Legislation to change sentencing rules fails
Several significant criminal justice reform measures passed in the recent General Assembly session, one of the busiest legislative sessions on crime and punishment in recent memory.
The abolition of capital punishment. The legalization of marijuana by 2024, complete with forthcoming “dispensaries” to sell it. Removing the presumption in law that those charged with certain crimes can’t be released on bail. And several more.
But a bill to scrap mandatory minimum sentences — also a key aim of reformers — died late Saturday night as a committee of lawmakers from both houses failed to reach a deal before the General Assembly session adjourned.
“It would have been the signature achievement of the session,” said Sen. Joseph Morrissey, D-Richmond, chief co-sponsor of the Senate version of the measure. “Everybody’s talking about the marijuana bill, but that
pales in comparison to the mandatory minimum bill.”
While carrying pot currently carries a mere $25 civil fine at lower weight levels, mandatory prison sentences often result in decades — and sometimes life — behind bars.
Mandatory minimums have played a prominent role in state criminal sentencing for more than 25 years.
Though Virginia judges must formally sentence within the ranges of punishments spelled out in law, they typically have the authority to suspend any of that time as they see fit.
But mandatory minimums are an exception to that rule: They require judges to impose at least a certain specific amount of jail or prison time on list of more than 200 crimes — from guns to drugs, from raping a child to assaulting police officers.
The mandatory punishments range from five days in jail for DUIs with certain elevated blood alcohol content, to 60 days for a second protective order violation, to five years on many gun, drug and childporn charges. And it’s a mandatory life in prison for raping or sodomizing a child 12 or younger.
Supporters of the laws contend they are a necessary safeguard against lenient judges. Critics assert that the rules strip judges’ discretion, and that prosecutors unfairly stack up such charges to pressure defendants to plead guilty.
The Senate version of the bill,
sponsored by Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke, called for scrapping all minimum sentences in state law, except for a life term for killing a law enforcement officer.
More than 10,000 state prisoners could have gotten new sentences had the Senate measure passed.
The House of Delegates’ version of the bill, sponsored by Del. Mike Mullin, D-Newport News, would have scrapped mandatory minimums on a much shorter list of charges — drug crimes, being a habitual offender and a few more.
Mullin said he didn’t have enough support in the House to do away with all of the minimums, leading him to focus on the drug laws.
But since so many people are sentenced on drug crimes, he said, that measure would have led to new sentences for about 8,000 prisoners, or 83% of those in state prison on the mandatory minimums.
The different bills passed their respective houses, with Democrats in favor and Republicans nearly all opposed.
Several senate lawmakers said early on that they didn’t like the idea of scrapping the mandatory minimums for drug laws — seen as politically easy — and coming back later to do the same for sex crimes and violent crimes. They liked an all or nothing approach.
A six-member conference committee was formed last week to try to hammer out a deal: Edwards and Mullin, plus Morrissey, Sen. William M. Stanley Jr., R-Franklin County, and Dels. Karrie D. Delaney, D-Fairfax County, and Jeffrey L. Campbell, R-Smyth County.
How the bill failed as the clock ticked down on the session Saturday evening is a matter of debate.
Morrissey blames Mullin for rejecting a late compromise offer that Morrissey asserts could have easily won the support of both houses.
“The reason we didn’t get that done lies squarely at the feet of Mike Mullin,” Morrissey said. “I hold him 100% responsible.”
Morrissey said he sent Mullin a proposal to add some gun crimes to the list of those in which mandatory minimums would be eliminated, but that Mullin rejected it at the 11th hour.
“He said, ‘I want to do that, but I can’t get it out of my caucus,’ which was horse **** ” Morrissey said, asserting that he has text messages proving that his proposal would have had more support in the House than Mullin was letting on.
Morrissey contended that Mullin, who works as an assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Hampton, “is a prosecutor masquerading as a delegate,” and that “the Senate is fed up with it.”
Mullin brushed off that criticism Monday.
The Senate, Mullin said, simply “wouldn’t budge” on their quest to scrap mandatory minimums for many more crimes than the House was willing to.
“It’s a tremendous shame that the Senate and the House were not able to get to a place of agreement,” Mullin said, lamenting that 8,000 drug crime prisoners now won’t get new sentencing hearings. “This is an example of the perfect being the enemy of the good.”
Mullin said Morrissey’s late proposal would have removed some DUI offenses, some rape and child pornography crimes, and carrying a gun as a violent felon, among others, from the list of crimes carrying mandatory minimum sentences.
That proposal, he said, wasn’t acceptable to House lawmakers. “There was a fundamental disagreement between the two bodies,” Mullin said. “Even with the final deal that Senate offered, we were at least 18 votes down in the House.”
The House, he said, “didn’t feel comfortable” with removing DUIs “and sexually-based or violentbased offenses” from the mandatory minimum list.
Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a Washington lobbying organization, voiced disappointment that the bill failed.
“Mandatory minimums don’t deter crimes, don’t make us safer, waste money and disproportionately impact Black communities,” the group’s deputy director for policy, Tinsae Gebriel, said in a news release.
“It is alarming that the legislature would fail to act,” she added, promising to take up the fight next year “for a legal system that prioritizes individualized sentences and second chances.”
Edwards, the senate bill’s sponsor, said hashing out a deal at that hour was difficult, especially talking over Zoom.
“It was late in the evening and people got exhausted,” he said.
“It was a very complicated bill. People were digging in their heels, and it just fell apart.” But, he said, he plans to bring it back again next year.