Michelle Lyn Taylor, age 34, got drunk one night and tried to seduce a 13 year old boy by taking his hand and putting it on her breast. This was definitely Not Cool. Nevada prosecutors thought it was so uncool that they charged her with a crime (“lewdness with a child under the age of 14”) that carries a mandatory life sentence and then refused to plea bargain. (Two years earlier, a woman who had sexually abused two boys repeatedly over the course of a year was offered a plea bargain and served ten months in jail.)
In the videotaped sentencing hearing, which you can see in its entirety below, the judge seems bemused by the prosecutors’ choices but unmoved by the defense attorney’s attempt to raise a constitutional objection. The defense attorney, not entirely unreasonably, pretty much loses it.
Michelle Lyn Taylor is now serving a life sentence and will have her first shot at parole ten years from now. Does this strike any of you as reasonable?
Somewhere I’ve heard a suggestion that prosecutors be assigned a budget not only in dollars but also in prison years (presently somebody else’s cost) that the defendant is sentenced to serve if a conviction is obtained. Would such a policy keep prosecutors on track? It might at least help them clarify their priorities.
I only watched the beginning of the video, but the “cruel and unusual” punishment would seem to apply to me. Are they not appealing to a higher court?
It is totally ridiculous, and only serves to bring the justice system into disrepute.
When did this mandatory life sentence come into force? It is very stupid of legislators to attach such a sentence to an offence as vague as “lewdness” (Behavior that is deemed morally impure or unacceptable in a sexual sense). Telling a dirty joke or possibly even swearing could be covered by this.
Whenever there is a media frenzy, the legislators get it badly wrong. I don’t know if there is something in the constitution that can bring reasonableness back in this case.
Completely unreasonable. Hopefully a higher court will overturn this. Extreme double standards like this run rampant through our legal system at the sentencing level and with the laws in general, so I guess this isn’t too surprising.
It’s a big mistake to think of this as an isolated case. We have criminalized almost everything. Fold a piece of paper into an airplane and give it to someone and you’ve committed a federal felony (CPSIA). Martha Stewart went to jail for lying to law enforcement; who hasn’t done that at one time or another (“got to get home to use the toilet, Officer”). As a practical matter we are ruled by prosecutors, who have been given the power to put just about anybody in jail if they want to. And even if they can’t actually convict, they can threaten you with crushing legal bills and years of litigation if you don’t do what they want (AIG, Spitzer, and Hank Greenberg).
The only odd thing about this case is that the prosecutors seem to have used their powers on a mere whim; why they would want to go after this woman is puzzling. Usually they have an ideological or political axe to grind, or they think the person did something really bad that they can’t prove, or they want headlines for sending a famous person to jail. This case just makes them look vicious and stupid.
Typical example of the moral panic over paedophilia. This isn’t really like the teen sexting = child pornography cases, which is more of a case of unintended consequences. It is hard to believe that legislators could not foresee drunken lewdness occurring. But even without diminished capacity – a life sentence, really? Are preteens really going to be traumatised for life if adults flash them? Even if you’re concerned about what lewd people might eventually do, that’s the role for judicial discretion.
But politicians love to be known as “Tough on child molesters” and if you oppose them – what, you support child molesters?
This is the problem with zero tolerance kind of thing – laws that restrict discretion. Zero tolerance policies reduce discretion and create a credible threat to try and deter offenders. Of course you don’t get deterrence if those it is supposed to be applied against don’t know about the rule. But as they say, ignorance of the law is no defense, otherwise everyone would be ignorant.
Reducing discretion reduces the potential for discrimination. But discrimination can be good & bad – it may mean disproportionately harsh sentencing for blacks, but it may also mean fair treatment for stupid actions (like the suspension an eagle scout got for having a pocket knife in his car parked in the school lot).
When you take away discretion, presumably to sharpen the deterrent factor, you end up with miscarriages like this. But even with discretion, you end up with miscarriages too, just different ones – e.g. the DA’s nephew getting off on a lesser charge, or two people committing the same crime getting wildly different sentences.
