Don’t change horses in midstream. Stay the course. Too late to turn back now.
Those proverbial messages aren’t cast-in-stone commandments; most folks bend those rules in some fashion.
But the consistent message is to avoid changing a basic approach midway through the process.
That’s why we should show concern about the handling of a criminal’s recent case under the Madison County unified court system, a concept where judges share resources to help reduce costs, avoid backlogs and move cases forward.
Joseph Martin recently experienced the downside of the unified system. Four years ago, he was an inmate when he joined in a riot in the Pendleton Correctional Facility. He swung a knife at an inmate hostage during the Feb. 8, 2008 incident.
His case started in 2010. Over time, there were more than 50 court dates when paperwork or a judicial decision was made. Circuit Court 2 judge Dennis Carroll heard most of the evidence following the filing of the case in December, 2010.
This year, on Jan. 3, Martin agreed to plead guilty to counts including criminal confinement, battery, arson and rioting. On Feb. 13, Martin showed up for sentencing and expected Carroll to be in the courtroom as the judge most familiar with his case.
Instead, Circuit Court Judge 4 David Happe was filling in. The defense requested a continuance, and Happe denied it. On Feb. 14, Happe sentenced Martin to 18 years in prison; the maximum would have been 23 years.
The handling of the sentencing was unfair. Judgment could have waited until Carroll returned. Even if Carroll decided the same fate for Martin, it was almost a slap to the face of a criminal willing to strike a bargain with a judge he had dealt with for more than a year.
As strange as it sounds, there could have been a rapport between judge and criminal that Martin expected to continue to the end of the case. Instead, Martin comes into court and finds a judge whose name had appeared on no previous docket entries. Martin experienced the same aggravation that anyone would feel after dealing for more than a year with a specific plumber, car repairman or judge.
Since the riot, Martin had been living with his fiancée and her two children in Evansville. He was working as a carpenter. “My judge knows all this,” Martin said, referring to Carroll. Martin thought his turnabout might result in a lesser sentence.
Perhaps it would have. Perhaps not.
We expect our courts, unified or individually, to deliver justice. That may have happened in Joseph Martin’s case.
But Martin and all criminal defendants should expect the final action in a case — a sentencing — to be issued by the judge most familiar with the case.
Opinion
Related Photos
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Joseph Martin, right, goes over documents with his employer Eric Scott outside of Circuit Court 6 Monday afternoon waiting for his sentencing hearing in connection with the 2008 Pendleton prison riot. John P. Cleary
Discussion
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