Extra leniency for police isn’t the problem, too little leniency for everyone else is

Good for attorney Joshua Hoffman for criticizing the recent decision of Judge Robert Taylor in sentencing a former Baltimore City cop for a felony assault and gun conviction too leniently (“Judge goes easy on Baltimore officer convicted of assault,” Oct. 28).

Unfortunately, it takes the likes of lawyer like Mr. Hoffman, who doesn’t appear that often in the city’s halls of justice before its robed autocrats, to question the regular injustices that occur without fear of reprisal from the bench.

Mr. Hoffman’s well-taken point — that no average defendant, certainly not an African American, would be essentially released after such a conviction — needs a little more fleshing out. As a perennial potential judicial candidate with an active website calling out the bench, I’ll do it. Judge Taylor’s decision isn’t that extreme if it were to exist in a vacuum. The convicted cop had no record, had solid employment and totally lost it on one occasion. The cop’s actions deserved punishment.

What Judge Taylor might have recognized, though, is that sending someone to prison is a major deal. It destroys their lives in so many ways. And mandatory sentencing, which this was, leaves no options for judges besides prison unless a judge grants the rare, elusive home detention which was given here.

So, it’s OK to be put off by the immediate hypocrisy in this case, but the larger issue occurring in every courtroom is that other judges need to be able to think outside of the box, no pun intended, for regular defendants. Whatever the reason that it’s not done, it only leaves citizens with a taste of racism and elitism and continues to rotate the revolving door of incarceration.

Todd Oppenheim, Baltimore