Second Chances Resource Library

The criminal legal system needs many reforms, but this Article will focus on capping maximum prison sentences at twenty years for adult offenders, at fifteen years for people up to age twenty-five, and shifting sentences for all other offenses proportionately downward.

Life without parole (LWOP) sentences are politically popular in the United States because, on their face, they claim to hold prisoners incarcerated until they die, with zero prospect of release via the regularized channel of parole. However, this view is procedurally shortsighted. After parole there is generally another remedial option for lessening or abrogating punishment: executive clemency via pardons and commutations. Increasingly, U.S. legal jurisdictions also provide for the possibility of compassionate release for lifers, usually granted by a parole board.

On paper, pardon, commutation, and compassionate release are thus direct challenges to the claim that an LWOP sentence will inevitably and invariably lead to the prisoner’s death while incarcerated. Few previous studies, however, have examined the finality of LWOP empirically. In this Article, I present original empirical data on clemency covering the period 1990–2021 in order to investigate the relationship between LWOP sentences and the release mechanisms of executive clemency and compassionate release in both state and federal cases.

Ultimately, the results of this research reaffirm the finality of LWOP in the United States, despite the availability, on paper, of at least three potential release procedures. Only a handful of LWOP prisoners have received commutation or pardon from U.S. presidents, state governors, or pardons boards. Compassionate release has been granted almost as rarely. That said, some demographics tend to have benefited more than others. The findings presented within this Article are relevant not only to domestic clemency and end-of-life release policy but also to litigation dealing with a “right to hope” as a component of human dignity, and to the academic debate over LWOP as a global replacement for the death penalty and a form of “extreme” punishment of its own accord.

Expanding Second Look Addresses the Ineffectiveness of Parole Systems

In this article, we offer the first scholarly assessment of a new practice emerging in many state criminal courts: prosecutor-initiated second look sentencing, also called resentencing. Attorneys working on resentencing matters consider the continuing integrity of a sentence imposed on a defendant years (or even decades) earlier, with an eye toward revising its terms. They assess numerous factors, such as whether the defendant still presents a public safety risk, whether the defendant has taken advantage of prison programming, and whether the original sentence now appears disproportionate due to a shift in community values. Second look sentencing thus offers great promise as a means to correct for the punishment excesses of the past.

But as we recount from our original interviews, there are some cracks beneath the surface. The defense and prosecutor roles in resentencing start from a structural power asymmetry that could weaken the spirit of cooperation that characterizes the early days of the practice. There are gaps (both real and perceived) between the lofty aspirations of prosecutorial rhetoric at the time of adoption and the more limited reality that emerges when prosecutors start making case-level decisions, subject to resource and political limits. Faced with this frustrating disconnect, some defenders return to their traditional adversarial role and refuse to enable or endorse what they see as programmatic failure. Left unchecked, these implementation roadblocks, combined with resource limits and political constraints, could delay the spread and blunt the effects of this innovative device.

This guide details Connecticut’s 53a-39 sentence modification process, and includes information on gathering and organizing the materials necessary to create the most compelling petition possible. It outlines the ways in which supporters can be most helpful to a person seeking a sentence modification and provides the information, templates, and official forms necessary to navigate the sentence modification process.

This article will explore the development of the inadequacy of medical care doctrine, from one judge’s decision to the Sentencing Commission including this factor as an enumerated ground for compassionate release in the sentencing guidelines. It will set the stage by reviewing the BOP’s history of inadequate medical care and history of neglecting compassionate release requests. This failure on the part of BOP led to the dramatic changes in the First Step Act which opened the door
for more compassionate release litigation. The article will then discuss how COVID changed everything and taught judges about the use of compassionate release as a lifeline for medically vulnerable people. It will then present and analyze some recent litigation that has raised issues of inadequate medical care. Finally, the article will end in the present—reflecting on the current, 2023, sentencing guidelines which include a ground for compassionate release based on inadequate medical care.

This Article argues that “Second Look” legislation is unnecessary: the same authority should already exist, under current doctrine, in the Federal Due Process Clause and (or) its state analogues. Though the Supreme Court’s approach to incarceration is anomalous as compared with
other fundamental rights, the Court has made clear that substantive due process requires that criminal confinement satisfy rational basis scrutiny. In the context of civil confinement, that same due process right to bodily liberty applies throughout the duration of a detainee’s confinement. Logic, along with the Court’s discussions of actual innocence and substantive retroactivity, indicates that the same ongoing protection should apply in the context of criminal confinement.

Just as a sentence can be irrational from the moment of issuance (as with an actually innocent defendant), a sentence can also become irrational over time. And there can be no rational basis for continuing to imprison a person when the branch of government responsible for identifying such a basis expressly disclaims it. In other words, any prosecutor who recognizes a sentencing injustice should, at any point in time, be able to trigger second look resentencing—a conclusion that provides a previously unexplored doctrinal basis for what some federal courts informally call the “Holloway Doctrine.”

Furthermore, just because a prosecutor asserts a rational basis does not mean that there is one. Rational basis scrutiny is forgiving, but it is not altogether toothless, and it offers additional values to social movements—including forcing adverse parties to give reasons for their actions. Incarceration must be supported by one of the recognized purposes of punishment, and there are instances in which none of those purposes meets the test. Courts themselves, therefore, have due process authority to release prisoners whose sentences have come to be irrational, regardless of the prosecutor’s position. Finally, if the Court ever resolves its fundamental rights anomaly and subjects prison sentences to strict scrutiny, that scrutiny should apply with equal force to ongoing incarceration.

The New York State Justice Task Force provides recommendations for changes to the criminal justice system to improve its fairness and effectiveness for all New Yorkers. It includes representatives from all participants in the criminal justice system – including judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, members of law enforcement, legislators, executive branch officials, forensic experts, victim’s advocates, and legal scholars – from across the State.

In this report, the Task Force turns its attention to sentencing reform, specifically “Second Look” reforms that enable courts to review and reevaluate an incarcerated person’s sentence after the completion of the appellate process and after a period of time served to determine if the sentence is still necessary and in the interests of justice. After careful deliberation and study, the Task Force concluded overwhelmingly to endorse Second Look reform. In addition to supporting the concept of Second Look review, the Task Force endorsed 15 recommendations regarding the scope, elements, and process of a Second Look review, which are detailed in this report.