The Council of the District of Columbia has proposed legislation that will allow for sentence reductions for our city’s most violent offenders. In the process, the council seems willing to force victims of the most horrendous crimes and their family members to relive the trauma that was inflicted on them years ago. They’re determined to make the district a less hospitable place for crime victims past and a more dangerous place for today’s residents and visitors.
In 2017, the city enacted the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act. This law allows 16- and 17-year-old defendants who were prosecuted as adults due to the nature of their offenses (generally murder and sexual assault crimes) and who were sentenced to and served more than 20 years in prison to petition the court for a sentence reduction. This law is premised on the fact that the brain of a youthful offender is not as developed as the brain of an adult and that youthful offenders are more prone to impulsiveness and peer influence.
However, the council now proposes to allow every defendant who committed serious offenses when they were under the age of 25 and for which they were sentenced to and served more than 15 years in prison to seek a sentence reduction. If passed into law, this will very likely result in hundreds of D.C.’s most violent offenders being released back into our neighborhoods. This is not only inconsistent with public safety, but it is also deeply damaging to the victims who believed that sentencing the offender brought some finality and, along with it, some peace of mind and an opportunity to heal.
As anyone familiar with our country’s incarceration rate can tell you, criminal justice and prison reform are long overdue. I was a career prosecutor and chief of the homicide section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Given my firsthand experience with the system, I believe our country is in serious need of criminal justice reform, particularly in the area of unduly lengthy sentences for nonviolent offenders.
But not all reform efforts are created equal. The criminal justice system must work not only for the defendants but for the victims as well.
As but one example of this misguided law currently on the books, an individual named David Bailey recently was released to the streets by Superior Court Judge Michael Ryan. By the time he was 17, Bailey had killed three people in two separate incidents. Under the IRAA, he petitioned for a resentencing.
In the case for which he was seeking a sentence reduction, Bailey killed two young, unarmed men in a double homicide after a minor dispute in a nightclub. Bailey shot one victim, Kevin Harrell, age 22, in the head and body. He shot the second, Gregory Kennedy, age 24, several times in the back as he ran for his life.
Imagine for a moment how this devastated the families of Harrell and Kennedy. After trying to heal the unfathomable pain and heartache of losing a loved one to violent crime and believing that there was finality in the perpetrator’s sentence years ago, they had their emotional scars torn open anew 25 years later. This represents a cruel and unusual turn of events for victims. Those family members of Harrell and Kennedy who could find the strength to attend the recent hearings found a system that seemed to care little about this new, unexpected trauma.
The family members pleaded with Ryan not to release the man who killed their loved ones. Wanda Harrell, the sister of deceased Kevin Harrell, puts it this way:
At the hearing, another Harrell family member pointedly and poignantly told the judge that if he released a three-time killer, “the blood of the next victim will be on your hands.”
The assigned prosecutor likewise opposed a sentencing reduction, arguing that Bailey had disciplinary infractions while in prison, had an extensive criminal history even at a young age, including killing yet another young man, Eugene West, by stabbing him to death in 1991, and remained an extreme danger to the community if released. Notwithstanding the prosecutor’s arguments and the pleas of victims’ family members, Ryan promptly reduced Bailey’s sentence to essentially time served, releasing him to the streets.
To be clear, defendants deserve a criminal justice system that provides not just due process but a healthy dose of decency, understanding, and even empathy. So many defendants who end up in our nation’s criminal courts had to contend with very difficult circumstances growing up. As a society we need to deal with the root cause of crime, not just the consequences once a crime is committed.
However, victims also deserve a criminal justice system that will address their victimization with determination, empathy, and finality. Victims of violent crime, whether personally or via the murder of a family member, are never the same. Some victims manage to move toward healing, but few are “made whole,” and all are forever changed.
Sentencing a defendant is supposed to be the culmination of the long, slow march toward justice and healing for a victim, a final chapter of sorts. Once a case is over and the perpetrator is sentenced, a victim can work toward healing, can attempt to move forward in life, and can find ways to ease the pain associated with being on the receiving end of the violent conduct of a fellow human being.
But now, given the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act, the perpetrator reenters the victim’s life, ripping open old wounds and forcing victims to relive the trauma they work so hard to put behind them. Victims are now made to go back into court decades later to plead with judges not to undo a sentence that was considered by an earlier judge to be just, fair, and final. If the defendant is released, the victims and their families are left angry, fearful, and in a very real sense victimized anew, this time by their government.
Given the current iteration of the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act, the damage has already been done to victims of crime at the hands of 16- and 17-year-old defendants. Let’s not extend the damage to hundreds of other victims and families by raising the eligibility age to include defendants who committed their crimes up to their 25th birthday. Victims deserve better from their government.
Glenn Kirschner (@glennkirschner2) is the founder and president of Homicide Family Advocates. He is a retired federal prosecutor and former chief of the homicide section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Kirschner is also a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.
