Two days after Leonard Pitts wrote still another column on the injustices of harsh prison sentences, a New Jersey judge showed him how lenient sentences can also be unjust.
Dharun Ravi received 30 days in jail for 15 counts related to using a webcam to spy on his gay college roommate being intimate with a man. The roommate, Tyler Clementi, committed suicide.
It’s not a stretch to imagine that many of the people outraged about Ravi’s light punishment are often the same people who think minimum-mandatory sentences are cruel.
As for Pitts, he has a history of being sympathetic to convicted felons, which is certainly his right (and perhaps the expectation of his employer). But he appears to be running out of fresh arguments because twice in the past couple of weeks he has invoked a worn-out urban myth: the pizza-man.
“We got tough on Jerry DeWayne Williams, a small-time criminal who stole a slice of pizza from a group of children. He got 25 years,” Pitts wrote.
Williams was no small-time criminal. He had five prior felony convictions when he was arrested for the pizza theft. Unfortunately for him, Californians – tired of habitual criminals and apathetic judges – a year earlier had approved a law that generally required a sentence of 25 years to life for offenders who had at least two prior violent felonies.
In March 1995, Williams received a sentence of 25 years, but he actually served less than five. (The media err when they say judges lose all discretion in minimum mandatory laws like California’s three-strikes law or Oregon’s Measure 11. Depends on the judge, depends on the attorney, depends on the defendant, depends on the priors, depends on the crime. As Jennifer Walsh, a criminal justice professor at California State University, Los Angeles, has noted: California’s strike zone is generous.)
Williams was released in October 1999 and – knowing how much was on the line – he tried to behave himself. His mom even noticed that he wasn’t the carefree son he used to be. (Working an ordinary, low-paying job will do that to a person.)
He held on until September 2003 when, according to the L.A. Times, his girlfriend called 911. Police arrived and found Williams moving out after a fight and demanding $150 he had given her toward the bills.
“As the officer looked on, Williams told his girlfriend: ‘I’m going to put a bullet in your ass if I don’t get my money.’”
Williams was arrested on suspicion of making a criminal threat – a felony. However, prosecutors allowed him to plead no contest to a misdemeanor, and he served 17 days in jail.
Three strikes and you’re not out – but wiser. Williams described in the L.A. Times his efforts to stay out of trouble. Because of the three-strikes law, he finally understood the multiple second chances he had been given.
Too bad Mr. Pitts doesn’t.
Two weeks earlier, he also invoked the pizza man in a column about a prison inmate named Russell.
Pitts met Russell in a medium-security correctional facility while talking to a group of inmates about the need to get an education if they wanted to find a job.
“It was toward the end that Russell asked a question whose exact wording I can’t recall, but whose gist was a simple challenge: What are you going to do to help me when I get out?” Pitts wrote. “He meant me, personally. And he meant you, personally.”
Sorry, Mr. Pitts, but I believe he meant you.
I have educated friends with no criminal records who are underemployed or unemployed. If I can’t help them, how am I going to help Russell?
No, I think a nationally-known, syndicated columnist with a lot of connections, holds the solution to finding Russell a job when he gets out of prison.
Pitts didn’t volunteer himself for the task. Instead, he veered off into more comfortable territory – attacking America’s criminal justice system for locking up guys like Russell (whose crime is never revealed by Pitts).
And he repeated a tired statistic that means nothing standing by itself: “The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but about 25 percent of its prisoners,” Pitts wrote.
Of course, his next sentence picked up the mantra of Sen. James Webb (D-Virginia): “Either Americans are much more crime prone than, say, the Japanese or the British or this (prison) ‘reform’ is insane.”
It isn’t that Americans are more crime prone; it’s that we have more freedoms and more opportunities for crime. Plus, we have drugs, and we have criminals who ignore our extensive gun laws – and are often not severely punished for doing so. (Being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm may only get you a year in jail.)
Thus, we have more crime. A lot of that crime goes unsolved and, consequently, unpunished. Crime pays. I’d be curious to know how many crimes Russell got away with before he was caught. Only he knows, and he may have lost count.
I bet Pitts didn’t even consider asking that question. He was too busy being a mouthpiece for Russell, even suggesting we had better help – or else.
“Maybe you find Russell’s question impertinent. … What are we going to do to help him when he gets out? It would be good if we had an answer for him. We might not like the answer he finds for himself.”
Well, well. Russell might not like what he finds.
Should he get out of prison and move to Portland, Ore., and should he find himself in the mood for a little breaking-and-entering, here’s what he will find if he comes to my place:
In the bedroom, on the chest of drawers, is a small jewelry box. Open it, and inside is a receipt from the Spokane (Wash.) Police Department for case number 07-138***.
Attached to the receipt is my note: “Attention Burglars: I have already been robbed.”
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
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