensive amount of information on sentencing and correctional law and policy. For more detailed information on these subjects, I recommend review of the following two textbooks: Lynn S. Branham,
- This book is designed to provide students with a general overview of the law and policy of sentencing and corrections. The first ten chapters of the book cover sentencing-related topics, including (a) restorative justice and other purposes of criminal sentences, (b) guilty pleas and plea bargaining, (c) different ways to structure sentencing systems, (d) the rights defendants have during the sentencing process, (e) aggravating and mitigating sentencing factors, (f) community-based sentences, (g) the death penalty, (h) Eighth Amendment constraints in noncapital cases, (i) parole release and probation and parole revocation, and (j) the enmeshed penalties (often referred to as “collateral consequences”) that attend a criminal conviction. Chapters 11 through 17 focus on the constitutional rights people have while they are incarcerated. The final two chapters of the book discuss the litigation of incarcerated persons’ civil-rights claims, including the remedies available when their...
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Chapter 6. Community-Based Sentences 86 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Statutes, policies, procedures, technical assistance, and training can be employed to promote the integration of evidence-based practices into sentences served in the community. Integrating evidence-based practices into community sentencing and corrections systems can promote sentencing aims while avoiding the harm and unnecessary incursion of costs that ensue when these systems operate without regard to research findings.
- Increasingly, criminal-justice experts and policymakers concur with the view expressed in an Arkansas statute: “Rational and consistent sentencing policy requires a continuum of sanctions” of varying restrictiveness.
- establish state-local partnerships to facilitate high-quality planning and implementation as well as adequate funding of sentencing and corrections systems within a community and throughout the state;
- While it is important that judges have an array of options from which to choose when sentencing individuals so that the most appropriate sentence is imposed in each case, it is equally important that a structure be put in place to ensure that sentences served in the community are achieving their objectives, not compromising the public’s safety, and being implemented cost-effectively. A number of states have enacted laws to create this structure.
- The value of the services rendered to the public by the people serving these sentences can be great. In addition, community-service sentences have the advantages listed at the beginning of this chapter that all community-based sentencing options offer. This sanction, however, is often not widely availed of. One of the chief roadblocks to its widespread use is the lack of a central agency in many jurisdictions that is responsible for coordinating the imposition and implementation of community-service sentences—for making sure that community service is a viable and readily available sentencing option for judges. Community-service sentences also sometimes face union opposition. Concerns about governmental liability for injuries incurred when people are performing community-service work may further inhibit the use of community service as a sentencing option.
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Title Page 4 results
Chapter 1. Introduction to Sentencing 57 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Much is at stake when legislatures are deciding what sentences to authorize for varied crimes. And much is at stake when judges are deciding what sentences to impose in individual criminal cases. In both instances, the decisions being made, both by legislatures and judges, can have a significant impact on the people being sentenced and their families, victim-survivors and their families, and the public at large. Gaining an understanding of sentencing law and policy is therefore prudent for those who want to know more about, or become immersed in, criminal justice.
- Sentencing systems have been rocked by charges that they are ineffectual, prohibitively expensive, and inflict needless harm on those who are sentenced, their families, victim-survivors and their families, and the community at large. Critics of the status quo point to indicators that in their view substantiate the need to overhaul sentencing laws, policies, and practices in the United States. Some of the key indicators cited include the following:
- The first half of this book examines laws and policies governing sentencing. When reading about these laws and policies, readers are encouraged to consider how they should be changed to help redress the problems flagged above.
- The education of law students about criminal justice largely focuses on two areas of the law: one, the elements of crimes and the defenses to them (criminal law); and two, the constitutional rights people have during the pretrial, including prearrest, stages of a criminal prosecution and at trial (criminal procedure). Largely overlooked in law schools’ curriculums is a criminal-justice-related subject of central importance: sentencing. Indeed, because most criminal charges are resolved, not through trials, but through sentences imposed following the entry of guilty pleas, one might argue that sentencing is a subject of foremost importance in the field of criminal law.
- The starting point for determining what sentences should be authorized for a crime or what sentence should be imposed in an individual case is the purpose or purposes of the sentences to be authorized or meted out. Traditionally, it has been said in the United States that criminal sentences have four principal purposes: deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and retribution. However, in recent years, what is known as restorative justice has gained a foothold in the United States and is increasingly being cited as a central aim of sentences and the justice system as a whole.
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Chapter 3. Sentencing Statutes and Guidelines 71 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The federal and Minnesota sentencing guidelines differ in many other ways. For example, unlike the Minnesota sentencing guidelines, the federal guidelines are predicated on the premise that incarceration is the only form of tough punishment. The result is a federal prison population comprised mostly of people serving time for nonviolent crimes. Critics of the federal guidelines have argued that many of these people could be held accountable for their crimes more effectively and at much less cost in a well-structured community-corrections system.
- Some statutes also provide for a mandatory-minimum sentence when a person convicted of a crime has previously been convicted of other specified felonies. The “three strikes and you’re out” laws that some states have enacted are an example of this type of mandatory-minimum sentencing statute. Under these laws, defendants who have been convicted three times of felonies listed in the statute must be sentenced to prison for a long, statutorily prescribed period—in some states, to life in prison without the possibility of parole. States differ as to the kinds of crimes that can count as strikes under their three-strikes laws. In some states, only convictions for violent felonies count as strikes, while in other states, a conviction for a nonviolent felony can constitute a strike. States also vary in the number of strikes that will trigger these long mandatory sentences, with some states requiring only two strikes and others requiring four.
- Sentencing guidelines are utilized in many jurisdictions to limit or guide the exercise of judges’ sentencing discretion. While sentencing commissions typically draft sentencing guidelines, legislatures still play a role in the sentencing process. Statutes outline the sentencing range—the minimum and maximum sentences for a crime within which the guidelines must operate. In addition, legislatures in some jurisdictions must approve sentencing guidelines and revisions to them before they go into effect, and in other jurisdictions, legislatures have the power to veto or modify proposed guidelines.
