Booker meets Roper and the rehabilitation of rehabilitation

The fascinating Booker work being done in the district courts merits as much attention as the Supreme Court’s work in Shepard (basics summarized here, commentary here and here) and the steady stream of circuit dispositions (discussed and linked here).  I see on-line this morning two remarkable district court rulings, each of which provides intriguing justifications for refusing to follow the federal guidelines’ severe career offender enhancements.

In US v. Naylor, 2005 WL 525409 (W.D. Va. Mar. 07, 2005) (also available here), Chief US District Judge James Jones discusses and quotes from the Supreme Court’s recent Roper decision to discount the defendant’s prior convictions for robberies committed as a juvenile.  In a thoughtful ruling (which echoes points I made here about Roper‘s possible impact on non-capital sentencing), Judge Jones carefully explains in Naylor why only legal technicalities suggest the application of the career offender enhancements and thus “a reasonable sentence for Naylor is 120 months imprisonment, within the sentencing range had he not been determined to be a career offender.”

In US v. Carvajal, 2005 WL 476125 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 22, 2005), Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein explains, when imposing a 14-year sentence, his rationale for “departures from the strictures of Career Offender punishments that I considered not entirely applicable to Carvajal’s offenses and criminal history.”  Judge Hellerstein carefully explains that career offender enhancements would raise the defendant’s sentence from a range of 63 to 78 months to a range of 262 to 327 months.  He then decides that neither range is appropriate in light of 3553(a) and Booker‘s instructions:

In my opinion, a 168 month (14-year) term of custodial punishment of 168 month would be just punishment.  Joseph Carvajal is 34 years old, and will be 48 years old when he emerges from prison (or 15% less if he wins reductions for good behavior).

Rehabilitation is also a goal of punishment.  18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(D).  That goal cannot be served if a defendant can look forward to nothing beyond imprisonment.  Hope is the necessary condition of mankind, for we are all created in the image of God.  A judge should be hesitant before sentencing so severely that he destroys all hope and takes away all possibility of useful life.  Punishment should not be more severe than that necessary to satisfy the goals of punishment.