I sent plenty of people to prison during my career as a judge. Now I’m working to get one man out, and not because I think he’s innocent.
I participated in hundreds of sentencing hearings in my 44-year career as a prosecutor and as a judge.
Most of the sentences imposed were within the range I thought reasonable given the crime committed and the defendant’s background.
Occasionally, the law mandated an excessive sentence, which I had to impose.
By far the most egregious example of an excessive mandated sentence that I was ever required to impose came in 2007. The defendant, Carl Ray Buske, was a 47-year-old aviation mechanic with no criminal record other than a 15-year-old conviction for drug possession.
His offense: the possession of 29 printed images of child pornography.
I was required to sentence him to 290 years
Buske did not create the images, sell them or even share the images with anyone.
Yet Arizona law required that his sentence be not less than 10 years for each image, with each sentence to be consecutive to the others — that is, one stacked on top of the other — for a total of 290 years in prison.
Like most people, I abhor child pornography. The possession of such images should be illegal and severely punished.
However, one of the guiding principles of our criminal justice system is that the punishment should be proportionate to and commensurate with the crime.
A sentence of 290 years in prison (a life sentence, in effect) for this conduct is not only disproportionate, it’s unconscionable.
No, it shouldn’t be punished this severely. In Germany the worst punishment anyone could possibly get for this offense is 5 years in prison. America has entered an era of fascism, and this is proof.