Today was the sentencing of Cesar Sayoc, the Trump supporter who sent pipe bombs to prominent Democrats and several media outlets in the fall of 2018. He was tried in federal court in Manhattan, in front of Judge Jed Rakoff. He got 20 years.
If you’re not enmeshed the criminal court system, sentencing is a whole separate phase of a case that happens after trial. It is decided by the judge rather than the jury, and often takes place months after the trial itself. In federal court, each side will generally write a sentencing memo, laying out an argument for why the judge should stick to, or deviate from, the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.
For the defense, the sentencing memo can be even more important than the trial itself. At trial, both sides are more or less forced to stick to the facts relevant to the criminal incident. At sentencing, a person’s entire person and history can come into the picture. Good mitigation can be the difference between life and death, or between a person dying in jail or having a shot at living on the other side.
In this case, Judge Rakoff made the somewhat unusual decision to publish his sentencing decision, rather than just make it orally. Judges are required to give their reasons for sentencing, but not to write them down. Oral decisions are technically available by ordering court transcripts, but they aren’t on the major legal databases and thus aren’t really searchable. Rakoff—building off the Forbes article of an ex-law clerk—spends the first part of his opinion arguing that the lack of written sentencing decisions does a disservice to criminal law, by keeping the sentencing portion of it from developing more fully.
I think he’s probably right, although I’m somewhat ambivalent about his reasoning. I am more interested in the idea that there should be some public accountability in sentencing. I am unsure that it would actually make sentencing less draconian, but it would at least be a public record of the small decisions made day-to-day by individual judges and prosecutors that, in aggregate, equal mass incarceration. It would also make the reasoning behind those decisions more transparent.
Judge Rakoff’s sentencing opinion contrasts Sayoc’s crimes, sending 16 pipe bombs to a combination of public places and private homes, with his lived reality: learning disabilities, childhood sexual abuse, abandonment, isolation, and drug use (in this case, steroids). (p. 4)
It also finds, most interestingly, that Sayoc never actually intended any of the bombs he made to explode. There was an “outside risk” they might, but the bombs were on timers that were not actually set to go off, and the wiring systems were “inoperable.” (p. 7-8)
The government argued that Sayoc was just bad at making pipe bombs. But Rakoff is persuaded by the evidence that Sayoc knew how to make a bomb, and made a conscious choice to make the ones he sent nonfunctioning. In other words, his was an act of psychological terrorism, but without real intent to do physical harm.
With this picture in mind, Rakoff ignores the defense’s proposed 10 year sentence, as well as the Government’s proposed “life” sentence, giving Sayoc 20 years. Sayoc is 57, so he will be in his mid 70s when released. Rakoff concludes by saying, “[n]o one can pretend this is not, in real terms, substantial punishment; but, in the Court’s view, it is no more, and no less, than he deserves.” (p. 9)
This is where judges kind of lose me. In sentencing, time can get thrown around by the decade, as if time ceases to matter in a linear fashion behind prison walls. For all the hand waving at leniency and not giving this person “life” in prison, 20 years to a man who is nearly 60 is not so far off of “life.” 10 years might give him a chance at breathing air as a free man on the other side, 20 years seems much less likely. (Prison is violence, not really a place people tend to grow old in peace.)
At the same time, should age matter? Should the sentence be different if the facts are the same, but the defendant is 27 rather than 57? What about 17? Life in prison is certainly different for a 17 year old. But is 20 years a “lighter” sentence for someone who has their whole adult life ahead of them, compared to someone who is staring down their seventh decade?
In terms of punishment, what really is the difference between 10 and 20 years? Maybe it’s all the same hell. I’ve spent a few hours here and there in various jails, and that has been enough to give me nightmares about them. I think three days in jail might break me. I don’t know that we as a society have a great sense of how future time should relate to punishment for past acts. I don’t know that there really is a logic to it.
At the same time, the guy sent 16 pipe bombs to people he disagreed with politically. In terms of the things that society wants to discourage, that’s pretty high up there.
I don’t really have great answers on how sentencing should work, other than we should abolish the entire system and start again. However, I appreciate that Judge Rakoff has at least committed to publicly grappling with the humanity of the person in front of him, whether or not I totally agree with the outcome.