Indeterminate sentence

“ For murder there is a statutory presumption that a life sentence will be imposed. The isolated fact that a murderer has pleaded guilty will not by itself be sufficient to disturb the imposition of that indeterminate sentence. It has been submitted that the only meaningful way of recognising your guilty pleas is for the Court to step back from the imposition of a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. ”

“ The indeterminate sentence says to him: "You are imprisoned because your violation of the law has proven that you were unworthy of being free. You must remain in prison until your character is modified. When it will have changed and when you have proven that you have become again worthy to be free you will recover your liberty." No Judge can in advance tell at what time the prisoner should be rendered to liberty. This knowledge can only be possessed by those who have the opportunity of putting the individual to proof and of judging of his conduct in various circumstances. ”

“ It puts that class beyond the power of continuing its depredations upon society. It is truly deterrent, because it is a notification to any one intending to enter upon that method of living that his career ends with his first felony. As to the general effects of the indeterminate sentence, I will repeat here what I recently wrote for the Yale Law Journal:
It is unnecessary to say in a law journal that the indeterminate sentence is a measure as yet untried. ”

“ It is from this law that the public notion of an indeterminate sentence is derived. It is, in fact, determinate, because the statute prescribes its limit. The introduction of the ticket-of-leave and the parole systems, and the earning of time by good behavior were philanthropic suggestions and promising experiments which have not been justified by the results. It is not necessary at this time to argue that no human discretion is adequate to mete out just punishment for crimes ”

“ Coupled with the parole law, the operation of the indeterminate sentence law promises much. It marks a great innovation. Naturally it must work its way slowly and must demonstrate its true worth to the community by years of experimentation. ”

“ It is only in the case of hardened offenders or of those guilty of certain major offenses that a minimum sentence is imposed.
For more than a generation prison reformers have urged the extension of the pure indeterminate sentence to this class of offenders also. Their logic is sound; it is the facts that are against them. ”

“ If the indeterminate sentence act is construed to confer such power upon the board without notice to the convict, then said act is in of the state, which prohibits cruel and of the state, which prohibits curel and unusual punishment or the taking of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, and against the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. ”

“ It is only in the ordinary prison where the parole is in use with no adequate discipline, and without the indefinite sentence, that deception can be practiced. But suppose a man does play the hypocrite so as to deceive the officers, who know him as well as any employer knows his workmen or any teacher knows his scholars, and deceives the independent board so as to get a parole. If he violates that parole, he can be remanded to the reformatory, and it will be exceedingly difficult for him to get another parole. ”

“ To take a decadent human being, a wreck physically and morally, and try to make a man of him, that is an attempt worthy of a people who claim to be civilized. An illustration of what can be done in this direction is furnished by the Elmira Reformatory, where the experiment is being made with most encouraging results, which, of course, would be still better if the indeterminate sentence were brought to its aid. ”

“ This is not to imply that I accept all of the Court of Appeals' conclusions regarding the limitations upon the States' power to detain persons who commit crimes. For example, the notion that confinement must be "for a fixed term" is difficult to square with the widespread practice of indeterminate sentencing, at least where the upper limit is a life sentence.↑ . Even advocates of a right to treatment have criticized the quid pro quo theory on this ground. E.g., Developments in the Law--Civil Commitment of the Mentally Ill, 87 Harv. ”

“ Those guilty of different degrees of criminality should be placed in different institutions and given entirely different treatment. The sentence should in all cases be what is called indeterminate—that is, no one should be sentenced for any given time. ”

“ Public justice must, therefore, be defeated, as all will agree, if the error cannot be corrected that the prisoner would be entitled to a discharge on habeas corpus, as every sentence in a criminal case is an entirety, so that if any part of it is unauthorized by law the whole sentence is illegal. ”

“ Those courts have expressed their belief that, even where the punishment imposed upon a defendant is entirely within the limits prescribed for the crime of which he was convicted, a sentence imposed in a prohibited manner-as, for example, a sentence imposed upon an absent defendant in violation of the command of Rule 43 that a defendant be present at sentencing [3] -is an 'illegal sentence' subject to correction under Rule 35. ”

“ That an erroneous sentence, when vacated and set aside during the same term by the judge who pronounced it, becomes void and of no effect, and that the prisoner, if duly convicted under a valid indictment, may be sentenced to such punishment as the law provides for the offence of which he is convicted just as if the erroneous sentence had never been pronounced. ”

“ Errors even in the administration of criminal law will occur, and the ends of justice imperatively require that when they do occur there shall be some appropriate mode for their correction without discharging a prisoner legally convicted, as it cannot be admitted that an error of the court in passing the sentence of the law can have the effect to expiate the offence of the prisoner or to condone the criminal act of the offender. ”

“ For completeness, I record that if I am wrong to sentence you on the basis that the Court retains a residual discretion to decide whether to impose a life sentence without parole, despite having concluded that no minimum term of imprisonment would be sufficient to hold you to account for the harm you have done, or to denounce your conduct, a whole-of-life sentence would have to follow in any event. ”

“ The Court's holding certainly finds no support in the language of Rule 35. That Rule, although painstakingly drawn by lawyers and approved both by Judges and by the Congress, simply provides for the correction of an 'illegal sentence' without regard to the reasons why that sentence is illegal and contains not a single word to support the Court's conclusion that only a sentence illegal by reason of the punishment it imposes is 'illegal' within the meaning of the Rule. ”

