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"I Live to Put People in Jail": Here Are Trump's Nominees for the US Sentencing Commission
“I Live to Put People in Jail”: Here Are Trump’s Nominees for the US Sentencing Commission
Two of the four names put forward by Trump are known for their tough-on-crime approach to criminal justice.
SAMANTHA MICHAELS MAR. 1, 2018 4:46 PM
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced four nominees to serve on the US Sentencing Commission, a bipartisan agency that creates sentencing guidelines for federal courts and is tasked with reducing sentencing disparities.
Two of the nominees have reputations for being tough on crime, including Georgetown University law professor Bill Otis, a former federal prosecutor who is a staunch supporter of mandatory minimum sentences and has criticized the commission’s guidelines for not being binding. “Our whole sentencing system that started in the Reagan-Bush era, the system of guidelines and mandatory minimums, has been a big success,” he told NPR last year after Attorney General Jeff Sessions urged federal prosecutors to seek the toughest punishments possible for their cases. “If one judges the success of the criminal justice system by the crime rate rather than the incarceration rate, under the system we’ve had and that Jeff Sessions is now restoring, there has been a tremendous fall-off in crime.”
In 2011, Otis told a House subcommittee that he believed the Sentencing Commission should be abolished, arguing that it became toothless after the Supreme Court in 2005 ruled that its sentencing guidelines should be advisory and not mandatory. “Fifteen years ago, the Commission was the 900-pound gorilla of sentencing law. It wrote binding rules, which courts followed more than seventy percent of the time, at an annual cost of roughly $8.8 million,” he testified. “Today, the Commission is an overfed lemur. It writes sentencing suggestion, which courts follow fifty-three percent of the time, at roughly twice the annual cost ($16.2 million).”
The second tough-on-crime nominee is Henry E. Hudson, a US district judge for the Eastern District of Virginia. Earlier in his career, as a prosecutor, Hudson stood by his decision to prosecute a mentally impaired man for the rape and murder of a woman in Arlington and then refused to apologize after the man served five years in prison and was exonerated by DNA evidence. He once declared, “I live to put people in jail” and was given the nickname “Hang ‘Em High” Henry.
Two of the four names put forward by Trump are known for their tough-on-crime approach to criminal justice.
SAMANTHA MICHAELS MAR. 1, 2018 4:46 PM
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced four nominees to serve on the US Sentencing Commission, a bipartisan agency that creates sentencing guidelines for federal courts and is tasked with reducing sentencing disparities.
Two of the nominees have reputations for being tough on crime, including Georgetown University law professor Bill Otis, a former federal prosecutor who is a staunch supporter of mandatory minimum sentences and has criticized the commission’s guidelines for not being binding. “Our whole sentencing system that started in the Reagan-Bush era, the system of guidelines and mandatory minimums, has been a big success,” he told NPR last year after Attorney General Jeff Sessions urged federal prosecutors to seek the toughest punishments possible for their cases. “If one judges the success of the criminal justice system by the crime rate rather than the incarceration rate, under the system we’ve had and that Jeff Sessions is now restoring, there has been a tremendous fall-off in crime.”
In 2011, Otis told a House subcommittee that he believed the Sentencing Commission should be abolished, arguing that it became toothless after the Supreme Court in 2005 ruled that its sentencing guidelines should be advisory and not mandatory. “Fifteen years ago, the Commission was the 900-pound gorilla of sentencing law. It wrote binding rules, which courts followed more than seventy percent of the time, at an annual cost of roughly $8.8 million,” he testified. “Today, the Commission is an overfed lemur. It writes sentencing suggestion, which courts follow fifty-three percent of the time, at roughly twice the annual cost ($16.2 million).”
The second tough-on-crime nominee is Henry E. Hudson, a US district judge for the Eastern District of Virginia. Earlier in his career, as a prosecutor, Hudson stood by his decision to prosecute a mentally impaired man for the rape and murder of a woman in Arlington and then refused to apologize after the man served five years in prison and was exonerated by DNA evidence. He once declared, “I live to put people in jail” and was given the nickname “Hang ‘Em High” Henry.
Oh, no; not Henry Hudson.
You’d be hard pressed to find a public intellectual who has been more wrong, wrong consistently that Bill Otis, the man Trump just nominated to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
Link to tweet
The Former Prosecutor Who Consistently Gets Criminal Justice Reform Wrong
Former prosecutor Bill Otis has been mistaken over and over again when advising legislators against reducing drug sentences.
Julie Stewart | Sep. 3, 2015 12:00 pm
No one expects our elected representatives to be experts in every area of public policy. At the same time, we have every right to expect that our representatives will consult policy analysts and experts who know what they're talking about, not someone who has been proven wrong time and time again. In the world of criminal justice, that someone is former federal prosecutor and Georgetown Law adjunct William Otis.
Over the past two decades, Bill Otis has become the Paul Ehrlich of criminal sentencing reform. He is always certain in his convictions and nearly always wrong. Moreover, like Ehrlich, Otis likes to scare the public with predictions of certain and impending doom, and he is immune to feelings of embarrassment or humiliation despite being proven spectacularly wrong over and over again.
For those too young to remember, Paul Ehrlich achieved fame in 1968 when he argued in his bestselling book, The Population Bomb, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate." Three years later, Ehrlich predicted England would not exist in 1980. Amazingly, he continues such talk today.
Former prosecutor Bill Otis has been mistaken over and over again when advising legislators against reducing drug sentences.
