SCOTUS Okays Piling on Mandatory Minimums — In the Name of Proportionality?

Yesterday, the Supreme Court held in Abbott v. United States that the five-year mandatory minimum prescribed by 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) must be imposed consecutively to other mandatory minimums imposed pursuant to other statutes.  The 924(c) mandatory minimum targets defendants who have used, carried, or possessed a firearm in connection with a crime of violence or a drug trafficking crime.

The defendants in Abbott illustrate how the same conduct that triggers 924(c) can also trigger other mandatory minimums.  

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Criminal Court: Guilty by the Preponderance of the Evidence?

One of our fundamental beliefs is that before a jury may convict a person of a crime, it must be satisfied of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.  However, upon even minimal scrutiny, this belief starts to crumble.  For example, Wisconsin criminal jury instruction number 140 concludes with the following two sentences: “While it is your duty to give the defendant the benefit of every reasonable doubt, you are not to search for doubt.  You are to search for the truth.”

This instruction is problematic for several reasons.  First, it invites — in fact, instructs — the jury to disregard the evidence and instead speculate on, or “search for,” what it believes to be “the truth.”  This capitalizes on the human tendency to think we can know things without evidence.  How often have you heard someone say, for example, “I know it, I just can’t prove it”?  The jury instruction only emboldens that kind of sloppy thinking, and at the worst possible time with much at stake.

Second, this concept of truth-seeking is actually misplaced.

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The Quiet Comeback of Early Release

Parole seems to be making a comeback.  Although it was a universal feature of the American criminal justice system as recently as forty years ago, parole fell into precipitous decline over the final three decades of the twentieth century.  By 2000, fifteen states and the federal government had abolished parole altogether, while twenty additional states had formally restricted its availability. Since 2000, however, many states have enhanced release opportunities for prison inmates (although some still resist the “parole” label for their new programs).

For an article I am working on, I have been collecting information about the states in the latter category.  I count twenty-eight.  What I have so far appears in a table after the jump.  

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