Fox News had an interesting blurb today about a woman in Ohio who failed to file income tax returns for five years and faced several misdemeanor charges as well as Potential jail time and fines.

The punchline? She only owed $1.16 in taxes.

It's difficult sometimes to take the criminal justice system seriously when you hear about cases like this, where someone is obviously caught in a bind and faces what appears to be an unfair punishment for a minor (if even) infraction.

On a larger scale, this was one of the main arguments against the Rockefeller Drug laws enacted in New York State in May of 1973. The Rockefeller Drug laws, which were severely scaled back in January of this year, were best known for their potential of lifetime imprisonment for drug offenses, which are referred to by many as "non-violent" crimes.

There are a lot of problems with the criticisms of the Rockefeller laws, especially this lifetime imprisonment claim. Just to be clear, only four offenses triggered the potential for a lifetime in jail, and those involved possession or sale of large quantities of a controlled substance. Possession or sale of cocaine in excess of four ounces was punishable as a class A-I felony, which carried a minimum jail sentence of 15 years to life. Whenever you hear a sentence defined in terms of "x to y", that's called an indeterminate sentence. X is the minimum required to be served before a person is eligible for parole, and Y is maximum that can be served. So a sentence of five to fifteen years means that a person is eligible for parole after five years, and can be denied parole until fifteen years are served. Any extra time is there as a potential punishment if there's a parole violation.

The thing that most people don't realize is that practically no one gets convicted of a class A-I drug felony, almost everyone is given the benefit of a plea bargain to some lesser charge. Often, if a defendant cooperates with the DA's office and testifies against other drug dealers, they're given the benefit of a class B felony and lifetime probation. At the very least, they can plead down to a class A-II felony which has a minimum of three years to life (and no one does life on one of these).

An example from one of my own cases, one of the first A-I felony drug sales I prosecuted involved a man who was fairly low on the totem pole, and unfortunately didn't really have any useful to information to share. He was permitted to plead to an A-II, was sentenced to three years to life, and was out of jail in six months. Six months you ask? How's that possible? In New York State, non-violent offenders up to a certain age (I believe it's recently been raised to 46 years old), can enter a program called "shock incarceration", which is similar to the boot camp programs you hear about sometimes. If successful, they can be out of prison in six months. Quite a few inmates take advantage of this program, once again demonstrating the fallacy of this lifetime imprisonment claim.