If you want to remove discretion in sentencing, then you have got to be sharp in defining the crime. It should be for something everyone can agree is a very serious offence, such as assault. “Lewdness” is far too vague.
I don’t know what the legislators had in mind, but I bet it wasn’t this. It is completely couterproductive, as it makes adults reluctant to put themselves in contact with children at all. This massively reduces the opportunities children have to take part in supervised activities. So they put themselves in unsupervised, more dangerous activities instead.
In Canada where I live Karla Homolka helped her husband abduct, torture, rape, and murder two teenage girls. And videotaped it. OH and helped him rape a string of women over several years. OH and helped him rape and murder her own sister.
Served 14 years.
This law doesn’t “restrict discretion.” It gives the prosecutor virtually unlimited discretion. If they like you, they’ll let you plead to something small. If they don’t, you get slammed. Note the other case mentioned, in which the defendant got ten months. The law has just shifted discretion from the judges to the prosecutors.
This is the typical pattern for drug crimes, as well. It used to be hard to convict high-level drug dealers of serious offenses. So Congress raised the penalties for trivial drug offenses to very high levels, giving the prosecutors the power to jail anyone caught with more than small amounts of drugs for a long time. That gave them the ability to make any drug offender do serious time, and they claim that they use it to send up the really bad people.
This is sickening. It is simply beyond belief that someone could be sentenced to life in prison for a single incident such as this. Even if this woman had made a habit of touching boys’ hands to her breasts, that should not ever carry a life sentence. I do hope this is appealed and that the law gets overturned for being blatantly unconstitutional (because it is). The more you know about mandatory minimum sentencing laws, the more it becomes clear that they are a Bad Idea.
In Georgia, a young man was convicted of statutory rape at 17 for having intercourse with his 15 year old girlfriend. 10 years later they are married and have two children. However, because he is a convicted sex offender, he cannot visit his children’s school, or take them to the playground.
In Miami, the law states that a convicted sex offender cannot live within 2,500 feet of a school, park, or church. Because parolees cannot leave the city, they are forced to stay in Dade County, but in Dade County the only place that is not within 2,500 feet of a school, park, or church is an island over which the Julia Tuttle Causeway passes. Therefore, paroled sex offenders have been forced to camp out on that island. Here’s an article describing the situation: http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/05/bridge.sex.offenders/.
This is happening all over the country. Many people convicted of sex crimes are rapists or pedophiles, but some are people (mostly men) who had sex with an underage girlfriend or inadvertently exposed themself.
It’s absurd.
In keeping in line with the theme of this blog, I’d remind Dr. Landsburg that he has once thought outloud as to whether it might be a proper disincentive to execute computer hackers or if it would be worth it to the population as a whole to randomly kill a person to resolve headaches.
As I’m sure most readers here know, the individual most recognized for identifying the correlation between the states that use the death penalty and drop in murder rates was against capital punishment on a moral level. Unfortunately this case probably doesn’t provide a strong disincentive to stop people from getting drunk and doing what this woman did.
Also, and again borrowing from Dr. Landsburg’s earlier writings, if this were a common and well-known punishment for this type of action, would the benefit of locking people up and preventing possible acts from taking place? I would assume that even if this was common it would not tilt the scales of the cost/benefit analysis.
Mike: “the individual most recognized for identifying the correlation between the states that use the death penalty and drop in murder rates was against capital punishment on a moral level.”
It is perhaps a small matter, but I think the way this is put is misleading. Please correct me if I am wrong, but the individual did not in fact notice a correlation between states that use the death penalty and drop in murder rates. It was a much more sophisticated model that predicted that each execution prevented about 8 murders. It requires some assumptions and empiricaly determined inputs into the model to get the result. Anyone looking for a correlation as such has been unable to find it amongst the noise.
I wonder why the prosecutors refused to plea bargain?
This was definitely Not Cool.
Except, quite possibly, to the 13-year-old boy.
