I guess Jim Carrey’s Cable Guy would have gotten an life sentence
Taking an unfortunate frame from the 1996 movie The Cable Guy, Brian Lemke met a woman while working as a serviceman in her home, pursued her, and eventually left threatening telephone messages for her. Indicted for violating 18 U.S.C. § 875(c), which prohibits transmitting threatening communications in interstate commerce, Lemke was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 24 months’ imprisonment. He now appeals only his sentence, which he complains is unreasonable and excessive….
Lemke was charged with two counts of knowingly transmitting in interstate commerce a communication containing a threat to injure the person of another, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 875(c). He was convicted of both counts following a jury trial. The district court set the offense level at 20 with a criminal history category of I for a sentencing range of 33 to 41 months. It then exercised its discretion to choose a below-guidelines sentence, and imposed a term of 24 months’ imprisonment. Lemke thinks that the sentence should have been lower yet, and so he has brought this appeal….
Lemke has placed all of his cards on his argument that his 24-month sentence is substantively unreasonable. He insists that he was provoked … to send a threatening message, but that he would never do such a thing again. He asserts that probation would be a sufficiently humiliating punishment because he is an upstanding citizen in his community. The problem is that these points at best suggest that the district court might also have selected a lesser sentence; they say nothing about whether the sentence the court imposed is unreasonable. From the standpoint of the appellate court, the actual sentence is entitled to a presumption of reasonableness, and so it was Lemke’s difficult burden to point to some reason to think that this sentence was entirely out of bounds. For what it is worth, we find it, if anything, to be lenient; it is certainly not unreasonably high. The government reminds us that Lemke’s actions were “disturbing and frightening,” particularly because he continued to scare his victims even after being warned by the FBI; investigators found maps of his victims’ locations in Lemke’s house; and he resisted arrest. The district court considered these arguments and gave Lemke a below- guidelines sentence.
I have left out the offense details from this excerpt, and the specifics of how Brian Lemke stalked and threatened multiple persons readily explains why the Seventh Circuit reached the conclusion that he was ultimately lucky to get a judge who decided a two-year federal prison term was sufficient. And yet, I still come away from this case troubled that the social response to this troubled fellow is two years in the federal pen rather than some intense therapy and close supervision in the community.
Like the Cable Guy, it would seems that Brian Lemke is a disturbed individual who may in fact be a real risk to at some point be violent to others. But I have no real confidence that sending him to the federal pen for the next few years is going to reduce the risk that he ultimately snaps and does something horrific. Indeed, I fear his incarceration could ultimately increase his likelihood of recidivism. And, most critically, I think we all should be troubled that the federal sentencing system, while it has created elaborate set of opaque guidelines designed to help a district judge decide how to sentence Brian Lemke, has no formal or even informal mechanism to examine critically just what this offender’s risk profile looks like and what kind of criminal justice response would have the best chance to reduce the risk of future threats or violence by him.