Suspended sentence

“ But the narrowness of the range of circumstances covered says nothing about the number of suspended-sentence cases covered. Misdemeanors punishable by less than six months’ imprisonment may be a narrow category, but it may well include the vast majority of cases in which (precisely because of the minor nature of the offense) a suspended sentence is imposed. There is simply nothing to support the Court’s belief that few offenders are prosecuted for crimes in which counsel is not already provided. ”

“ If there be none, a suspended sentence or a parole generally follows, for it is believed that with the majority better results are obtainable through fear under freedom than by discipline under restraint. ”

“ The special court-martial convening authority shall review the record produced by and the recommendation of the person who conducted the vacation proceeding, decide whether the probationer violated a condition of suspension, and, if so, decide whether to vacate the suspended sentence. If the officer exercising jurisdiction decides to vacate the suspended sentence, that officer shall prepare a written statement of the evidence relied on and the reasons for vacating the suspended sentence. ”

“ Conceived as a mere incident of the sentencing power, to be exercised only in exceptional cases, the suspended sentence and probation are beginning to disclose themselves as a momentous, not to say revolutionary step in the progress of penology, not less important in its ultimate consequences than the substitution a century ago of imprisonment for the death penalty and other forms of physical punishment. Like the older forms of punishment which it superseded, imprisonment too has proved a failure, so far at least, as the newer aim of punishment, the reformation of the wrong-doer is concerned. ”

“ If, during the probation period for suspension of sentence, a criminal whose sentence is suspended violates laws, administrative rules and regulations or regulations relating to supervision and control over suspension of sentence stipulated by the department of public security under the State Council and if the circumstances are serious, the suspension shall be revoked and the original punishment shall be executed. ”

“ An officer exercising special court-martial jurisdiction may vacate any suspended punishments other than an approved suspended bad-conduct discharge or any suspended portion of an approved sentence to confinement for one year, regardless of whether they are contained in the same sentence as the bad-conduct discharge or confinement for one year. ”

“ We conclude that it does not. A suspended sentence is a prison term imposed for the offense of conviction. Once the prison term is triggered, the defendant is incarcerated not for the probation violation, but for the underlying offense. The uncounseled conviction at that point “result [s] in imprisonment,” Nichols, 511 U.S., at 746; it “end [s] up in the actual deprivation of a person’s liberty,” Argersinger, 407 U.S., at 40. This is precisely what the Sixth Amendment, as interpreted in Argersinger and Scott, does not allow. ”

“ It is not possible here to do more than touch slightly on the various methods of dealing with occasional criminals. The one that approaches most nearly to imprisonment is the method of pronouncing suspended sentences of imprisonment to hang over the inculpated individual during a limited period, at the end of which period, if his behaviour is good, the sentence lapses. ”

“ When it is discovered that, before a person was granted a suspended execution of sentence for a crime, the person had been sentenced to imprisonment without work or a greater punishment for another crime before such grant. ”

“ A State could thus keep a person under continual threat of imprisonment without review by this Court of any constitutional objections to his convictions by a continued series of convictions and suspended sentences. ”

“ Section 5 Suspension of Sentence Article 72 A suspension of sentence may be granted to a criminal sentenced to criminal detention or to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years if, according to the circumstances of his crime and his demonstration of repentance, it is certain that suspension of the sentence will not result in further harm to society. ”

“ Such is the plain meaning and effect of the direction that upon the arrest of the probationer 'the court may revoke the probation or the suspension of sentence, and may impose any sentence which might originally have been imposed.' In other words, suspension whether of the sentence or of its execution leaves a trial court free to commit the criminal to prison if he fails to meet the test of freedom during the probationary period. ”

“ Where an offender is sentenced to life imprisonment for murder the Court must order the offender to serve a minimum period of imprisonment. [8] That term must not be less than 10 years and must be the minimum term the Court considers necessary to hold you accountable for the harm you have done, to denounce your conduct, to meet the needs of deterrence and to protect the community. [9] If no minimum term of imprisonment would be sufficient to satisfy any one of those sentencing purposes, the Act provides that I may order that you serve your sentence without parole. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When sentencing a person to deprivation of freedom or transfer to a disciplinary battalion, the court deducts pre-trial confinement time, one day of which is taken as equivalent to one day of sentence time. When sentencing a person to corrective labor, exile, or banishment, one day of confinement time is taken is equivalent to three days of sentence time. ”

“ 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 ”

“ None will dissent, we presume, from the remark of the inspectors, that “it should be remembered by all those who are intrusted with the high prerogative of administering punishment, that the convict in the prison is sentenced by the law to expiate his crime by confinement and hard labor, and that every degree of punishment beyond what is needful for the due execution of this sentence, and the attainment of the best ends to be answered by it, is excessive, is beyond the sentence and intention of the law, and is without law or justice.” ”

