Let judges reconsider long prison sentences

Devin A. Giordano, Tribune News service

For people, myself included, who are serving long prison sentences in New York, years pass, circumstances change, and lives take on dimensions that were not discernable at the time of sentencing. Yet under current law, no judge has the power to revisit a sentence once it has been imposed, no matter how much time has passed or circumstances have changed.

This is not due to a lack of information. New York’s prison system collects decades’ worth of records on behavior, age, health and risk. The problem is more basic than that. Judges are legally barred from reconsidering long sentences, even when the facts on which those sentences are based no longer exist.

Among those calling for a different approach is Rowan Wilson, the chief judge of the state of New York. In recent comments, Wilson has noted that judgments made at sentencing are not just responses to past harm but predictions about future danger. Judges, he argues, should be able to revisit those predictions later, based on new information.

New York’s proposed Second Look Act, currently before the state legislature, would provide a means to this end. The bill, which has been explicitly endorsed by the New York State Justice Task Force, which works to prevent wrongful convictions, would allow people who have served long sentences to apply for judicial review after at least 10 years or half their sentence, whichever is less. Judges would be permitted, but not required, to reassess the sentence using current information. The law would not mandate release or erase accountability. It would simply restore discretion.

That kind of discretion already exists elsewhere in the system. Judges routinely reassess people’s circumstances when making decisions about bail, probation, parole violations or resentencing after appellate reversals. What the Second Look Act proposes is extending that same logic to the longest sentences, the ones most likely to outlast the assumptions that produced them.

Other states, including California, Washington and Maryland, have already adopted versions of second look or resentencing laws, often with age-based or youth-based provisions. At the federal level, the First Step Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2018, expanded mechanisms for sentence reductions. These policies have not produced waves of violence or judicial chaos.

Still, resistance remains strong. Many Americans believe that long sentences, by themselves, make society safer. The longer people are incarcerated, the thinking goes, the less harm they can cause.

But in fact, research consistently shows that the likelihood of violent offending declines sharply with age, particularly after a person’s 30s and 40s. Someone sentenced at 19 is not the same person at 49, whether or not the system chooses to acknowledge this.

Second Look does not deny the reality of harm or the seriousness of crime. It asks whether a system that claims to value safety should be willing to test its own conclusions. A hearing does not guarantee release. Judges can deny applications when they believe someone still poses a risk. What a hearing does do is require the system to justify continued incarceration using present facts rather than historical fear.

I was sentenced in New York in 2017 to 20 years to life under New York’s felony murder law, based on events that occurred when I was 19. I am now 31, having spent more than a decade incarcerated. Under current law, no judge has the authority to reconsider my sentence, even to determine that it should remain exactly as it is. The original prediction about the person I would become is treated as final.

That rigidity has consequences beyond any individual case. It produces aging prison populations, rising costs and a justice system that measures accountability in years served rather than accuracy maintained. Most importantly, it prevents courts from honestly answering a basic question: Does continued incarceration still serve public safety?

If long sentences truly make society safer, judges should be able to confirm that through review. If they do not, the system should be able to adjust. For now, New York allows neither. The question is not whether punishment should exist. It is whether judgments made at sentencing should go untested forever.