Separating Sentence From Proof

A plea bargain was struck, and both prosecution and defendant were prepared to put the matter to rest.  The charge was the felonious reckless operation of a vehicle, plus some misdemeanor failure to obeys. From the Laconia Daily Sun :

Officer (now Sergeant) Michael Finogle was in the parking lot at Endicott Beach when he said Jonathan E. Lord, 25, drove a car “at a rate of speed and manner as to narrowly miss” him as he was trying to get the car to stop.

In essence, Finogle claimed that Lord nearly killed him with his car.  The plea provided for Lord to plead guilty to two misdemeanors:

Lord would have been sentenced to one year in jail for each charge — all but 60 days suspended — and would have had the suspended jail time hanging over his head for three years.

Case closed?  Not as far as Judge James O’Neill III was concerned.  In a move that rarely happens, the judge rejected the deal as too lenient.

In jurisdictions where plea deals include both charge and sentence, judges are reluctant to become involved in the propriety of the terms, both for the sake of leaving it to the parties to hash out what both sides deem acceptable, as well as recognizing that there may be issues which are below his radar that affect a party’s approach to the deal.

In the case of the prosecution, they may be aware of a critical witness who, despite their hard work in preparation, isn’t likely to survive cross-examination, or is just too shaky to sustain the burden of proof.  On the defense side, some defendants just can’t handle the pressure of a trial, and will do anything, even cop to a crime they didn’t commit, to be done with it.  There are myriad motivations and reasons that go into a plea bargain, and many of these are not appropriate subjects of discussion with the judge.

Then there are times when a plea bargain presents something of an impossibility.  If the defendant is guilty of the crime, the sentence must reflect the legitimate sentencing purposes.  In a small town, for example, general deterrence, sending a message, can be a critical factor in a court’s imposition of sentence. 

Just as a stiff sentence may be the big message, in order to let the locals know that Smallville, a place where crime rarely happens, isn’t going to start treating conduct that could harm its cop lightly, a light sentence sends a message that you can do harm in Smallville and walk away relatively unscathed. 

Laconia, New Hampshire, has a unique feature, in that it’s the home of motorcycle week, a gathering of thousands of bikers each June.  From first hand reports I’ve gotten from the Blind Guy, it’s all good, clean fun, though the care and feeding of thousands of hungry, rowdy bikers has its challenges.  It seems that this might have been one of the things Judge O’Neill had in mind in rejecting the plea as overly lenient. 

Given Laconia’s facing a lot of men and women on motorcycles who might want to test its mettle, and the need for police to keep the bikers under some minimal amount of control, the question of how the court treated reckless vehicular conduct could well be a more serious problem for Laconia than other locales.  While it’s impossible to say with certainty whether this is what was going through Judge O’Neill’s head, it hardly seems unreasonable that crimes with cars and motorcycles hold a special place in the Laconia court.

But a plea, by definition, takes for granted the defendant is guilty.  While it may be a plea of convenience, a choice by a defendant to take the weight rather than roll the dice at trial, the judge imposing sentence (other than in an Alford plea) must assume guilt to be conclusively established.  And if the defendant is guilty, then the legitimate sentencing factors come into play. 

It’s both fair and appropriate for a judge to consider whether the agreed upon sentence, one that he must impose and, if he’s doing his job properly, by imposing endorses, is proper.  Notably, this should cut both ways, whether the terms of the deal are too severe or too lenient.  Even with a plea bargain, the judge remains the judge, and he owns every sentence he imposes.  Every sentence must still be fair and appropriate, even if he played no role in its negotiation.

Judge O’Neill, for whatever reason, determined that he could not impose the negotiated sentence. 

So the case went to trial, and the defendant was acquitted.  Guilt is a completely different issue, and the prosecution failed to sustain its burden of proving that the defendant, Lord, was the guy who almost ran Finogle down.  Sometimes it happens this way.  Not too often, but sometimes it all works out right.

H/T Turley

4 thoughts on “Separating Sentence From Proof

  1. Jeffrey Deutsch

    Does the “upcoming major holiday weekend” effect mainly help the defense, or is it a wild card?

    (Note the day – and time – the jury retired to deliberate…and how “long” they deliberated.)

    Jeff Deutsch

  2. SHG

    Aside from your question having nothing to do with the post, it’s impossible to know.

  3. Jeffrey Deutsch

    I’m sorry, perhaps I should have provided a bit more explanation.

    The jury got the case the Friday afternoon before Memorial Day weekend. They deliberated all of 35 minutes. To me, that signals a strong likelihood that they wanted to get the heck out of their and not ruin their holiday weekend.

    I’m wondering if that could have made an acquittal more likely, if that’s what a majority of them (or maybe a very influential juror or two) wanted at the beginning and the others didn’t think it was worth screwing up their holiday to try to change their minds.

    What do you think?

    Jeff Deutsch

  4. SHG

    I understood your question, and it’s still not relevant to the post even though it bears on an aspect of the underlying trial.  But since you’re apparently very interested in this point, I’ll respond as a matter of courtesy.

    A lot of verdicts come in between 4 and 5 o’clock on Friday because jurors want to get out of there.  It doesn’t per se help one side or the other, but rather galvanizes the jury to go with the majority and be done with it.

    It’s doesn’t appear to be the problem in this case, as a 35 minutes verdict early on a Friday afternoon wasn’t needed to get out of the jury room.  They had plenty of time to deliberate, but apparently didn’t need it.  A 35 minute verdict is very fast, and shows that they were either unanimous at the outset or very close.  The Friday Effect likely had nothing to do with it.

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