- Sometimes after a defendant is sentenced, the legislature reduces the authorized penalty for a crime or a sentencing commission reduces the presumptive or recommended sentencing range applied when calculating the sentence for that crime. The result is disparity in sentences being served, with defendants sentenced before the change in the law serving sentences longer than comparable individuals sentenced after that change. To abate that disparity problem, legislatures sometimes authorize the retroactive application of a modified statutory penalty or sentencing guideline. Those serving sentences imposed before the change in the law can then file a motion for a reduction of their sentences. Some statutes also authorize courts to modify those sentences
- When modifying sentencing laws and guidelines, care must be taken to avoid violating the constitutional provisions that prohibit laws. Article I, § 9 of the United States Constitution prohibits Congress from enacting laws, while Article I, § 10 prohibits the states from enacting such laws. A sentencing law or guideline that increases the punishment for a crime after the crime has been committed violates the (imposing a presumptive sentence under sentencing guidelines higher than the presumptive sentence in effect at the time of the crime was unconstitutional). An
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Chapter 18. Litigating Incarcerated Persons’ Civil-Rights Claims 83 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Because Congress could amend § 1983 to include a qualified-immunity defense for private corrections companies and their employees, an important question remains: whether, as a policy matter, the qualified-immunity defense should be extended to private entities and their employees. It is also noteworthy that the Supreme Court in specifically left open the question whether a private corrections company or its employees can assert a good-faith defense to a claim. The Court did not elaborate on the parameters of this potential defense.
- The end result of exempting employees working at private correctional facilities from suits is that a person confined in a federal prison can seek redress for the violation of a constitutional right from the federal employee responsible for the violation, but a person subjected to the same constitutional violation while serving a federal prison sentence in a private prison cannot. And if both state and federal prisoners are housed in the same private correctional facility and suffer identical violations of their constitutional rights, those incarcerated under state law can secure relief under § 1983 from the offending employees, but those imprisoned under federal law are foreclosed from bringing their constitutional claims against those same employees.
- To assert a cognizable claim under § 1983, the “person” sued must have acted “under color of” state law—specifically, a statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage. To satisfy this under-color-of-state-law requirement, it is not necessary that a state law require or even authorize the defendant’s unconstitutional actions. In fact, as was discussed in Chapter 11, the requirement can be met even if a state law specifically prohibits these actions. Thus, in , the Supreme Court concluded that police officers had acted “under the color of” state law when entering the plaintiffs’ home without a warrant, even though the warrantless entry violated the state’s constitution and certain state statutes. The Court noted that for a person’s actions to be deemed taken “under color of” state law, they need only reflect the “ ‘[m]isuse of power, possessed by virtue of state law and made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law.’ ” The Court reasoned that §...
- The purpose of personal immunity, both absolute and qualified, is to prevent the fear of being sued, as well as the attendant burdens of litigation, from unduly hampering official decisionmaking. Another interest is implicated, though, when decisions are being made regarding the scope of immunity, if any, that should be extended to a particular type of government official—the interest in vindicating constitutional rights. The Supreme Court has balanced these competing interests by holding that, as a general rule, executive officials can avail themselves of only a qualified-immunity defense. (prison officials, including the director of the department of corrections and the warden, were only entitled to qualified immunity). If executive officials seek even greater protection from damages liability, they have the burden of proving their entitlement to absolute immunity.
- Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress. . . .
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Chapter 10. Enmeshed Penalties (“Collateral Consequences” of Convictions) 96 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The obstacles to reintegration erected by the law but not subsumed within sentences are often referred to as the “collateral consequences” of a conviction. This term has been criticized as misleading, in part because it suggests that these adverse effects of a conviction that are mandated or authorized by the law are not intended or significant.
- A majority of states have now enacted ban-the box laws, although many of them place constraints only on public, not private, employers. In addition, the federal government has a ban-the-box law, 5 U.S.C. § 9202, and many cities and counties have approved ban-the-box ordinances.
- The Supreme Court held that a prerequisite to a finding of either an or a double-jeopardy violation was absent in this case—punishment. The Court concluded that the purpose of the SVPA was not to punish sexually violent predators for their past crimes. In fact, a criminal conviction was not even necessary for confinement under the SVPA. Instead, the primary purpose of the SVPA, according to the Court, was to protect the public by incapacitating a small group of very dangerous individuals. The Court considered it significant that individuals confined under the SVPA, though housed in a prison, were segregated from the rest of the prison population and were supervised by the Department of Health and Social and Rehabilitative Services, not the Department of Corrections.
- The practical obstacles discussed above are not the only ones impeding formerly incarcerated individuals’ reintegration into society. People returning to the free world after a period of imprisonment as well as other people with criminal convictions face obstacles created by laws—obstacles that serve as constant reminders that they must continue to pay a price for their criminal misdeeds. Some of these roadblocks to assimilation into the community, such as the denial of voting privileges when convicted of a felony, arise automatically upon conviction, even though not part of the official sentence. The imposition of the other principal kind of legal disability that may ensue from a criminal conviction but is not encompassed within the sentence falls within the discretion of a government official or entity. The loss of public-housing benefits is an example of a discretionary disqualification emanating from a drug-related conviction; the drug-related activity that culminated in the...
- One way to curtail the injurious effects of enmeshed penalties is through front-end approaches that limit when the law imposes or authorizes an outside-the-sentence penalty for a crime. What has happened in the voting-rights arena provides an example of some states doing just that. With increasing frequency, states are repealing laws that disenfranchise certain categories of people with criminal convictions, such as those serving a probation sentence.
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Chapter 4. Procedural Rights During Sentencing 75 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Some facts that augment the sentence imposed in a case are sentencing factors, but others are actual elements of the charged crime. As discussed below, the Constitution affords defendants heightened protection when the fact to be proven by the prosecution is an element of the crime, including the right to have the fact proven beyond a reasonable doubt and the right to have a jury decide whether this burden of proof has been met. In an increasingly long line of cases, the Supreme Court has striven to identify when a fact affecting a defendant’s sentence is an element of the crime and not just an aggravating sentencing factor.
- In , the Supreme Court further elaborated on the distinction between sentencing factors and elements of a crime. The defendant in that case pleaded guilty to second-degree kidnapping, a crime for which the statutory maximum sentence was ten years in prison. The state’s sentencing guidelines under which he was sentenced set the “standard” sentencing range for this crime at forty-nine to fifty-three months. However, the sentencing judge found that the defendant had committed the crime with “deliberate cruelty,” an aggravating factor that, under the state’s sentencing laws, provided grounds for departing upwards from the standard sentencing range. The judge then sentenced the defendant to prison for ninety months, a sentence below the statutory maximum sentence but about three years longer than the standard sentence prescribed by the guidelines.
- The Court emphasized in that its decision did not spell the end to determinate sentencing or to the realization of the aim of determinate sentencing to limit sentencing disparity. (Determinate-sentencing structures were discussed in greater depth in Chapter 3.) The Court cited several options that would enable jurisdictions to comply with the requirements of the Constitution while retaining their determinate-sentencing systems. They could, for example, hold bifurcated trials in which a jury first determines whether the defendant is guilty of the crime charged and then determines whether a fact not reflected in the initial verdict exists that warrants the imposition of an enhanced sentence. Alternatively, all the facts needed to support imposition of the aggravated sentence could be established in a single jury trial.
