“At Sentencing, Youth Bares Soul, and Judge Bares His Pain”

The title of this post is the title of this interesting article in today’s New York Times.  Here is how it begins:

Justice Thomas Farber’s dilemma in a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday played itself out like a dramatic monologue. How much misery was appropriate to inflict on a promising 19-year-old, who himself had inflicted misery on society by dealing drugs, the judge asked himself out loud. “It’s almost an impossible calculus,” said Justice Farber, who sits in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

The young man, Yiskar Caceres, had been arrested four times in roughly 15 months for selling or possessing cocaine, and Justice Farber already had given him an opportunity to wipe his slate clean before his most recent arrest, in April.

Now, Justice Farber said, he had no choice but to sentence Mr. Caceres to state prison.  But even in doing so, the judge showed some compassion: he gave Mr. Caceres four and a half years in prison, half the maximum sentence that prosecutors had sought.  Because Mr. Caceres has already served 11 months and will be eligible for a drug-treatment program, he could be out in as little as two years.