“ Upon a trial before the court sitting without a jury, he was found guilty and sentenced for certain of the contempts to imprisonment for six months in the House of Detention, and for other contempts for two years additional in the penitentiary. Upon his application and consent, the first part of the sentence was increased from six months in the House of Detention to a year and a day in the penitentiary, but to run concurrently with the two years' imprisonment. ”

“ In a very practical sense, a person in custody under several consecutive sentences is being 'held' under the combined sentences. And the legislative language is a natural, though not nicely precise, way of stating the purpose that the sentence for escape shall begin upon the expiration of the aggregate of the terms of imprisonment imposed by earlier sentences. ”

“ When a person who was sentenced a suspension of execution of sentence is sentenced to an imprisonment without prison labor or a heavier punishment due to a crime committed deliberately during the period of the suspension, and if the judgement thereof becomes final, the sentence of suspension of execution of sentence shall be nullified. ”

“ It is exactly such a commitment as the court makes to an asylum of a man who is proved to be insane, and it is paralleled by the practice of sending a sick man to the hospital until he is cured. The introduction of the indeterminate sentence into our criminal procedure would be a radical change in our criminal legislation and practice. The original conception was that the offender against the law should be punished, and that the punishment should be made to fit the crime, an 'opera bouffe' conception which has been abandoned in reasoning though not in practice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many of our states, however, are adopting the indeterminate sentence with provisions that the prisoner may be released on parole. There is a great difference in the attitude of the public towards the individual released and known by society as a discharged convict and the individual released on parole. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fifty-four years' confinement at hard labor, away from one's home and relatives, and thereby prevented from giving assistance to them or receiving comfort from them, is a punishment at the severity of which, considering the offenses, it is hard to believe that any man of right feeling and heart can refrain from shuddering. It is no matter that by cumulative offenses, for each of which imprisonment may be lawfully imposed for a short time, the period prescribed by the sentence was reached, the punishment was greatly beyond anything required by any humane law for the offenses. ”

“ A sentence simply of 'imprisonment,' in the case of a person convicted of an offense against the United States,-where the statute prescribing the punishment does not require that the accused shall be confined in a penitentiary,-cannot be executed by confinement in a penitentiary, except in cases in which the sentence is 'for a period longer than one year.' In neither of the cases against the accused was he sentenced to imprisonment for a period longer than one year. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the present day, there is no country in which sentences are altogether indeterminate. Even in the United States of America, where the indeterminate sentence prevails, a maximum term is specified for the prisoner’s detention. The greater this maximum, the more powerful will be the effect of the indeterminate sentence. ”

“ If objection is made to the indeterminate sentence on the ground that it is an unusual or cruel punishment, it may be admitted that it is unusual, but that commitment to detention cannot be called cruel when the convict is given the key to the house in which he is confined. ”

“ Thus, it is not allowed to impose a sentence of actual imprisonment on part of the punishment of restricting physical freedom and declare a suspension on the execution of the remaining part of the punishment. ”

“ On Tuesday the 7th of February, the prisoner was brought up to receive sentence, when the recorder addressed to him the following observations: “Let me implore you (said he) to bethink yourself of the awful situation in which you stand, on the brink of eternity and of the grave, beyond which there is no room for repentance. The legislature, in cases of murder, has, by a recent statute, interposed an increased interval between conviction and condemnation, and between condemnation and the final execution of the dreadful sentence of the law. ”

“ Let the criminal be throttled or beheaded in prison. His civil death has been pronounced publicly by the sentence of expulsion, and that sentence has killed him in the memory of all citizens. The citizens do not care what is done with the physical man after that sentence. ”

“ Unless a parole violator can be required to serve some time in prison in addition to that imposed for an offence committed while on parole, he not only escapes punishment for the unexpired portion of his original sentence, but the disciplinary power of the Board will be practically nullified. If the parole laws should be construed as respondent contends, parole might be more reluctantly granted, contrary to the broad humane purpose of Congress to grant relief from imprisonment to deserving prisoners. ”

“ While prisoners so sentenced may be paroled, the period of their probation is so limited that there is little opportunity to influence and train the man. ... "The Superintendent is satisfied that the indeterminate has many advantages over the definite sentence, but its full benefit cannot be had under the law as it now stands and is applied. It should be amended so as to provide for longer parole periods and for minimum sentences never exceeding the maximum penalty for the crime of which the prisoner is convicted less the commutation allowed on definite sentences." ”