EDITORIALS

Our View: Inject reality into sentencing laws

Staff Writer
The News Herald

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, giddy with budgets that were sometimes more than a billion dollars into the black, Florida lawmakers went all-in on the easiest of targets: Harsh, long sentences for criminals.

But over the years, state lawmakers have realized that the get-tough-on-crime spree has a massive price tag — and unintended consequences. Lawmakers are considering tweaks that would keep Florida’s sentencing laws tough, but allow for flexibility and proportionality. That’s smarter justice.

The current target is a law then-Gov. Jeb Bush pushed for, with the snappy title of “10-20-Life.” It required a 10-year minimum mandatory prison term for anyone using a gun in the commission of a long list of felonies. The minimum increased to 20 years for anyone who discharged the firearm during the crime, and at least 25 if someone was injured or killed in the commission of the felony.

The 1999 law faced new scrutiny in 2013, after Marissa Alexander of Jacksonville was convicted and sentenced to 20 years minimum for firing what she told police was a “warning shot.” Alexander, who had no criminal history prior to her arrest, claimed self-defense, saying she was trying to run away from her estranged husband, who was attacking her. The case was later overturned on appeal. After prosecutors threatened to retry her on three separate charges, each of which would have carried a 20-year-sentence, Alexander agreed to a plea deal that allowed her to be released with time served.

The legislation approved Oct. 5 by the Senate Criminal Justice Committee would address that kind of case, removing aggravated assault from the list of crimes covered under the law. A prior version would have erased the high minimum sentences for aggravated assault if the court finds the defendant had a good-faith belief that they were acting in self-defense — a protection that should be restored to cover other offenses listed in the 10-20-Life law. Judges should always have the ability to consider the “totality of the circumstances” to determine whether a long sentence is truly warranted.

Lawmakers should apply this kind of scrutiny to nine other sentencing laws enacted around the same time as 10-20-Life, which created six new categories of “career criminals,” and mandated that everyone sent to state prison serve at least 85 percent of the court-ordered sentence. Most significantly, it included language intended to strip discretion from judges and even prosecutors. In recent years, lawmakers have also added tough mandatory penalties for other crimes, including trafficking in prescription painkillers.

There were good intentions behind these laws. But there’s an associated cost. It’s seen in ballooning prison budgets — from 1996 to 2011, Florida’s prison population climbed from about 62,000 to well above 100,000 — and a growing number of cases where the harsh dictate of the law has forced justice out of alignment, and tied judges’ hands. Among them: A Putnam County teenager sentenced to 15 years in prison for selling 25 hydrocodone pills; a Davenport man serving 20 years for firing a warning shot at his daughter’s boyfriend, who was threatening violence; a man who was attacked from behind outside a Tallahassee nightclub, serving a 25-year sentence because he shot one of his attackers in the leg.

These cases are drawing public notice. A recent poll by Families Against Minimum Mandatories, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, found that 78 percent of respondents support reforming minimum-mandatory laws to give judges more discretion (with 50 percent saying they “strongly supported” such reform).

Few people are arguing that dangerous criminals should walk free. But giving judges more ability to fit the punishment to the crime should be a priority for lawmakers.