Hudson Reporter
Sacco urges Murphy to sign bill eliminating mandatory minimum sentences
The governor will have to act soon, facing resistance from county prosecutors ×
Sacco wants to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for official misconduct.
Legislation that would eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for a number of nonviolent offenses has been awaiting a decision from Gov. Phil Murphy.
Currently, courts are required to sentence a person to a minimum length of time in prison if they are convicted of a crime with a pre-determined mandatory minimum. According to the state, New Jersey has the nation’s largest disparity in incarceration rates among Black and white individuals, at a jarring 12 to 1 ratio.
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Everyone has the right to a trial when accused of a crime. After all, our system of law states that a person is innocent until proven guilty.
However, when going to trial means facing a sentence five times harsher than taking a plea, defendants might think twice before invoking that right, even if they’re innocent.
I once had a client charged with murder who insisted he didn’t do it. Oscar (pseudonym) was just 16 at the time of the crime. We went to trial and fought long and hard. As deliberations dragged on, the judge sent his law clerk to me with a message if Oscar pleads guilty then and there, he’d convince the prosecutor to reduce the crime to manslaughter and give Oscar 11 years. Oscar, age 20 at the time of the trial, had a hard choice. He might be acquitted after trial, or he could take the 11 years and be done with it.
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With Daniel Lippman and Theodoric Meyer The initial 100-to-1 sentencing disparity, which the coalition writes “may have been well-intentioned in 1986” when it was included in a bill crafted by now-President