Julie Stewart | Sep. 3, 2015 12:00 pm
No one expects our elected representatives to be experts in every area of public policy. At the same time, we have every right to expect that our representatives will consult policy analysts and experts who know what they're talking about, not someone who has been proven wrong time and time again. In the world of criminal justice, that someone is former federal prosecutor and Georgetown Law adjunct William Otis.
Over the past two decades, Bill Otis has become the Paul Ehrlich of criminal sentencing reform. He is always certain in his convictions and nearly always wrong. Moreover, like Ehrlich, Otis likes to scare the public with predictions of certain and impending doom, and he is immune to feelings of embarrassment or humiliation despite being proven spectacularly wrong over and over again.
For those too young to remember, Paul Ehrlich achieved fame in 1968 when he argued in his bestselling book, The Population Bomb, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate." Three years later, Ehrlich predicted England would not exist in 1980. Amazingly, he continues such talk today.
Paul Ehrlich was on a sometime-in-the-'70s episode of "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" on TV last week. Every thing he said turned out to be wrong.
Retweeted by Radley Balko: https://twitter.com/radleybalko
That time Otis called for sterilizing a 10 year old sex offender (who almost certainly was a victim of sex assault as well) http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2013/10/how-should-the-law-federal-or-state-deal-with-a-10-year-old-serious-sex-offender.html …
And also this:
"His life is OVER. Might as well shoot his ass now and put him out of his future misery!"
Link to tweet
Dear God. There’s basically one person left in America who thinks our criminal justice system isn’t punitive enough. His name is Bill Otis. And Trump just nominated him to the US Sentencing Commission.
Link to tweet
Here’s a Slate profile of Otis. The man is a dinosaur. Trump just appointed him to position with critical influence over mass incarceration.
Link to tweet
CRIME
MURDER, THEFT, AND OTHER WICKEDNESS. JULY 29 2015 5:53 AM
Last Man Standing
Nothing can stop the bipartisan coalition pressing for criminal justice reform. Nothing, except maybe Bill Otis.
By Mark Obbie
This is the third installment in a series on victims of crime. Read Part 1 and Part 2.
On the second day of the Federalist Society’s annual National Lawyers Convention last fall, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey opened his segment of a panel discussion with a joke: “And now a word from the Luddite wing of the panel.” Mukasey was one of four criminal-justice experts on stage for what was billed as “a conversation among conservatives” about criminal justice reform. The subject was a draw for this crowd, considering how many leaders on the right now champion ideas that a short while ago would have been considered categorically liberal. Mukasey was included to bring symmetry to the panel: It was him and one other tough-on-crime traditionalist debating two advocates for reform.
When Mukasey took a crack at making the “Luddite” case, however, the strongest opposition he could muster to the flurry of pending reform measures was a plea to advance cautiously toward big cuts in imprisonment. That left it to his teammate, William Otis, to go it alone in defending the sentencing status quo. After a blunt opening volley—“Two facts about crime and sentencing dwarf everything else we’ve learned for the last 50 years: When we have more prison, we have less crime. And when we have less prison, we have more crime”—Otis continued as his side’s only resolute oarsman, pulling with all his might against the current.
It’s a role Otis has grown accustomed to. In congressional hearings, seminars, and news stories heralding the bipartisan reform movement and the practical inevitability of changes in federal law, Otis serves as the go-to voice for maintaining tough-on-crime sentencing.
Pundits, policy wonks, academics, and journalists seem in lockstep agreement that there really is no debate anymore about whether it’s time to pull back from the extremes that gave America its distinction as the world’s prison warden. As names like Meese, Gingrich, and Koch speak up on the other side of the divide, Otis seems increasingly isolated, the only man fighting a war that ended a long time ago.
MURDER, THEFT, AND OTHER WICKEDNESS. JULY 29 2015 5:53 AM
Last Man Standing
Nothing can stop the bipartisan coalition pressing for criminal justice reform. Nothing, except maybe Bill Otis.
By Mark Obbie
This is the third installment in a series on victims of crime. Read Part 1 and Part 2.
On the second day of the Federalist Society’s annual National Lawyers Convention last fall, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey opened his segment of a panel discussion with a joke: “And now a word from the Luddite wing of the panel.” Mukasey was one of four criminal-justice experts on stage for what was billed as “a conversation among conservatives” about criminal justice reform. The subject was a draw for this crowd, considering how many leaders on the right now champion ideas that a short while ago would have been considered categorically liberal. Mukasey was included to bring symmetry to the panel: It was him and one other tough-on-crime traditionalist debating two advocates for reform.
When Mukasey took a crack at making the “Luddite” case, however, the strongest opposition he could muster to the flurry of pending reform measures was a plea to advance cautiously toward big cuts in imprisonment. That left it to his teammate, William Otis, to go it alone in defending the sentencing status quo. After a blunt opening volley—“Two facts about crime and sentencing dwarf everything else we’ve learned for the last 50 years: When we have more prison, we have less crime. And when we have less prison, we have more crime”—Otis continued as his side’s only resolute oarsman, pulling with all his might against the current.
It’s a role Otis has grown accustomed to. In congressional hearings, seminars, and news stories heralding the bipartisan reform movement and the practical inevitability of changes in federal law, Otis serves as the go-to voice for maintaining tough-on-crime sentencing.
Pundits, policy wonks, academics, and journalists seem in lockstep agreement that there really is no debate anymore about whether it’s time to pull back from the extremes that gave America its distinction as the world’s prison warden. As names like Meese, Gingrich, and Koch speak up on the other side of the divide, Otis seems increasingly isolated, the only man fighting a war that ended a long time ago.
