Can procedural injustice produce substantive justice?

An interesting state sentencing case reported in this article from Utah highlights the uncertain relationship between procedural and substantive sentencing justice.  Here are the basics:

Authorities are investigating whether a controversial Utah judge secretly knocked 10 years off a sex offender’s prison sentence.  Third District Judge Leslie Lewis allegedly had an ex parte (one side only) conversation with a defense attorney and subsequently reduced his client’s sentence by 10 years without consulting prosecutors….

Defense attorney Roger Kraft said it all began with a bad day he had in Lewis’ courtroom on Feb. 10.  Kraft was before Lewis for the sentencing of his client, 46-year-old James Robert Scott, who had pleaded guilty to three counts of sodomy on a child…. Lewis ordered Scott — who had sexually abused a 7-year-old girl — to serve 30 years to life in prison by running three 10-to-life terms consecutively.  Prosecutors had asked for 30 years to life, but a pre-sentence report recommended 15 to life.

Back at his office after the sentencing, Kraft penned a letter to Lewis to vent his frustration.  “It is my job to argue BEFORE the court and not WITH the court,” Kraft wrote.  A month later, on March 15, Kraft got a phone call from Lewis, who offered an apology.  “She said she went back and watched the video [of the hearing] and said I was 90 percent correct in my letter,” Kraft said.  Kraft said his letter did not ask Lewis to reduce Scott’s sentence.  But during their phone conversation, Kraft said he told the judge, “I’m hoping our [courtroom] banter didn’t cost my client an additional five or 10 years.”  After Kraft reminded her of the stiff sentence, Lewis said, “If I still have jurisdiction, I’m going to change that,” according to Kraft. 

Offering to reduce Scott’s sentence by 10 years, Lewis promised to send Kraft documentation of the change, he said.  Then Lewis said something that turned Kraft’s pleasure to discomfort. ”She said, ‘I would appreciate it if you don’t discuss this with the prosecutor,’ ” Kraft recalled.  ”She said it at least two, and maybe three, times.”…

The article continues to explain that Judge Lewis doctored the docket in order to change the defendant’s sentence to 20 years’ imprisonment without telling anyone, and that the defense attorney reported the change when he found out about it months later.

There are many interesting facets of this case, including the fact that Judge Lewis has gotten in trouble for other courtroom behavior and is facing a retention election.  What may get lost in the commotion, however, is that even the reduced sentence of 20 years was five years longer than what the pre-sentence report recommended.  Though there seems to have been lots of procedural injustice in this case, was substantive justice perhaps ultimately served?