“ In a society that values the presumption of innocence and demands resolution of all reasonable doubt before stripping its members of liberty or life, the decision to leave undisturbed a sentence of death that could be constitutionally infirm is intolerable.
Contrary to the majority's intimation that the legal standard is "less than clear from our cases," see ante, at 378, we have firmly adhered to a strict standard in our review of challenged jury instructions. ”

“ As I understand the law, it is the duty of the court, unless application be made for a new trial, or a motion in arrest of judgment be made for some defect in the indictment, to pronounce judgment upon every prisoner convicted of crime by a jury, who pleads guilty. An indefinite suspension of the sentence prescribed by law is a quasi pardon, provided the prisoner be discharged from imprisonment. No court in the state has any pardoning power. ”

“ Yet the reader should not infer that definitions and grades of crime capable of corresponding punishments are not proper, desirable, and necessary. Of course they are. The practical use of such statutes is to fix a maximum sentence of punishment. As a rule the minimum is anything the judge sees fit. Hence you may deduce a general principle to the effect that the charge against the prisoner, even assuming his guilt, indicates nothing definite as to his moral turpitude, danger to the community, or general undesirability. ”

“ As our decision in Williams v. New York demonstrates, however, that statement does not accurately describe the reality of discretionary sentencing conducted by judges. A defendant's actual punishment can be affected in a very real way by facts never alleged in an indictment, never presented to a jury, and never proved beyond a reasonable doubt. In Williams' case, facts presented for the first time to the judge, for purposes of sentencing alone, made the difference between life imprisonment and a death sentence. ”

“ Rule 35 applies to any 'illegal sentence,' not to any illegal conviction, and thus by its terms the Rule protects only those rights which a defendant retains even if the judgment of guilt against him is proper. ”

“ Let us now turn to the other and no less important function of the judge,—the imposition of sentence. It is a platitude that the chief failing of modern criminal justice is the inequality of punishment. It may well be and often is the case that in one branch of the General Sessions a prisoner is being released upon "parole" under a "suspended" sentence at the precise moment that some other and no more guilty defendant in another branch of the same court is being sentenced to prison for three, five or even ten years at hard labor. ”

“ Prisoners who misconduct themselves, are liable to be punished in a variety of ways;—by the infliction of corporal chastisement, by being sentenced to an irongang, to a penal settlement, or by an addition to their original sentence. A single magistrate cannot order a prisoner to receive more than fifty lashes ”

“ That the right to refuse to impose a sentence fixed by statute, or to refuse to execute such a sentence when imposed, is a discretion inhering in the judicial power to try and punish violations of the criminal law. 2. That even if there be doubt on this subject as an original proposition, such doubt is dispelled as the right was recognized and frequently exerted at common law. 3. That the power claimed has also been recognized by decisions of state courts and of United States courts of original jurisdiction to such an extent that the doctrine is now to be considered as not open to controversy. ”

“ Stephens, 462 U.S. 862, 877, 103 S.Ct. 2733, 2742, 77 L.Ed.2d 235 (1983) (" [A] n aggravating circumstance must genuinely narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty and must reasonably justify the imposition of a more severe sentence on the defendant compared to others found guilty of murder") (footnote omitted) ”

“ In addition, the petition poses a second question of profound constitutional significance: whether a defendant's waiver of his right to a jury in a capital sentencing proceeding is voluntary, knowing, and intelligent when no evidence indicates that he was aware of a state statute requiring the court to impose a life sentence if the sentencing jury failed to reach a unanimous decision. ”

“ Second, and related, one of the chief errors of Almendarez-Torres—an error to which I succumbed—was to attempt to discern whether a particular fact is traditionally (or typically) a basis for a sentencing court to increase an offender's sentence. ”

“ Bad men, like good men, are entitled to be tried and sentenced in accordance with law, and when it is shown to us that a person is serving an illegal sentence our obligation is to direct that proper steps be taken to correct the wrong done, without regard to the character of a particular defendant or to the possible effect on others who might also want to challenge the legality of their sentences as they have the right to do 'at any time' under Rule 35. ”

“ But it has been widely accepted that mandatory sentences for [p403] crimes do not best serve the ends of the criminal justice system. Now, after the long process of drawing away from the blind imposition of uniform sentences for every person convicted of a particular offense, we are confronted with an argument perhaps implying that only the legislatures may determine that a sentence of death is appropriate, without the intervening evaluation of jurors or judges. ”

“ Moreover, if the jurists agree in allowing conditional liberation, before the term assigned in the sentence, when the prisoner seems to have given proof of amendment, the natural consequence, by mere abstract logic, ought to be a prolongation of punishment for the prisoner who is not amended, but continues to be dangerous. ”

“ If the prisoner was guilty of murder, there was no justification for yielding to the popular demand. If, on the other hand, there was “a reasonable doubt” as to whether the man died from the effects of arsenic, she ought to have been set at liberty. But to commute the sentence for the reason given was to convict the prisoner of attempted murder, a charge upon which she had never been tried, and for which, if found guilty, she would not have received penal servitude for life. ”