7th Circuit orders new sentence after judge's remarks on urban decay, riots and fatherhood
A federal judge’s remarks at a sentencing hearing have once again led the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to order resentencing for a drug defendant.
Chief Circuit Judge Diane Wood wrote the July 22 opinion chastising U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa of Milwaukee for “several wide-ranging soliloquies” on urban decay, social unrest, the “pathology” of some neighborhoods, and his own experiences in the defendant’s neighborhood. The National Law Journal (sub. req.) has a story.
Wood ruled in the case of Billy Robinson Jr., who had been recruited into his cousin’s heroin-trafficking operation for two months before the feds shut it down. Robinson pleaded guilty to two counts of traveling in interstate commerce to facilitate heroin distribution, and Randa sentenced him to 84 months in prison.
Wood said Randa’s comments “strayed so far from the record that we cannot trace the (legitimate) reasons for Robinson’s sentence.”
Wood also wrote a September 2010 opinion in which she ordered resentencing because of Randa’s “extraneous and inflammatory comments” on a defendant’s immigration status and drug problems in the United States that he believed to be linked to the defendant’s native Mexico. Randa also belittled the defendant’s comment that he was a good family man with the comment, “Even Adolf Hitler was admired by his family.”
In the new case, Randa made comments that were irrelevant and without basis in the record, Wood said. It is inappropriate to blame a defendant for national issues only tangentially related to his conduct, Wood said.
The National Law Journal links to a transcript of Randa’s remarks. They included:
• His recollection about his college days, when he dated a woman in Robinson’s neighborhood. Randa said that he visited her “without any fear of getting jacked, or shot, or anything. And now, years later, that whole neighborhood has changed. And this activity is probably the reason for it. Drugs everywhere.”
• Pointed out that Robinson had five children by four different mothers and questioned whether he could support all of them. Randa commented after Robinson said he planned to move to Alabama with his fiancée to leave bad influences behind.
• Discussed his belief that Milwaukee today is similar to Milwaukee in 1967, and drew parallels to Milwaukee’s 1967 riots and recent Baltimore protests for police brutality.
The case is United States v. Robinson.