- The Supreme Court has yet to address the scope of the right to appointed counsel at a sentencing hearing. If the dimensions of that right mirror the parameters of the right to appointed counsel at trial, indigent defendants convicted of a felony have the right to be represented by appointed counsel during sentencing proceedings. And it seems most likely that the Court would apply the actual-incarceration standard to sentencing proceedings in misdemeanor cases—that the Court would be reticent to recognize a broader right to appointed counsel at a sentencing hearing than exists at trial. Under this actual-incarceration-standard, an indigent defendant convicted of a misdemeanor would only have a right
- The Supreme Court has also held that a fact that triggers a mandatory-minimum sentence is an element of a crime. The federal statute at issue in authorized a minimum prison sentence of five years and maximum sentence of life in prison when a defendant had used or carried a firearm in connection with a violent crime. But if the defendant had “brandished” the weapon, the minimum prison sentence was seven, not five, years. In a close 5–4 decision, the Court held that the fact of “brandishing” the firearm was an element of the crime, which meant that the defendant had the right to have a jury decide whether, beyond a reasonable doubt, this brandishing had occurred. In concluding that elements of a crime not only increase the “ceiling” but also the “floor” of a criminal penalty, the Court explained: “[B]ecause the legally prescribed range
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Chapter 5. Sentencing Evidence 42 results (showing 5 best matches)
- As discussed in the preceding chapter, when aggravating facts are not elements of a crime, they can still have a significant effect on what sentence is selected from within the “legally prescribed” sentencing range. Mitigating factors can also have an impact on a court’s sentencing decision. They can affect the dispositional decision—whether, for example, the sentence will include a period of incarceration. And they can affect the duration of a sentence, such as the length of a probationary term, and the amount of a financial sanction, such as a fine.
- While the scope of the information about defendants and their crimes that may be introduced during sentencing hearings is quite vast, the Constitution does place limits on the information that can be considered when sentencing a criminal defendant. is a case in point. involved a defendant who was sentenced to prison for a minimum of ten years and a maximum of twenty for burglary and robbery. The length of the sentence was due in large part to a string of prior convictions cited by the sentencing judge. In fact, however, the defendant had not been convicted in all the cases to which the judge alluded. The criminal charges had been dismissed in one of those cases, and he had been acquitted in two others.
- While a defendant’s refusal to cooperate with authorities in their investigation or prosecution of others’ crimes may usually be considered an aggravating sentencing factor, the rendering of aid to those authorities may mitigate a defendant’s sentence. Often, statutes, sentencing guidelines, and court rules explicitly authorize a court to reduce a sentence because of such cooperation, though some require that the prosecutor first file a motion for this sentence reduction. (upon prosecutor’s motion, court can impose a sentence below the statutory mandatory minimum when the defendant provided “substantial assistance” in the criminal investigation or prosecution of someone else). And even when there is no such specific authorization for a reduction of a sentence due to the defendant’s cooperation or no prosecutorial motion for a sentence reduction, courts may have the authority in some jurisdictions, as part of the sentencing discretion with which they have been vested, to consider...
- was construed narrowly by the Supreme Court in . The defendant in was sentenced under the Armed Career Criminal Act, a federal statute requiring imposition of a minimum prison sentence of fifteen years on a person with three prior convictions for a “violent felony” or a “serious drug offense” who was then convicted of possession of a firearm by a felon. The defendant contended that two of the prior convictions upon which his enhanced sentence was based had been obtained in violation of his constitutional rights. Specifically, he maintained that his convictions had been obtained in violation of due process of law and without the effective assistance of counsel to which he was constitutionally entitled. The federal judge who sentenced the defendant, however, refused to delve into the question whether the prior state convictions upon which the defendant’s enhanced sentence was based were, in fact, unconstitutional.
- When deciding whether the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule applies during sentencing proceedings, courts have weighed the costs of applying the exclusionary rule in the sentencing context against the benefits. One of these costs is the withholding of probative and reliable evidence from sentencers, which can, in turn, lead to the imposition of overly lenient or otherwise inappropriate sentences. The courts have concluded that these costs generally outweigh any benefit exclusion of the evidence might have in deterring violations of the Fourth Amendment by law-enforcement officials. The courts have reasoned that to the extent the suppression of evidence has a deterrent effect on these officials, they generally will be dissuaded from violating the Fourth Amendment because they want to obtain enough admissible evidence to secure a conviction at trial. The inadmissibility of the evidence at a sentencing hearing usually will not yield much, if any, additional benefit in terms of...
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Chapter 8. Cruel and Unusual Punishment and Noncapital Cases 61 results (showing 5 best matches)
- At this point, the caselaw on chemical castration is sparse, and its constitutionality has not been resolved definitively. But the practice of chemical castration has incited a debate about whether, from a policy perspective, it is appropriate and wise to include chemical castration as a condition of a sentence or of release from prison and, if so, what limitations should be placed on the use of this sanction. An example of one such possible limit would be a requirement that psychotherapy be provided in conjunction with the medication-based treatment.
- Third, the defendant pointed to the unusual severity of his sentence compared to the penalties for recidivists in other states. The Supreme Court did not consider this factor of any import either. The Court noted that many states only varied slightly from Texas in the way in which they punished those who persist in committing felonies. The Court also cited the difficulty of comparing states’ sentencing statutes due to wide variations in their parole practices and granting of good-time credits. In other words, comparing a sentence with sentences imposed in other jurisdictions can be misleading because there are often substantial differences between sentences imposed and the sentences actually served. For example, while the defendant in
- In a dissenting opinion with which three other Justices (Blackmun, Stevens, and Marshall) agreed, Justice White denounced what he considered Justice Scalia’s skewed reading of the Eighth Amendment. Justice White wondered how the same words—“cruel and unusual”—could mean one thing in the capital context and another thing in the noncapital context; grossly disproportionate sentences, he argued, were either unconstitutional or they were not. Justice White also ridiculed the notion that the proscription in the Eighth Amendment of “excessive” fines somehow implied that excessive prison sentences were constitutional. Not only was this reading of the Constitution, in Justice White’s opinion, illogical, but it demanded a level of clarity and specificity in the language of the Constitution that was not the norm. As examples of the vague language that permeates the Constitution, Justice White cited the requirements of “due process of law” and the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of “...
