Daniel Holtzclaw, a former Oklahoma City police officer, has just been sentenced to 263 years in prison for rape and other sexual offenses committed against black women in a poor neighborhood. Although I am a criminal defense attorney, and I am usually sympathetic to a convicted criminal, I don’t feel much sympathy for police officers, prosecutors, or judges convicted of crimes. And Mr. Holtzclaw’s offenses were awful. But no one should be sentenced to 263 years in prison under any circumstances.
No one expects that Mr. Holtzclaw is going to serve 263 years in prison. Prison is a notoriously harsh environment, and so his life expectancy is probably now below the national average. He’s 29 years old. Whatever social benefit is available by sending him to prison would be completely realized by a fifty-year term. I doubt that there is a greater deterrent effect for 263 years compared to fifty Similarly, whatever threat Mr. Holtzclaw is to reoffend will have evaporated by the time he is seventy-nine, even assuming he lives that long as a former police officer in prison.
But imposing a 263-year prison term will make ridiculously long prison terms look a little more ordinary and a little more reasonable. It doesn’t matter much to Mr. Holtzclaw one way or the other - if it were me, the prospect of being released at the age of seventy-nine wouldn’t look much different than no chance of being released ever. It matters a lot more to a drug offender for whom the judge can choose between five- and ten-year prison terms, or a sex offender for whom the judge is choosing between twenty-five and seventy-five years. If 263 years is an upper limit, then ten years looks a lot more reasonable for a minor crime. By contrast, if fifty years were the longest prison term than could be imposed, then ten years for a minor crime would look unreasonable, as in fact it is.
Mr. Holtzclaw’s crimes were awful, and he should be severely punished. But the number of years that he will serve in prison is not a mere symbol - it is a measure of the number of years of his life that will be taken away. Perhaps he is beyond redemption, and he is certainly not the poster-child for sentencing reform. But imposing sentences to send a message is a lot less important than imposing sentences that will do justice in a particular case. Ordering Mr. Holtzclaw to remain in prison for two hundred years after he dies will do no good to his victims, but it will continue the expensive and unproductive trend of longer and longer sentences.
