Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Governor Patrick’s “Profiles in Courage” moment

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By Carol Rose, ACLU of Massachusetts executive director

Ordinary politicians become great leaders when they take a principled stand, even at the risk of political backlash—what President John F. Kennedy captured in the phrase “profiles in courage.”

Massachusetts voters got a glimpse of that kind of political leadership last week when Senator Cynthia Stone Creem (D-Newton), the Senate Chair of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, dissented from a conference committee’s approval of a crime bill that would expand unjust and wasteful mandatory sentencing, by forcing judges to impose one-size-fits-all sentences, regardless of the facts of an individual case.

At the final conference committee meeting, Senator Creem—joined by Senator Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester)—made a bipartisan show of good sense by pressing to allow at least a little judicial sentencing discretion. It would have allowed an individual offender to be parole-eligible after serving a substantial portion of the required maximum sentence, “in the interest of justice.”

Although the conference committee ultimately scrapped that provision and settled on a bill with a one-size-fits-all sentencing structure, the two Senators who tried to bring fairness and discretion back into the bill deserve our thanks. So do the six other Senators who joined Senator Creem in voting against the bill on Thursday, July 18, when the Senate passed it 31-7.

The bill is now on the Governor’s desk.

Senator Creem and those who voted with her understand that our hugely overcrowded prisons and county facilities house hundreds of individuals serving mandatory sentences. Any new law requiring more people to serve more and longer mandatory sentences will make that worse, at a cost to Massachusetts taxpayers of almost $50,000 a year, per prisoner.

Imagine how many folks could get clean and get a job if we had $50,000 to invest in rehabilitation and job training for each person, rather than incarceration. Locking people up regardless of the specific facts of their crime isn’t justice. It’s a waste, in both human and economic terms.

Sadly, so-called “tough on crime” bills can move forward through the legislative process, with woefully insufficient attention to matters of fairness that are essential for a criminal justice system.

Now it’s Governor Deval Patrick’s turn to do the right thing.

The Governor has said that he wants positive and meaningful sentencing reform, vowing that he’ll sign only a “balanced” bill. What the legislature has given him, while arguably improved over previous versions, remains way out of balance. It would take Massachusetts in the wrong direction, locking up more people without individualized determinations of justice, at extraordinary costs to taxpayers and public safety.

It’s time for Governor Patrick to exercise his leadership at this critical moment. He should reject or propose significant improvements to this legislation, not simply sign the bill before him.

In short, it’s Governor Patrick’s “Profiles in Courage” moment.

Please urge Gov. Patrick not to accept the harsh mandatory-sentencing bill as written.

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Comments

  1. What SHOULD the law say? I mean, when you make a law saying x is illegal, doesn’t the legislation include enforcement either by fine of a certain range of dollar amount or a certain range of prison term? It shouldn’t be entirely up to the judge. If it’s just judge’s discretion then a defendant’s fortunes are based on which judge he gets. This seems to raise questions of equal protection.

    • You’re right that it’s the legislature’s role to provide a range of enforcement options—but not to essentially do the sentencing by requiring a mandatory maximum. That’s our concern.

  2. I guess I figure that when a law says “imprisonment for five to ten years” then five years is a mandatory minimum for that conviction, though I don’t know how probation, parole, or suspended sentences are counted.

  3. Imagine how many folks could get clean and get a job if we had $50,000 to invest in rehabilitation and job training for each person, rather than incarceration.

    Imagine how much money we’d save on locks and security devices if we didn’t have to worry about thieves… imagine how safe women would feel walking the streets at night if they didn’t have to worry about robbers and rapists… imagine what ever you want but the reality is we have prisons full of people who would cut your ear off to make $50 or enough to buy their next ‘fix”. We have laws and we have sentencing guidelines, even with mandatory sentences there is some discretion so stop with the hyperbole.

    Here are the MA Court Sentencing guidelines and descriptions of mandatory minimums. Here’s an example front he site…

    Illustration 15: A 17 year old defendant with no prior record has been convicted of Trafficking in Marijuana (100 to 2,000 lb.), an offense which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of incarceration of three years. It is revealed at trial that the defendant played a minor role in the criminal conduct and was suffering from a mental disorder at the time of the commission of the offense.

    In this instance because the defendant has no prior conviction for a level 7 or level 8 drug trafficking offense, the judge has the discretion, upon finding one or more mitigating factors, of departing from the mandatory minimum sentence and sentencing the defendant in accordance with the guidelines. Factors that may warrant mitigation in the above example include the defendant’s age, role, and/or mental health at the time of the offense.
    Under no circumstances, however, is the judge obligated to depart from the mandatory minimum sentence of incarceration.

    A mandatory minimum is no more than saying a crime of “X” will get 1 to 10 years sentence but in no case will it be less than 1 year. I have always felt that that was exactly what 1 – 10 years meant.

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