- The Court then concluded that imposition of a life sentence without parole for a nonhomicide crime committed when under the age of eighteen is a grossly disproportionate penalty when viewed against the backdrop of the penological goals touted in favor of such a sentence. The Court noted that since juveniles are not as blameworthy as adults, the sentence far exceeds the boundaries and aims of retribution. And because juveniles are immature, irresponsible, and impulsive, the possibility of receiving such a sentence is unlikely to affect their decision to commit a crime. Consequently, a life sentence with no hope of release is a grossly disproportionate way of trying to deter juveniles’ commission of nonhomicide crimes.
- The Supreme Court’s analysis and disposition of the disproportionality claims in and is to be contrasted with the result and analysis in The defendant in , like the defendant in , had received a life sentence under a recidivist statute, although the life sentence was without the possibility of parole. The defendant in , however, had been convicted of many more felonies than the defendant in —a total of seven, and his convictions were for seemingly more serious crimes—three third-degree burglaries, a third-offense drunk driving, grand larceny, obtaining money under false pretenses, and writing a bad check for one hundred dollars. The Supreme Court in
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Chapter 9. Parole Release and Probation and Parole Revocation 82 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The entities making compassionate-release decisions vary. While some statutes entrust these decisions to courts, others remit the release decisions to the parole board, department of corrections, or other administrative entity. Whomever is entrusted with compassionate-release decisions, what is noteworthy is how infrequently dying, significantly ill, and elderly people obtain compassionate release. For an overview of states’ compassionate-release policies and practices, see Families Against Mandatory Minimums,
- Discretionary parole release has sparked controversy in recent years. Five major criticisms have been leveled against incorporating parole into sentencing systems. First, parole decisions can lead to sentencing disparity. Although this disparity can be mitigated somewhat by the adoption of parole guidelines that limit and channel the parole board’s exercise of its discretion, disparity often remains in the initial decision whether to send a person to prison. Second, not knowing whether or when parole will be granted before the end of a prison sentence can cause tension, frustration, and despair in the prison population, leading to behavioral problems and the disruption of efforts to help people in prison rehabilitate or habilitate themselves while they are incarcerated. Third, uncertainty regarding the duration of confinement, combined with what can be recurrent parole hearings, can be extremely stressful and sometimes traumatizing for victim-survivors. Fourth, people are often...
- The problems caused by parole have led some states and the federal government to abandon their parole systems and move towards more determinate sentencing systems. (Some of the different types of determinate sentencing systems are discussed in Chapter 3.) Some of the jurisdictions that have abolished parole have instituted what is known as “supervised release” in its stead. Supervised release, like parole, follows a period of incarceration. One of the distinctions between parole and supervised release is that a judge imposes the supervised-release term as part of a defendant’s sentence. A defendant, for example, might be sentenced to prison for four years to be followed by one year of supervised release.
- By contrast, a general practice or custom of releasing people from prison in certain circumstances will not, by itself, create a liberty interest in such release. In
- A number of states and the federal government have developed special mechanisms for the early release of people from prison in certain carefully defined circumstances. Commonly, statutes provide for what is called “compassionate release” when people in prison are terminally ill. But some imprisoned people, such as those sentenced to death or serving a life sentence without parole, may not be eligible for a sentence reduction due to their terminal illness.
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Chapter 2. Guilty Pleas and Plea Bargaining 109 results (showing 5 best matches)
- involved a defendant who had been charged with forging a check in the amount of $88.30, a crime for which he could be sent to prison for two to ten years. The prosecutor offered to recommend a five-year prison sentence if he pled guilty. The prosecutor furthermore informed the defendant, who had two prior felony convictions, that if he refused to plead guilty, he would be prosecuted under the state’s “Habitual Criminal Act.” Under this law, a person convicted of three felonies was subject to a mandatory life sentence in prison. The defendant refused the prosecutor’s offer and went to trial. After being convicted of the forgery offense and then found by the jury to have two other felony convictions, he was sentenced to life in prison.
- is another case in which the Supreme Court refused to apply a presumption of vindictiveness. In that case, the defendant received two concurrent 30-year prison sentences after pleading guilty to rape and burglary in return for dismissal of a sodomy charge. After securing the reversal of his convictions on appeal because his guilty pleas were invalid, he went to trial and was convicted on all three counts. In sentencing the defendant, the trial judge stated that the trial had revealed facts about the case of which the judge previously was unaware, such as that the defendant had raped the victim five times. The judge then sentenced the defendant to two concurrent life sentences in prison for the sodomy and burglary and imposed an additional 150-year sentence for the rape, to be served consecutively with the other two sentences.
- Plea-bargaining proponents argue that plea bargaining yields many benefits. Plea bargaining, for example, expedites the processing of criminal cases, preventing the breakdown of court systems that might occur if many more defendants insisted on going to trial. In addition, as cases are disposed of more quickly, people who are in jail awaiting trial can be released sooner, a benefit not only to themselves and their families but to the taxpayers who are paying the expensive tab for their pretrial incarceration. Plea bargaining can also relieve the stress on victim-survivors, defendants, and all of their families caused by not knowing what the outcome of a criminal case will be, and it can help defendants, their families, and taxpayers avoid the expense of a criminal trial. Plea bargaining can additionally facilitate law enforcement as defendants provide information about the criminal activities of others in return for a favorable plea agreement. And plea bargaining can temper the...
- The question for the Supreme Court was whether an increased sentence following the vacating of a guilty plea creates a presumption that the sentencing judge was retaliating against the defendant for exercising the right to contest a guilty plea’s validity. The Court said that for there to be such a presumption, there would have to be a “reasonable likelihood” that increased sentences following the setting aside of guilty pleas are due to judicial vindictiveness. The Court, however, was convinced that this “reasonable likelihood” of vindictiveness does not exist when a defendant first was sentenced following entry of a guilty plea and then resentenced following a trial. The Court noted that during a trial, a judge usually will find out information about a crime and the defendant that was not revealed to the judge when earlier accepting the defendant’s guilty plea—information that often will indicate that the defendant should receive a more severe sentence than the one imposed...
- addressed this question in a case involving a noncompliant prosecutor. In , a prosecutor had agreed to make no recommendation as to the sentence to be imposed for the gambling offense to which the defendant pled guilty. A different prosecutor, however, was assigned to handle the case at the sentencing hearing, and at that hearing, he asked that the maximum prison sentence be imposed on the defendant. The sentencing judge then imposed the maximum sentence, although he insisted that his decision was based on the defendant’s criminal record and was not influenced at all by the prosecutor’s sentencing recommendation.
