Wednesday, January 14, 2009

A view from the other side

Last week a defendant here was sentenced to 60 years to life for a truly ugly crime: he broke into a house and raped an 11 year old girl at knifepoint in her own bed. Some excellent police work and he wonders of DNA testing, along with a brave little girl who remembered what he looked like, nailed him for it. This state doesn't do parole as such; the sentence you get is the sentence you serve, less good time which is minimal to none in a case of this type. The "to life" provision is a workaround of the problems with the sex offender civil commitment statute; after he serves the minimum, whether he ever gets released is discretionary with DOC. The conventional wisdom among defense lawyers is that DOC will never release anyone serving that type of sentence.

It's probably academic anyway; given the average inmate's attitude toward sex crimes against children he's not going to survive the initial sentence. I recall getting a panicked call from the mother of a guy I represented who was doing some prison time for drug offenses; he was being told by the other guys on his cell block to show them the legal documents from his case proving that he was there for drugs, because if he was there for a sex crime against a child he was going to get seriously hurt. Actually, lawyers are regularly asked for fake documents by clients who are going up for sex crimes precisely to avoid that scenario; no one I know will do it.

The thing here is that I knew the girl's parents; I worked with her father on occasion, thought the world of him, and attended his funeral a few months before the rape. As much as I try to have some professional sympathy, I can't help feeling satisfaction at this SOB's predicament. I guess it's hard to maintain the professional detachment when the crime's against someone you know.