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Full-Text Articles in Law
Modifying Unjust Sentences, E. Lea Johnston
Modifying Unjust Sentences, E. Lea Johnston
E. Lea Johnston
The United States is in the midst of an incarceration crisis. Over-incarceration is depleting state budgets and decimating communities. It has also led to the overfilling of prisons, which has degraded conditions of confinement, increased violence, and reduced access to needed medical and mental health care. Judicial sentence modification offers a means to address both the phenomenon of over-incarceration and harsh prison conditions that threaten unjust punishment. Indeed, some legislatures have framed states’ early release provisions as fulfilling goals of proportionality and just punishment. Proportionality is also an express purpose of the proposed Model Penal Code provisions on judicial sentence …
Smoke And Mirrors: Model Penal Code § 305.7 And Compassionate Release, E. Lea Johnston
Smoke And Mirrors: Model Penal Code § 305.7 And Compassionate Release, E. Lea Johnston
E. Lea Johnston
The American Law Institute has revised the sentencing articles of the Model Penal Code to include three important sentence modification measures. One of these provisions, Model Penal Code § 305.7, would allow a judge to reduce a prison sentence at any time for any “compelling” reason, if the purposes of sentencing justify sentence modification. Compelling circumstances may include advanced age, physical infirmity, or any other circumstance that sufficiently affects the retributive or utilitarian aims that animate limiting retributivism, the philosophy undergirding the revised Model Penal Code sentencing articles. Limiting retributivism provides that individual sentences should occur within the bounds of …
Humane Punishment For Seriously Disordered Offenders: Sentencing Departures And Judicial Control Over Conditions Of Confinement, E. Lea Johnston
Humane Punishment For Seriously Disordered Offenders: Sentencing Departures And Judicial Control Over Conditions Of Confinement, E. Lea Johnston
E. Lea Johnston
At sentencing, a judge may foresee that an individual with a major mental disorder will experience serious psychological or physical harm in prison. In light of this reality and offenders’ other potential vulnerabilities, a number of jurisdictions currently allow judges to treat undue offender hardship as a mitigating factor at sentencing. In these jurisdictions, vulnerability to harm may militate toward an order of probation or a reduced term of confinement. Since these measures do not affect offenders’ day-to-day experience in confinement, these expressions of mitigation fail to protect adequately those vulnerable offenders who must serve time in prison. This Article …
Vulnerability And Just Desert: A Theory Of Sentencing And Mental Illness, E. Lea Johnston
Vulnerability And Just Desert: A Theory Of Sentencing And Mental Illness, E. Lea Johnston
E. Lea Johnston
This Article analyzes risks of serious harms posed to prisoners with major mental disorders and investigates their import for sentencing under a just deserts analysis. Drawing upon social science research, the Article first establishes that offenders with serious mental illnesses are more likely than non-ill offenders to suffer physical and sexual assaults, endure housing in solitary confinement, and experience psychological deterioration during their carceral terms. The Article then explores the significance of this differential impact for sentencing within a retributive framework. It first suggests a particular expressive understanding of punishment, capacious enough to encompass foreseeable, substantial risks of serious harm …
Conditions Of Confinement At Sentencing: The Case Of Seriously Disordered Offenders, E. Lea Johnston
Conditions Of Confinement At Sentencing: The Case Of Seriously Disordered Offenders, E. Lea Johnston
E. Lea Johnston
At sentencing, a judge can often foresee that an individual, given his major mental disorder and other vulnerabilities, will experience serious harm in prison. These harms may include psychological deterioration and mental distress, attempted suicide, or victimization by staff or other inmates. In response, some jurisdictions allow a judge to commit a disordered offender for treatment in lieu of incarceration, while others designate need for treatment and undue offender hardship as mitigating factors for use at sentencing. None of these measures, however, goes far enough to protect vulnerable prisoners. This Article builds a case for expanding judges’ sentencing power by …