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Copyright Page 8 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Nutshell Series, In a Nutshell
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Chapter 14. Procedural Due Process 84 results (showing 5 best matches)
- and are to be contrasted with the Supreme Court’s decision in . In , the Court considered whether the plaintiff, who had been transferred from a prison to a mental hospital, had been deprived of liberty without due process of law. In addressing the threshold question whether such a transfer deprives a person of liberty within the meaning of the Due Process Clause, the Court once again applied the “within-the-sentence test.” This time, however, the Court concluded that confinement in a mental hospital is not within the range of conditions and consequences implicitly authorized by a prison sentence. The Court cited two reasons for this conclusion: one, the stigma that attends confinement in a mental hospital; and two, the behavioral-modification programs that a person may be forced to participate in while confined involuntarily in a mental hospital.
- In assessing the impact on state interests of providing these and other procedural safeguards when confinement in a supermax prison is at issue, the Supreme Court noted that the state’s interest in protecting the safety of other people imprisoned at the facility, correctional personnel, and the public was a “dominant consideration.” The Court pointed to the peril prison gangs pose to the safety of others. Gang leaders commonly direct prison gang members to kill people confined in prison and prison staff. However, the possibility of being punished with criminal sanctions like a prison sentence may do little to deter such killings by gang members already serving life sentences. The Court was therefore concerned that incorporating the kinds of procedural safeguards that typically attend an “adversary hearing” into the process of determining whether someone should be assigned to a supermax prison would compromise the important state interest in safeguarding institutional security and...
- The same rationale underlying the Supreme Court’s conclusion in that an interprison transfer does not deprive someone of any constitutionally derived liberty interest led the Court to conclude in that a transfer from the general-population unit of a prison to an administrative-segregation unit does not deprive the person transferred of any liberty stemming from the Constitution itself. Prison officials usually place people in administrative segregation either because of the risk of harm they pose to staff or others in the facility or because they are particularly vulnerable to being harmed themselves and need what is called “protective custody.” The Court observed in that a transfer for these administrative reasons from one section of a prison to another with harsher conditions and more restrictions is “well within the terms of confinement ordinarily contemplated by a prison sentence.” Consequently, people sentenced to prison should “reasonably anticipate” undergoing such a...
- The Supreme Court’s decision in does not mean that confinement in a disciplinary-segregation unit will never implicate due process. Disciplinary (or administrative) segregation for much longer periods of time than thirty days may, for example, trigger the protections of due process. See
- As discussed earlier in this chapter, the people confined in the supermaximum-security prison in question had almost no contact with any other human being. Nonetheless, because people sentenced to prison already and inevitably suffer a curtailment of their freedoms due to their incarceration, the Supreme Court characterized the private interest at stake—the interest in avoiding an erroneous transfer to a supermax prison—as only “more than minimal.”
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Chapter 15. Housing Assignments and Prison Programs 41 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The factors that some courts have said should be considered when determining whether incarcerated females and males are similarly situated have at times made it difficult for the plaintiffs in those cases to prevail on their gender-discrimination claims. For example, in
- Even though people serving prison or jail sentences may have no constitutional right to be compensated for their labor, they often have a right to compensation under statutes or regulations. Typically, these statutes and regulations provide for a very low rate of compensation compared to compensation rates in the outside world. Wages of less than, and often much less than, fifty cents an hour are quite common.
- While incarcerated individuals’ FLSA claims usually have failed, most courts have refused to hold that they are categorically excluded from the FLSA. . In concluding that the FLSA can sometimes apply in prisons and jails, courts have focused on another purpose of the FLSA—the prevention of the unfair competition that ensues when employers pay employees subminimum wages. These courts have raised concerns about the unfair competition that can occur when goods or services produced by incarcerated people for a private employer compete with goods or services produced in the outside world. (construction company owned by sheriff’s daughter and son-in-law used people serving jail sentences as laborers, paying them twenty dollars a day). However, despite such sometimes-expressed concerns about unfair competition, most courts have held that incarcerated people working in state-operated prison industry programs do not have to be paid the minimum wage.
- In , the Supreme Court considered whether the plaintiff’s participation in a treatment program for people convicted of sex crimes could constitutionally be conditioned on his disclosure of his sexual history, including sex crimes with which he had not been charged previously. To participate in the treatment program, people also had to admit their culpability of the crime for which they were serving a prison sentence even if they had testified at their trial, as had the plaintiff in this case, that they were innocent. Those who refused to disclose the required information or to admit their guilt of the crime for which they were incarcerated had their privileges curtailed substantially, including their visitation rights, work opportunities, earnings, and access to television. In addition, they were transferred from the medium-security unit to a maximum-security unit where they were housed in a four-person rather than a two-person cell and subject to augmented constraints on their...
- One theme that has permeated the court cases striking down the segregation of incarcerated people by race is that over the long term, segregation can actually aggravate racial tensions. (holding unconstitutional a policy of double celling people of the same race during the eight-week processing period following their entry into the prison system). represents one of the few, exceptional cases where a court upheld race-based segregation, though for a limited period of time. In that case, the district court agreed to permit prison officials to house only people of the same race together in double cells. But the court emphasized that the officials were faced with an emergency situation. In part because of racial tensions exacerbated by interracial cell assignments, a riot had erupted in the prison. Nine residents and one correctional officer were killed during the riot, and the records needed to assess the security risks posed by each individual within the prison were destroyed. The...
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Chapter 7. The Death Penalty 66 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The absence of proof that race had been a factor in the jury’s decision in this case to return a death sentence was also cited by the Court in rejecting the defendant’s claim that his sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The Court was unconvinced that there was unconstitutional arbitrariness in the imposition of death sentences in Georgia simply because of the demonstrated risk that racial bias played a role in juries’ decisions to sentence a defendant to death. The Court emphasized that Georgia’s capital-punishment system contained many procedural safeguards to avert arbitrariness in the imposition of the death penalty. Refusing to “assume that what is unexplained is invidious,” the Court concluded that the statistical risk that the death penalty was imposed because of the defendant’s or the victim’s race was not “constitutionally significant.”
- Although the Supreme Court in seemed confident that Georgia’s death-penalty statute was crafted, on its face, in a way that adequately avoided the arbitrary and capricious imposition of death sentences, statistics presented to the Court in a subsequent case revealed that there was racial disparity in the implementation of that statute. In , the Court considered the constitutional implications of a study that found that African-American defendants convicted of murder in Georgia were more likely to receive the death penalty than defendants who were white. The study also found that the race of the victim had a bearing on the likelihood of receiving a death sentence; defendants whose victims were white were much more likely to receive the death penalty than defendants whose victims were black. The death penalty was imposed in 22% of the murder cases involving a black defendant and a white victim, 8% of the cases involving a white defendant and a white victim, 3% of the cases involving...
