Jail time for judges and prosecutors you think?
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Terrell McCullum
Federal prosecutors in North Carolina have been aware for nearly a
year that dozens of North Carolinians currently incarcerated in federal
prisons should not be there, but they have done next to nothing to help
them, and in at least once case are actually trying to prevent an
innocent man’s release, according to an investigation by USA Today.
This bizarre, Kafkaesque, nightmare arose over the past nine years,
as federal courts in North Carolina misapplied a federal law making gun
possession a crime for felons whose prior conviction carried a
potential sentence of more than one year in prison. In 1993, North
Carolina adopted a new, unique system called “structured sentencing,”
which makes potential sentences depend on the individual defendant’s
prior criminal record. Thus for the same past crime, two defendants with
different criminal records might face very different potential
sentences. Nevertheless, for years federal courts ruled that if the
potential sentence for a past crime was more than a year for any
defendant, then every defendant who committed that crime was legally
barred from possessing a gun, and could be convicted of a federal crime
and sentenced to federal prison for that.
Last August, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit overturned all those cases,
holding that only those defendants whose potential sentence for a past
crime could have been more than a year qualify as felons. That means
that dozens, and possibly hundreds, of people who did not face a
potential sentence of at least one year for their past crimes were
convicted and sentenced under an interpretation of the law that was
wrong.
To their credit, federal prosecutors soon dropped pending charges
against people whose records no longer qualified them as felons, and the
4th Circuit reversed more than 40 convictions that were on appeal at
the time. To their shame, they have done nothing to notify inmates whose
incarceration is likely illegal, nor do they plan to do so. They argue
that “legal innocence,” based a change in the law, differs from “factual
evidence,” based on new evidence, even though American law has always
stated that court rulings are not changes in the law.
Ripley Rand, U.S. attorney in Greensboro, N.C., excuses their
conduct by claiming they are “not aware of any procedural mechanism by
which they can be afforded relief,” but that lawyers in his office “have
not been pounding on the table” to keep anyone in jail.
“It’s been tough,” admits Rand, although amazingly he was referring
not to the plight of so many wrongly convicted men in prison, but to
his office’s struggles with the legal issues involved.
-Matt Bewig
To Learn More:
Scores in N.C. are Legally “Innocent,” yet Still Imprisoned (by Brad Heath, USA Today)
Source @AllGov
