Justice in America: A Decent Decision Defies the Supreme Court's Limpet-Like Ideology

In recent years, the US Supreme Court has taken a predictable course with right-wingers on the bench imposing their ideology, but Monday brought a notable change.

In a 5-4 ruling, the State of California was ordered to reduce its overcrowded prison population by 30,000. The ruling followed displays in court of photographs of inmates crowded into an open gymnasium-style rooms and “telephone-booth-sized cages without toilets".

In the 1980s, California imposed a "three strikes rule" for offenders. If you were found guilty of a third felony, there was an automatic sentence of 25 years, regardless of the nature of the offence. Sentencing discretion was removed from judges.

Now California’s prisons are full of women on 25-year sentences whose crime was smoking crack cocaine. I suspect the men’s prisons are also stocked with drug users, and it is likely that these people will be among the 30,000 to be released within two years into California society. I doubt that many will have been rehabilitated, so the probable outcome will be a vast number of men back before the courts on drug charges.

Justice Kennedy, speaking for the majority in the California case, described a prison system “that failed to deliver minimal care to prisoners with serious medical and mental health problems and produced needless suffering and death". Why it took so long for the Supreme Court to realise that lengthy prison sentence without paroles, meted out to so many people, was bound to produce this result defies imagination. Thank heavens, there was sufficient humanity on the Court bench to come --- belatedly --- to the right conclusion.

For, with the exception of Justice Kennedy, the Justices have shown a limpet-like ability to keep to their beliefs and ideologies, regardless of fact and circumstance. Clarence Thomas goes even farther, with his steadfast refusal to give an opinion in court.

True to form in the California case, Justice Scalia wrote, “Most of them [the early releases] will not be prisoners with medical conditions or severe mental illness and many will undoubtedly be fine physical specimens who have developed intimidating muscles pumping iron in the prison gym.” In other words, Scalia is saying "release these people and they will re-offend using violence". He then took a Pontius Pilate stance, admonishing his brother and sister judges for their majority ruling but washing his hands of the result.

Justice Alito acknowledged that “particular prisoners received shockingly deficient medical carte but such anecdotal evidence cannot be given undue weight….Today’s decision will lead to a grim roster of victims.”

So I humbly remind Justices Scalia, Alito, Thomas and Roberts that, if you tacitly approve a criminal justice system that can impose a mandatory life sentence or a 25-year term without parole for felonies such as stealing videos or golf clubs --- removing any discretion in sentencing from the trial judge --- you reap what you sow. If there is a “grim roster of victims” in California, part of the blame must lie with a judicial system that is content to see more than 1% of Americans behind bars, often for crimes where no violence has been perpetrated.

No criminal justice system is perfect but I am distinctly uncomfortable with the one I find in America. Take care, if you visit, not to offend. I certainly believed that warning sign I saw in Georgia last month: “If you speed, you get 30 days jail time.”