- The Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision, upheld these death sentences The Court emphasized that the brothers’ participation in the felonies (kidnapping and robbery) resulting in the deaths was “major” and that they had acted with “reckless indifference to human life” when they participated in crimes that they knew posed “a grave risk of death.” The Court distinguished the case before it from . In that case, the Court had struck down the death sentence imposed on a defendant who had driven the getaway car in an armed robbery but had not killed the two murder victims. The Court noted in
- The defendant in , an African-American man sentenced to death for killing a white police officer, argued that the above statistics confirmed that racial discrimination permeated the capital-punishment system in Georgia, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the law and the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments. However, the Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision, concluded that since there was no evidence that the defendant had been discriminated against intentionally, his right to be accorded the equal protection of the law had not been violated. Specifically, there was no proof that the jury in this case had imposed the death penalty because of the defendant’s race or the race of his victim. Nor was there any evidence that the Georgia legislature had acted with the intent to discriminate against African Americans when enacting the death-penalty statute.
- The Supreme Court has also addressed the constitutional significance in the death-penalty context of certain attributes of the person being sentenced. The Court has flip-flopped on the question whether the Eighth Amendment permits the imposition of the death penalty on a person with an intellectual disability. In , the Court held that while an intellectual disability is a mitigating circumstance that may counsel against imposition of the death penalty, executing a person with this kind of disability is not unconstitutional. Thirteen years later, in , the Supreme Court reversed its position. In concluding that it conflicts with the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” to sentence a person with an intellectual disability to death, the Court emphasized that eighteen of the states in which the death penalty was authorized now
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Index 298 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Community sentencing and corrections laws, 167–68
- Community sentencing and corrections laws, 166–68
- Legislation, community sentencing and corrections, 166–68
- See also Cruel and Unusual Punishment; Death Penalty; Sentencing Evidence; Sentencing Guidelines; Sentencing Statutes; Shame Sentences
- Concurrent and consecutive sentences, 119–20
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Chapter 17. Cruel and Unusual Punishment 65 results (showing 5 best matches)
- An Eighth Amendment claim can be raised in a number of different contexts. Chapters 7 and 8 discussed constraints the Eighth Amendment places on the imposition of the death penalty and noncapital sentences. The way in which a person is treated while in prison or serving a jail sentence can also violate the Eighth Amendment. Eighth Amendment claims in this context typically concern alleged deficiencies in medical care, correctional officers’ use of force, the failure to protect from attacks or sexual abuse, or the conditions in which people are confined.
- The Supreme Court concluded its opinion by holding in that if people serving prison sentences have a “serious mental illness,” antipsychotic drugs can be administered involuntarily to them as long as two requirements are met: one, they pose a danger to themselves or others; and two, the treatment is in their “medical interest.” The dissenters in pointed out what they considered one of the ironies of the majority’s opinion: the prison policy upheld by the Court in that case did not, on its face, meet the substantive-due-process requirements the Court had announced. Nowhere in that policy was there a requirement that the medication decision be made with the medical interests of the person being medicated in mind. However, the majority of the Court appeared willing to assume that doctors would prescribe medication only to meet the medical needs of their patients, citing the ethical duty of physicians to refrain from prescribing medication for any other reason. The dissenters, on the...
- The prison policy whose constitutionality the Supreme Court was analyzing permitted antipsychotic drugs to be administered involuntarily when an imprisoned person “suffers from a mental disorder and as a result of that disorder constitutes a likelihood of serious harm to himself or others and/or is gravely disabled.” The plaintiff in contended that this policy abridged his right to substantive due process. He underscored the invasiveness of such unwanted medical treatment—not only the physical intrusion that results from the treatment, but also the degradation of having someone else decide, over his objection, what to do to his body. In addition, he cited the serious, and sometimes lethal, side effects that antipsychotic drugs can cause, including catatonia, swelling of the brain, drowsiness, restlessness, high blood pressure, ..., impotency, eczema, tremors, muscle spasms, and involuntary movements so disabling that the medicated person cannot perform such basic tasks as driving...
- The Eighth Amendment applies to individuals convicted of, and sentenced for, a crime. When pretrial detainees assert similar claims, they are analyzed under other constitutional provisions, usually the Due Process Clause. The courts are divided on whether a person convicted of, but not yet sentenced for, a crime is to be considered a pretrial detainee or like an imprisoned person when analyzing a constitutional claim contesting the person’s conditions of confinement or treatment while incarcerated.
- In addition to the Constitution, statutes may extend protections to incarcerated people who are sick, injured, or disabled. Perhaps the most significant example of the breadth of protection that a statute may provide is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), codified at . The ADA prohibits state and local governments and other public entities from discriminating against any “qualified individual with a disability” and from excluding individuals from programs, services, or activities because of their disability. . § 12132. A “qualified individual with a disability” is defined as “an individual with a disability who, with or without reasonable modifications to rules, policies, or practices, the removal of architectural, communication, or transportation barriers, or the provision of auxiliary aids and services, meets the essential eligibility requirements for the receipt of services or the participation in programs or activities provided by a public entity.”
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Chapter 16. Searches, Seizures, and Privacy Rights 83 results (showing 5 best matches)
- A number of lawsuits challenging the viewing and searching of the bodies of incarcerated people have involved cross-gender observations of them while they are bathing, dressing, or using the toilet or cross-gender searches—patdown searches, strip searches, and searches of body cavities. Before delving into the case law, one common feature of these cases warrants highlighting: Most of them seem to assume that the correctional officers conducting the searches and the incarcerated people being searched are heterosexual and that their gender identity matches their biological gender. When reading how courts have grappled with legal issues arising from what is typically termed “cross-gender” viewing and “cross-gender” searches within correctional facilities, consider whether and how this largely unacknowledged complexity—variations in sexual orientation and gender identity—should affect the law and policies governing cross-gender surveillance and searches.
- Most courts have assumed or held that incarcerated people retain a limited right to privacy under the Constitution.
