Governor: Sentencing guidelines too often ignored

Gov. Asa Hutchinson Monday told the state’s Legislative Criminal Justice Oversight Task Force that inmate sentencing guidelines should be given more teeth and more weight.

Composed of legislators, law enforcement officers and members of the judicial community, the task force was created by legislation earlier this year to consider criminal justice reforms.

Hutchinson said those reforms begin with how the state sentences inmates. He said the task force should consider adjustments to the current guidelines, which are nonbinding recommendations given to judges regarding sentences for various crimes. Also needing study is the percentage of cases sentenced outside the guidelines, and whether those deviations are appropriate.

He said judges should have the freedom to issue sentences they deem appropriate, but judges and prosecutors could be required to state on the record their reasoning when they issue a sentence outside the guidelines. Moreover, an appeals process should exist for those sentences.

“At least it’s my impression is that our guidelines have little teeth, are weakly being followed and don’t carry the weight that they should,” he said. “And so to me, either we need to abolish the sentencing guidelines and say we’re not going to have those, or give them some real meaning and teeth. Because that’s the way you correct the system in the beginning and to eliminate some of the disparities that we see in our sentences.”

He cited four cases in describing that disparity. In one case, a first-time drug offender caught with booby traps was given six years’ probation, a second-time offender was given six years, and a third-time drug offender was given 135 years.

“I think we’re escalating at the wrong level. We need to have an escalation, but wherever you wind up with 135 years for somebody with drug offenses, you can have an addiction problem and wind up with 135 years,” Hutchinson said.

A fourth case involved a person who was sentenced to 80 years for writing $18,000 in hot checks. “The judge got mad at him,” Hutchinson said.

Hutchinson later said to reporters that the practice of ignoring sentencing guidelines is a contributing factor to the state’s growing prison population. Andy Barbee with the Council of State Governments Justice Center told task force members that, with 18,813 inmates, the state’s prison population has grown by almost 4,000 since 2013, when the population was 14,825.

However, Ken Casady, a Saline County-area prosecuting attorney and a member of the task force, said afterwards that in his experience, most sentences that are issued outside of the guidelines are for less, not more, than the recommendation. He said judges who deviate upwards already complete a departure report.

Hutchinson said criminal justice reforms will be made in the 2017 regular session rather than in a special session beforehand.