Dr. Memory, did you see the perp in question?
i cannot fathom that laws dictate behavior. i cannot imagine either a planned assassination or crime of passion being committed by someone who is concerned about the consequences of their behavior (assuming they think they will in fact get caught).
from the scarlet letter to the tattoo – from amputation to execution…i cannot think of a single punishment that changes the future behavior of either the individual or the society.
rules are made to be broken.
Laws like this are a solid reason not to live in Nevada.
We have an overly deferential judiciary. They need to start to man up and nullify these stupid statutes that constrain their decisions. They need to start testing the boundaries of judicial independence.
There is a case from the 80’s of a woman who got 10 years for “drug trafficking” for answering the phone for her boyfriend, who was actually a drug dealer. The boyfriend, of course, informed on her and got a plea deal. The judicial philosophy that says you must strictly apply the statutes, even in cases where they obviously aren’t meant to apply, is just plain wrong.
I think we’d be much better off if we substituted the vast majority of our criminal justice system with a tort system. If the “injured” party here had to prove damages, they would never get a life sentence imposed on the “criminal.”
FYI, what’s going on here is that the Judge knows he has to impose this sentence, but he’s breaking the rules to let her raise all these constitutional arguments as a way to help her out. Because on appeal, all these arguments need to have been raised below, and he knows this will be appealed. What he has to do by law is pretty obvious, but he is doing her a favor.
I’m with Alan Gunn in wondering why the prosecutors opted for this seemingly odd course of action.
GregS, right on! I’ve had it with all those stupid people abusing democracy to foist their laws on the rest of us. It’s time for wise judges to take charge.
This is extremely sad. Doesn’t anyone in that system care how bad this makes them look?
Lesson: The law is a chainsaw; not a delicate surgical instrument.
I don’t fully fathom the panicky response to activities like this by people who have no regard for chastity – who would regard the activity with a smile if the “victim” were a couple of years older.
I certainly hope this case warrants executive clemency.
@Alan Gunn – the law absolutely does restrict discretion. It disallows either the judge or prosecutor from considering any sentence other than a life sentence with possibility of parole in 10 years. The ADA may have discretion on which statute to charge her with, but doesn’t have discretion with regard to the penalty.
That’s the problem – overlapping and poorly defined crimes. Obviously the legislature wasn’t thinking of this type of action when they created the mandatory life sentence.
jambarama: “The ADA may have discretion on which statute to charge her with”
Precisely the source of my and Alan’s puzzlement. Why was that discretion not exercised? Does the DA’s office think that this is popular in their district? Are they excessively strict? Do they have a personal problem with the defendant or her attorney? Did the defendant or her attorney decide to go for an all-or-nothing “make my day” strategy?
I’m surprised that no one on this blog has identified this potential result: If being lewd, etc, carries a harsher sentence than manslaughter, doesn’t that create an incentive for more manslaughter?
I find this case to be sad. But I’m more worried about what implication this law has on the lives of children if a minor crime carriers a harsher sentence than a more serious crime. It seems to me that, at the margin, you’re going to get substitution of the serious crime for the minor one.
But I’m not an economist. Maybe I’m misunderstanding how this kind of thing works.
The only thing I have to offer here is this:
Imagine if the sexes of the offender and victim were reversed?
If “Michelle Lyn Taylor, age 34, got drunk one night and tried to seduce a 13 year old boy by taking his hand and putting it on her breast.” were replaced with “Michael Taylor, age 34, got drunk one night and tried to seduce a 13 year old girl by taking her hand and putting it on his genitalia,” would we be more likely to say “Thank you judicial system for protecting other young girls from that monster!”
@dullgeek:
“If being lewd, etc, carries a harsher sentence than manslaughter, doesn’t that create an incentive for more manslaughter?”
Why would it?
DA explains why plea agreement could not be reached in Taylor case
http://elkodaily.com/news/local/article_13eb1e20-5da7-50d7-8188-92ef3d9fc601.html
He says Taylor would not agree to a plea bargain that required her to register as a sex offender. She chose to plead innocent to the charge with the life sentence instead, taking her chances.