From Doug Berman at Sentencing Law & Policy comes this New York Times article about the influences surrounding the sentencing of 19 year old Yiskar Caceres by Supreme Court Justice Thomas Farber.

“It’s almost an impossible calculus,” said Justice Farber, who sits in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

The young man, Yiskar Caceres, had been arrested four times in roughly 15 months for selling or possessing cocaine, and Justice Farber already had given him an opportunity to wipe his slate clean before his most recent arrest, in April.

Judge Farber showed remarkable compassion.  But I can’t help but wonder, under the circumstances of this case, whether this is a good example.

Caceres, at the judge’s direction, prepared a paper explaining “what he was thinking.”  This was probably the first time in Caceres life that he attempted any introspection, making this a very interesting exercise.

Before he was sentenced, Mr. Caceres read the judge a three-and-a-half-page letter he had drafted at the judge’s request, explaining what he was thinking when he committed his crimes.

“I first started selling drugs at the age of 16,” Mr. Caceres said. “I went from one day having nothing to the next day having over $300. It was an unexplainable feeling.”

He added: “While the money was coming in, so did the status of having money and the respect I received from the fact of me having money. All these things made me overlook the wrong I was doing to myself and others.”

So he’s not going to win a prize, but this is remarkable for someone in Mr. Caceres’ position, where the chances are slim to none that he ever considered becoming a drug dealer worthy of a second thought.  Perhaps the most moving aspect of this article, and the thing that influenced Judge Farber, was this:

After The New York Times published an article about Mr. Caceres’s case in July, Justice Farber said, he received many letters. One, which he said was particularly touching, came from a man to whom he had given a life sentence for murder.

The letter said, “Nothing that they say about rehabilitation in state prison is true,” Justice Farber said. The inmate also pleaded with him to “please consider any other options than this human warehouse” for Mr. Caceres.

“It therefore saddens me that I have to sentence Mr. Caceres to state prison,” the judge said.

But there is also an ugly side to this story, that probably wouldn’t occur to anyone who doesn’t spend time in the trenches.  This was Caceres’ fourth conviction in a little over a year.  He was, what we call in New York, a pred, meaning a predicate felon who faced mandatory state prison time. 

And what did his lawyer, Mark Cohen, do for him?  He took his fee, pled him out, and gave him a fresh business card to call back when he got busted again.  Then pled him out again.  I’ve known Mark a long time, having helped him when he came out of the Bronx DAs office and taken him under my wing, until I came to the conclusion that we didn’t share an understanding of the role of a criminal defense lawyer.

Caceres could have been saved.  Instead, he was just another quick fee, plead ’em and weep.  Justice Farber did what he could to help Yiskar Caceres, given the limitations of the law.  It’s a shame that his own lawyer didn’t see his role the same way.  To him, Caceres was just another quick and dirty legal fee.