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Commentary by Stephen Charest
In another initially baffling incident, Douglas County District Judge Greg Schatz handed down a sentence earlier this year that sent a man convicted of repeatedly raping, beating, and robbing a mentally challenged woman to prison for a total of only 10 to 15 years--meaning the convict could be released on parole in as little as 4 years.
Both the Nebraska Attorney General and the Douglas County Attorney are appealing the sentencing ruling as having been too lenient.
Make politics while the sun shines, boys.
I agree totally that on the facts of the crime, the sentence imposed was way too light. However, the further facts of the matter are that no one from the prosecutor's office attended the sentencing hearing; no one from the victim's family did, either.
The latter is not the victim's family's fault. The court sent notice of the hearing to only the victim herself, who could not read (of which the court was fully aware), so no one from the victim's family even knew about the hearing until it was too late.
The absence of anyone from the prosecutor's office is another story, however. That is just plain inexcusable. If there was a scheduling conflict, send someone else--but don't not go! The interests of the victim and the people are too vital to treat in such a cavalier fashion. (Besides, once the word gets out, it's a lot of bad press.)
The judge heard no one advocating for the victim or the people. He heard only from the defendant's attorney that the defendant suffered from learning disabilities and drug addiction himself--both of which, in the law, tend to reduce culpability because of diminished capacity.
It would have been hard for him under those circumstances to have imposed a tougher sentence. After all, he is supposed to rule on the evidence before him at the sentencing hearing, not from things (even things he may know from earlier proceedings) that are not on the record before him at that moment.
Most of the time in Nebraska, sentences that are "too lenient" are not overturned. But both the Attorney General and the Douglas County District Attorney feel they have a compelling case and are getting a lot of media coverage saying it. The Attorney General's case is going to be taken more seriously than the Douglas County District Attorney's--after all, the latter's is the office that screwed up by not attending the sentencing hearing in the first place.
Personally, I hope the sentence is overturned and the defendant gets something more in line with the heinousness of what he did. He was convicted by a jury of first-degree sexual assault, robbery, false imprisonment, and two weapons charges, which together would have produced a maximum sentence of 175 years.
Here's the short form of what the defendant did: "[He] repeatedly raped a 42-year-old woman . . . who has the mental ability of a fourth-grader. He whipped her with a belt and left her bound in the basement [of her home], returning the next morning to rob her and threaten to kill her."
The defendant is only 24, but already has an impressive series of felony convictions to his "credit."
As if all this were not enough, he apparently called someone on the phone while in jail to try to get the victim of these crimes killed. He is set to stand trial on that this coming December. In front of the same judge who gave him the light sentence this time. I can but shake my head in sadness and in wonder.
Charest is a Lincoln, Nebraska attorney and publisher of the blog To the Barricades
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