There is a case here in Milwaukee that is bringing to light a sometimes used concept called “Acquitted Conduct sentencing”.
Simply put, it allows a judge, and in some cases a jury, to consider the totality of the case, including what the defendant was acquitted of, as guidelines for sentencing.
A defendant can be found not guilty on one charge in the case and guilty of another. This happens all the time. But in acquitted conduct sentencing the charge that the defendant was found not guilty of is incorporated into the decision of what the punishment is for the charge he/she was convicted of.
I think this stinks. It gives the government another whack at the defendant without going through the hassle of due process. I’m stunned to learn that courts have ruled this a valid concept.
In the Milwaukee case it is my opinion that the defendant was guilty of the original charge, and the prosecution just didn’t do a good enough job to get a conviction. But they didn’t, he was found not guilty, and that should be the end of it. That’s how our system is supposed to work.
While I believe this guy to be a slug, I still hope he wins his appeal and our state supreme court or SCOTUS rips this concept to shreds!
Do you believe that everything a court considers in sentencing must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and within the same rules of evidence as the trial itself?
Also, do you believe that an acquittal means factually innocent?
Just so I’m clear on the concept, the judge is still limited to whatever the maximum criminal penalty was on whatever crimes the accused was actually convicted of, correct?
So if you’re accused of murder (penalty of, say, 25 years to life) and burglary (one to five years), then acquitted of murder and convicted of burglarly, the judge can sentence you to five years for burglary on whatever basis he likes, including his belief that you’re actually guilty of murder, but can’t sentence you to longer than the five years?
I’m not seeing why EITHER of these answers would be relevant to the issue at hand?
The question is, should a crime you were acquitted of be used as justification to send you to jail–and in those terms, the answer to me (a non-lawyer) must be unambiguously no.
Because the rules of evidence, the standard of proof, and the things that can be considered by the court are different for sentencing than for a criminal trial. The sentencing judge is allowed, quite properly, to consider a wide range of evidence that would not meet the standards of a criminal trial. Which leads us to my second question, where an acquittal does not function as a determination of factual innocence, but rather a “did not prove during the trial beyond a reasonable doubt”.
The answer to the criminal justice system and a majority of the appellate courts is yes.
Agreed. (With the spirit of the questions) The only thing that a not guilty verdict means is that the state can’t punish you for the crime. If I am acquitted of murder, you may refuse to hire me because you think I’m guilty. You might not let your kids play with my kids because you think I’m a murder. The Kiwanis Club can deny me membership.
Likewise, the judge in another case can look at the facts of a different case and enhance my sentence (but still within the range of the offense in the other case) because of the particular circumstances he sees.
The OP is correct that a not guilty verdict is the end of it, INSOFAR as the government can punish you for that PARTICULAR offense. But it, along with everything else in your life, can be used for sentencing purposes for a different offense.
I don’t see the issue, then. The (well, a) reason statutes almost always define criminal penalties as a range rather than an absolute is to account for mitigating or aggravating factors, which are subjective matters entrusted to the judge. How is this any different?
Isn’t is possible for a rational actor to answer “No” to both of your general questions, yet still believe that the specific behavior of the judge in the OP is unconscionable?
The sentence the defendant received was not more than was statutorily allowed for the crime he was convicted. There are a range of penalties for a given crime, and the judge can only sentence someone within that range. While, in this case, the “guidelines” (I’m not sure what that means) may have allowed for 6 mo. probation, but the court is allowed to use any sentence within the range.
On a case by case basis, sure. I suppose you could conclude that a sentencing court can consider almost everything about the crime, the criminal, the victims, and the actual guilt or innocence of defendant, and do so at a lower standard of proof, and still make an exception for “acquitted conduct”. I just don’t find that exception to be all that compelling.
I think the OP believes that if the state doesn’t prove a person guilty beyond a reasonable doubt during that one specific trial, the government and the judge should be forbidden from ever considering whatever facts came out in the trial as factors in mitigation or aggravation.
That seems wrongheaded because it’s a strawman. The OP is making no such claim.
The convict in the article was sentence to and amount of jail time five times the guideline for the offense he was convicted of. The judge made it clear (though did not explicitly state) that the sentence was in part because the judge felt the defendant committed arson.
Clearly, the judge is (and should be) allowed to use a different standard of evidence when considering aggravating and mitigating factors for sentencing. Clearly, the judge is not (and should not be) allowed to overrule a jury’s verdict of “innocent” and send a defendant to jail for a crime he has been cleared of. The OP’s premise is that the judge in this case did the latter; Hamlet argues that the judge did the former. Under current caselaw, Hamlet is apparently correct. But I’m not convinced that such reasoning actually serves the cause of justice.
Guidelines are just that. For example, here’s the wiki article on Federal sentencing guidelines. A guideline is not the statutory penalty for the crime, it’s a guide for what sentences should be handed out within the range proscribed by the statute, in an effort to discourage wide variance in sentencing from individual judges. Under United States v. Booker, these guidelines are not mandatory and do not carry the force of law.
So, the defendant was not sent to jail for a crime he’d been cleared of; he was given a longer-than-typical sentence that fell within the range of the criminal penalty for the statute was convicted under.
See, here is one example of where it falls apart. A jury finding of “not guilty” is not a finding of “innocent”. Hence the second question I asked that you seemed to think was irrelevant. The jury didn’t find him innocent, they found that the state didn’t prove, at trial, him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. A judge, using the same evidence and a differing standard of proof, could, and in fact did, conclude he did commit these actions. Just like judges have for centuries.
The criminal justice system does not require a judge to sentence someone only based on what is proven beyond a reasonable doubt in court using trial level rules of evidence. That’s why, in the US, judges have a different standard of proof, have different evidence they can consider, and are given much more latitude (although mandatory sentencing takes way too much of it away) in their findings at a sentencing hearing.
I stand corrected, but I don’t think this affects my point. A judge who said, “‘not guilty’ isn’t the same as ‘innocent,’ so I’m sending you to jail for 2 1/2 years” would be immediately kicked off the bench.
[QUOTE=Hamlet]
The criminal justice system does not require a judge to sentence someone only based on what is proven beyond a reasonable doubt in court using trial level rules of evidence.
[/quote]
At no point have stated that the justice system has this requirement, and I’d appreciate if you stop putting words into my mouth.
As I said before. Including evidence not proven beyond a reasonable doubt as part of sentencing is unambiguously legal. Sentencing a defendant for a crime he was not found guilty of is unambiguously illegal. And acquittal conduct sentencing unambiguously lies somewhere between these two. The only uncertainty is which side of the line it lies on.