Home/D. Connecticut/United States v. Jenkins

United States v. Jenkins

403 F. Supp. 407, 1975 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15500
District Court, D. Connecticut·Decided October 31, 1975·No. Cr. B-63·Published·Cited by 2 cases

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION ON MOTION TO REDUCE SENTENCE

NEWMAN, District Judge.

This motion under Fed.R.Crim.P. 35 for reduction of an eighteen-year sentence imposed for the crime of armed bank robbery has prompted the Court to explore the relationship between the length of sentences and the duration of time served.

The long sentence was imposed in view of the seriousness of the offense and the defendant’s extensive prior record, which includes convictions for two robberies, two larcenies, and a weapons offense. Expressed in terms of sentencing objectives, the sentence was imposed to serve as a general deterrent to others, a specific deterrent to this defendant, and for purposes of incapacitation. While pursuit of these objectives re *408 quires a sentence of considerable length, neither they nor any other theories of sentencing indicate what length of sentence is appropriate. In selecting eighteen years, the Court assumed that, even though sentence was imposed pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 4208(a)(2), 1 one-third of the sentence, six years, was very likely the minimum time defendant would actually serve and that a realistic range of the likely period of actual confinement would be six to nine years.

In considering defendant’s motion to reduce, the Court has been concerned that the original sentence may have been unduly influenced by what may appropriately be called the Slovik syndrome 2 —the expectation that a sentence will not be fully carried out. The reference is to the American soldier, Eddie Slovik, sentenced to death for desertion in World War II and executed, though the court martial members who imposed the sentence did not expect that it would be carried out. The phenomenon appears to have resulted in confinements longer than anticipated by sentencing judges especially with sentences of less than five years, since parole board guidelines often specify confinement terms of two and three years, far more than one-third and even one-half of many imposed sentences. 3 See United States v. Slutsky, 514 F.2d 1222 (2d Cir. 1975). Whether the phenomenon occurs as frequently with long sentences was unclear, since the parole guidelines for armed robbery range from 26 to 65 months, depending upon salient factor scores, a confinement period that would be less than one-third of sentences longer than fifteen years. What needed to be examined was the length of time convicted bank robbers were actually serving after imposition of longer sentences.

Inquiry to the United States Board of Parole elicited two computer printouts prepared by the Bureau of Prisons showing time served by all bank robbers released during 1974. The first printout covered all those released by an initial parole decision, and the second covered all those released by expiration of the full sentence, less good time credit, i. e., mandatory releases. The data disclosed the type of sentence, the sentence length, and the time served prior to parole or mandatory release. The data were analyzed by this Court for sentence lengths of 10, 15, 20, and 25 years. Only regular adult sentences and indeterminate sentences (imposed pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 4208(a)(2)) were analyzed. 4

A summary of the data is set forth in the following Table I.

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United States v. Jenkins, 403 F. Supp. 407, 1975 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15500 (D. Conn. 1975).

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