- It is clear from the Supreme Court’s decision in that if, as the lower courts have held, the Fourth Amendment places limits on the inspection and observation of imprisoned persons’ bodies, the protection the amendment affords incarcerated people is quite limited. involved a Fourth Amendment challenge to visual body-cavity inspections to which both pretrial detainees in a correctional facility and people serving sentences there were subjected after contact visits. (As noted earlier in this book, contact visits are those occurring without a physical barrier between incarcerated individuals and their visitors.) During the body-cavity inspection at issue in , men incarcerated in the facility had to bend over and lift their genitals to permit correctional officials to visually inspect their rectums, and females had to let correctional officers visually inspect their vaginal and anal cavities.
- The state of the law involving cross-gender viewing and cross-gender searches within prisons and jails continues to be in flux. However, some areas of general consensus have emerged. First, the courts concur that a correctional officer’s inadvertent or occasional observation of an unclothed, incarcerated person of the opposite sex usually does not violate the right of privacy. Second, the courts agree that the right of privacy is not abridged when a correctional officer of the opposite sex is in the living area of a facility for a short, but defined, period of time. The courts reason that the people who live in that area can feasibly take steps during those set times to avoid being seen naked or using the toilet.
- The Sixth Circuit’s decision in
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Chapter 19. Remedies 106 results (showing 5 best matches)
- People in state prisons challenging the fact or duration of their confinement also cannot seek damages in a suit stemming from their allegedly unconstitutional confinement unless and until one of three events has occurred: (1) a state court’s order has reversed or vacated the conviction or sentence; (2) an executive order has expunged the conviction or sentence; or (3) a federal court has issued a writ of habeas corpus, thereby raising doubts about the validity of the conviction or sentence. . These restrictions also apply to plaintiffs seeking damages or a declaratory judgment in a suit because of allegedly unconstitutional procedures during certain prison disciplinary hearings. When a hearing resulted in the revocation of good-time credits and a court finding in favor of the plaintiff would “necessarily imply” that the revocation of the credits was invalid, the plaintiff first must seek and obtain redress in one of the alternative forums identified in
- Litigation to enforce constitutional or other rights is not the only way of attempting to make correctional facilities safe, humane, and sanitary. States, for example, have adopted health and fire-safety standards for state and local correctional facilities and implemented inspection schemes to monitor compliance with those standards. In addition, correctional officials can strive to operate their facilities in conformance with professional standards and then seek accreditation of those facilities from such accrediting bodies as the Commission on Accreditation for Corrections and the National Commission on Correctional Health Care. Jurisdictions also can utilize independent, public entities to monitor, and report publicly on, conditions in correctional facilities in those jurisdictions. And people incarcerated in prisons and jails may at times succeed in obtaining redress through administrative grievance procedures for injurious conditions or practices. However, if the need for...
- Because of this physical-injury requirement, courts must ascertain whether an incarcerated person who was not physically injured or subjected to a sexual act is seeking compensatory damages for mental or emotional injuries only, thereby foreclosing any compensatory relief. The decision of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in
- Other courts have disagreed with this construction of the physical-injury requirement. These courts have held that incarcerated people can still seek and secure compensatory damages for injuries, other than emotional or mental harm, resulting from constitutional violations that produced no physical injury and involved no sexual act. The Seventh Circuit’s decision in
- The sheriff in argued that the Supreme Court’s decision in , which was rendered after entry of the consent decree, justified the decree’s modification. In , you will recall, the Supreme Court held that the double celling of pretrial detainees is not unconstitutional. The Supreme Court in responded that just because it becomes evident from a change in the law that the parties have obligated themselves to do something more than the Constitution requires does not mean that a consent decree can and should be modified. The Court pointed out that parties entering into consent decrees have the prerogative to, and often do, take steps that go beyond the minimal requirements of the Constitution. A change in the law that clarifies that the parties, in fact, did so when they entered into a consent decree is therefore not adequate grounds for unsettling the parties’ agreement. Otherwise, consent decrees would have tenuous foundations, and the incentive of parties to resolve their differences...
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Outline 289 results (showing 5 best matches)
Chapter 12. First Amendment Rights 84 results (showing 5 best matches)
- In , a group of pretrial detainees challenged the constitutionality of a jail policy that prohibited contact visits between pretrial detainees and their visitors, including family members. A contact visit is one in which there is no physical barrier, such as a glass panel, between confined people and their visitors. The Supreme Court analyzed the constitutionality of this ban on contact visits under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Because the Due Process Clause prohibits the punishment of individuals who have not been convicted of a crime, the pivotal question before the Court was whether this ban on contact visits was tantamount to punishment. Such proscribed punishment exists when a policy or practice is designed to punish pretrial detainees. And even in the absence of proof of an intent to punish, a restriction or condition that detrimentally affects pretrial detainees constitutes unconstitutional punishment if it is not “reasonably related to a legitimate...
- In a dissenting opinion, Justice Marshall objected to extending the watered-down First Amendment test applied to people convicted of crimes to pretrial detainees not yet convicted of a crime and presumed innocent of any criminal wrongdoing. In defending its decision not to differentiate between these two categories of justice-involved people, the majority responded that pretrial detainees often pose the same, and sometimes greater, threats to institutional security as individuals incarcerated for crimes of which they have been convicted. For example, pretrial detainees awaiting trial for very serious crimes may be more dangerous and present a heightened risk of escape than people convicted of less serious crimes and sentenced to a short period of incarceration.
- Even when the Constitution allows certain restrictions on the receipt of visits from family members and others, correctional officials must decide whether the restrictions are sound from a policy perspective. Institutional-security considerations will, of course, be factored into this policy assessment. In addition, research revealing that receiving visits while incarcerated reduces recidivism rates, as does the frequency of those visits and the number of different people visiting, bears on the question of the types of restrictions that should be placed on visiting privileges while incarcerated.
- The Court also qualified what it had said earlier in regarding the relevance of other prisons’ policies to the constitutionality of prison regulations. The Court stated that just because a publication was admitted into some prisons and not others did not mean that prison officials were necessarily acting irrationally or arbitrarily. The Court observed that prisons can differ greatly from one another and that even the same prison can vary significantly over time as far as the steps needed to preserve its security.
- This rejection of a balancing of interests seems at odds with the long line of cases discussed earlier in this chapter in which the Supreme Court has done exactly what it said the district court should not have done. And in most of those cases, the Court was analyzing the rights of imprisoned people, not pretrial detainees presumed innocent of any criminal wrongdoing. However, even if the Court in had applied a balancing test, the end result of the case might have been the same, particularly if the test mirrored the laxness of the
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Chapter 13. Access to the Courts 53 results (showing 5 best matches)
- While indigent, incarcerated people do not, at least generally, have a constitutional right to the assistance of appointed counsel when litigating civil-rights claims or claims raised in postconviction proceedings, they may, by statute, be accorded such a right. For example, as is discussed more fully in Chapter 18, federal courts have the discretion under to appoint counsel to represent indigent individuals who have filed a civil suit, such as a civil-rights suit brought under § 1983. In addition, indigent people have the right, accorded by a federal statute, to assistance from appointed counsel when they are seeking to set aside a death sentence in a federal habeas corpus action.
