Ranting to /dev/null

In court: 6/19/07

I've just come from the magistrate courtroom after a morning spent there. Most of the morning was spent watching a series of initial appearances/arraignments. The last half-hour or so was at a hearing for a pro se motion to return property.

What an experience.

About ten people were indicted today. Two of them were white. One of them was female. A plurality were black, with the rest Hispanic. Most indictments involved drugs and/or firearms. About half of the defendants were detained prior to their trial as a flight risk and danger to the community. The statutory maximum penalties for the offenses were generally ten years and $250,000.

Watching this was actually pretty difficult. First of all, it's extraordinarily unlikely that the defendants will be given the statutory maximum. The Federal Sentencing Guidelines rarely include the statutory maximum in their sentencing range. It's entirely impossible that any of the defendants will ever be able to pay anything close to the maximum penalty, even though two of them were involved in drug deals in excess of $10,000. Why does the law impose penalties that are never actually meted out?

Furthermore, what's the rationale for locking someone up for ten, twenty, thirty years for an offense that took twenty seconds to commit? How is that making the punishment fit the crime? Does the simple fact that we have the largest prison system in the world really mean that incarceration is just or even a good idea? I seriously believe that if any of these people are convicted--they all pled "Not Guilty" for what it's worth--it would be better for everyone involved to simply string them up, administer ten or twenty lashes, and turn them loose. No massive expenditures for feeding and housing them, no prolonged legal procedures, and more importantly, no destruction of their lives. You get twenty from the cat and your life sucks for a few months, but you're still living. You get twenty in the pen and everything you knew is gone.

I don't want to do this. My experience at the Department of Justice has been incredibly instructive, and the opportunity to draft a brief for the 3d Circuit is something I will always be glad to have done. But I don't want to be involved in criminal law anymore. I suspected this going into it, but I know it for a fact now.