Echoing last week’s report from Sal Paolantonio of ESPN, John Eligon of the New York Times reports that any plea deal reached between prosecutors and Giants receiver Plaxico Burress will require the man who blew a hole through his leg with an unlicensed weapon to spend time in jail.
Apparently, the reduction of charges from second-degree possession (which entails a mandatory minimum sentence of 3.5 years) to third-degree possesion (which doesn’t) is a common tool employed by prosecutors, based on factors such as the defendant’s criminal history, the reason for carrying the gun, and the circumstances surrounding an arrest.
Frankly, we don’t like it.
It gives the authorities way too much discretion to decide who does and who doesn’t get put away for a minimum of 3.5 years. Basically, they get to pick and choose which folks they regard as worthy of a reduced charge — and which folks are viewed as deserving to be locked up for a long time.
The process runs counter to the stated purpose of a law that supposedly places a high price on carrying a loaded and unlicensed firearm. If the idea is to deter such conduct by threatening them with a 3.5-year mandatory sentence, the notion that the book will be thrown only at the guys (or the occasional girls) whom the prosecutor regards as worthy of a 3.5-year sentence makes little sense.
The problem is that, without some objective and fair test for deciding which defendants who are obviously factually guilty (like Burress) get put away for 3.5 years and which ones get a deal for something far less than that, the prosecutors have too much power to dramatically affect the lives of people who have committed the exact same crime.
Though we realize that such dynamics are common in the criminal justice system, we can’t think of a more stark example of prosecutors having the power in one instance to take a hard line and in one case to show mercy, based on exactly identical facts.
That said, we’re not saying that Burress should be sent away for 3.5 years. We’re only saying that the illegal gun possession law should provide for truly equal justice. The second-degree/third-degree game that prosecutors can play with this specific law suggests to us, as currently constituted, it doesn’t.