- To prevail on a right-of-access claim, plaintiffs must show something more than that they were denied access to an adequate prison law library and failed to receive adequate alternative legal assistance. In , the Supreme Court held that they must also prove they suffered an “actual injury” because of deficiencies in a prison law library or the legal assistance with which they were provided. They might demonstrate, for example, that they were unable even to file a complaint because a law library was so inadequate. Or, according to the Court, they might establish that a complaint was dismissed for failure to meet a “technical requirement” of which they were unaware because of deficiencies in the system in place in the prison for affording them and others legal assistance.
- One question with which some appellate courts have been confronted is whether it was an abuse of the trial court’s discretion to conduct the entire trial of a civil-rights claim through videoconferencing—with all the witnesses, including the imprisoned plaintiff, testifying before the judge or jury via videoconference. Appellate courts have acknowledged that videoconferencing can detract from a jury’s or other factfinder’s ability to observe a witness’s demeanor and thereby better assess the witness’s credibility. However, they have still upheld trial courts’ decisions to hold the full trial via videoconferencing. is one such case. The facts the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals cited in support of its conclusion in that case that it was not an abuse of discretion to conduct the jury trial by videoconference included, among others, that the plaintiff was serving a life sentence and had been classified by prison officials as an “extremely high escape risk.”
- In , however, Justice Kennedy, who wrote the concurring opinion that provided the fifth vote needed to reject the constitutional claim, emphasized the special circumstances of the case before the Court. Justice Kennedy noted, for example, that there was no evidence that anybody on death row in the state in question had actually been unable to find a lawyer willing to assist them in a state postconviction proceeding. In addition, while the state did not hire attorneys to represent imprisoned people in the postconviction proceedings, attorneys were assigned to the prisons to assist people on death row in drafting their postconviction petitions. The possibility remains then that the Supreme Court might find, in a case with different facts, that an indigent person sentenced to death has a constitutional right to the assistance of an attorney when challenging the validity of a conviction or sentence in a postconviction proceeding.
- Most courts have also held that correctional officials generally cannot read mail to or from an attorney, even if the imprisoned person who sent or is the designated recipient of the mail is present. (reading letters from attorney abridges the right of access to the courts unless “reasonably related to a legitimate penological interest”). These decisions have been animated by a concern about “the chilling likely to result from an inmate’s knowledge that every word he writes to his lawyer may be intercepted by prison guards and possibly used against him.” . As has been true in cases involving simply the inspection, not reading, of legal mail, courts have pointed to different sources of the constitutional restrictions on correctional officials’ reading of mail to or from an attorney—the right of access to the courts, the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, and, in the case of people confined while
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Chapter 11. An Introduction to the Rights of Imprisoned People 30 results (showing 5 best matches)
- One purpose of incarceration is incapacitation. When incapacitation is the object of a prison sentence, the goal is to prevent a person from committing further crimes against the public while the sentence is being served. As was discussed in Chapter 1, the incapacitation rationale for incarceration has sparked great controversy, inciting debate about whether the comparative costs and benefits of incapacitation have been assessed accurately.
- The Supreme Court has now recognized that imprisoned people have an array of constitutional rights. In addition to their right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishments, they have, for example, the right to freedom of speech, the right to religious freedom, the right to marry, the right to have access to the courts, the right to equal protection of the law, and due-process rights.
- involved a suit brought by several individuals whose home was searched by police officers without a warrant. The state constitution as well as several state statutes prohibited the police officers’ actions. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court held that § 1983’s under-color-of-state-law requirement could be met even if a state law prohibited the actions of the government officials that allegedly had violated the Constitution. The Court noted that § 1983 was enacted to provide a federal remedy for the violation of constitutional rights in large part because states in the post-Civil War era often looked the other way when state laws were violated. The Court therefore concluded that the under-color-of-state-law requirement is met as long as a constitutional violation stems from the “ ‘[m]isuse of power, possessed by virtue of state law and made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law.’ ”
- Third, a change in the composition of the Supreme Court was another factor catalyzing the abandonment of the hands-off doctrine. The “Warren Court,” named after the Chief Justice who headed the Court during this time, tended to interpret the scope of civil liberties more broadly than the Court had in earlier years. The Warren Court was also committed to extending the protections of the Constitution to disfavored and marginalized people, including those accused of crimes and people serving prison sentences. It was during this era that the Supreme Court rendered such landmark decisions as warnings must precede custodial interrogation) and (Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule applies to the states).
- The chapters that follow discuss the courts’ views about the scope of constitutional rights when in prison. While reading these materials, consider what, in your view, the purposes of incarceration should be and how those purposes should affect the scope of the constitutional rights of people in prison. Also contemplate the answer to this policy question: What rights should be afforded people in prison separate and apart from their rights under the United States Constitution? This question is one of import because federal, state, and local governments have the prerogative to extend rights to incarcerated people that go beyond the federal constitutional minima.
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WEST ACADEMIC PUBLISHING’S EMERITUS ADVISORY BOARD 16 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Joanne and Larry Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics & Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center
- University Professor and Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Professor ofConstitutional Law and the Courts, New York University
- Arthur J. Kania Dean and Professor of LawVillanova University Charles Widger School of Law
- John Deaver Drinko/Baker & Hostetler Chair in Law Emerita Michael E. Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University
- Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus University of California, Berkeley
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Table of Cases 38 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Publication Date: September 26th, 2022
- ISBN: 9781636594132
- Subject: Corrections and Sentencing
- Series: Nutshells
- Type: Overviews
- Description: An excellent reference tool, this book explores a range of sentencing-related topics, including the principal purposes of criminal sentences, restorative justice, guilty pleas and plea bargaining, different ways to structure sentencing systems, procedural rights during sentencing proceedings, sentencing evidence, community-based sentences, the death penalty, Eighth Amendment constraints on sentences in noncapital cases, parole release, probation and parole revocation, and enmeshed penalties (often called the “collateral consequences” of a conviction). The latter half of the book contains an illuminating overview of the constitutional rights of incarcerated people, details on litigating their civil-rights suits challenging conditions of confinement and their treatment while incarcerated, and the remedies available to them.