Are the following sexual assault sentences typical?

March 21, 2008 2:19 AM

This New York Times article about an INS agent's alleged coercion and sexual assault of a green card applicant brings up several past cases. All ended in relatively lenient sentencing. And so, I have to ask: Can you even be sentenced to "weekends in jail?"

The Times piece briefly mentions adjudicator Kelvin R. Owens, who was "...convicted in 2005 of sexually assaulting a 45-year-old woman during her citizenship interview in the federal building, and sentenced to weekends in jail for six months." It also names agent Eddie Romualdo Miranda, who, "charged with demanding sexual favors from a 29-year-old Vietnamese woman in exchange for approving her citizenship application...was acquitted of a felony sexual battery charge last August, but pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery and was sentenced to probation." It being that I understand little to nothing (read: nothing) about legal matters, I'm curious as to the following:

1) In terms of jurisdiction, it looks like Owens was tried on a federal level, while Miranda was tried at a local level. Any idea why?

2) Would the above sentences be considered typical for the charges on which Owens and Miranda were found guilty (sexual assault and misdemeanor sexual battery, respectively)?

3) I'm assuming that Owens and Miranda could have been tried for extortion, in addition to sexual assault or battery. Why weren't they?

4) Kind of random, but given the power dynamic, I'm curious as to whether Owens or Miranda's sentences would have differed if, say, rather than victimizing immigration applicants, either had coerced and assaulted a lower-level employee (i.e., if the crimes had a sexual harassment component)?

Apologies for the awkwardness/wordiness (this is my first post), as well as my general cluelessness. Cheers.

posted by evidenceofabsence to law & government (8 comments total)

I not a lawyer, so I cant answer your specific questions, however ..... "Can you even be sentenced to "weekends in jail?"....... the answer is most assuredly "Yes." (atleast insofar as my experience goes in the US of A) On the few instances I have been involved with law enforcement and the courts, I saw several cases/situations of people serving their sentence (in jail) only on weekends.
posted by jmnugent at 3:13 AM on March 21, 2008

As a point of interest, and only that, in Australia you can do weekend detention.
I think part of it means the person can still go to work and provide for their family, but their fun is kiboshed.

I know of a chap who had it towards the end of his normal jail sentence. After that he had community service at a volunteer organisation where I was working. His was a white collar crime involving a government department.
posted by taff at 3:40 AM on March 21, 2008

Weekends used to be fiarly common here until they brought out the house arrest bracelets. Now they can achive the same thing without the expense of putting you in jail.

Also as a bit of weirdness I know someone who while serving weekends applied for a weekend pass (nothing else to do in jail after all) and got it.
posted by Mitheral at 4:28 AM on March 21, 2008

(1) Federal criminal jurisdiction is (basically) discretionary. In the vast majority of cases, the US Attorney's office won't press federal charges against someone who is also facing state charges for the same overall circumstances/situation. These two cases took place in different times with different federal judicial districts and hence charging decisions were made by different US Attorney offices and (potentially) different policy staffing at the Criminal Division in Washington.

(2) These days, probation is a very common sentence for a first misdemeanor conviction, and six months of weekends is at worst a mainstream sentence for a misdemeanor or low-grade first-offense felony. I think that the Times article is a bit sloppy in describing Owen's convictions. It reads: "convicted in 2005 of sexually assaulting," but in fact he was probably convicted of a misdemeanor or a very low level felony. Such a short sentence would have been impossible if the actual crime he was convicted of was something legally equivalent to rape.

(3) In addition to Federal vs. State, all charging decisions are discretionary. You don't charge more than you want the accused to be punished for -- which is a subjective decision of prosecutors -- and beyond that you only charge the crimes that you are sure you can prove. Sometimes the weakness of your case requires you drop certain charges for a plea bargain.

We don't really know what Owens' and Miranda's defenses were, and we don't know what weaknesses their accusers may have had in terms of credibility on the stand. Miranda was actually acquitted of felony sexual battery. That data point means that there was some pretty serious weakness in some aspect of the government's case. That he thereafter plead to misdemeanor battery suggests there may have been a plea bargain which involved dropping extortion or other charges.

(4) is a good question...
posted by MattD at 4:43 AM on March 21, 2008

The official jargon for weekends in jail is "work release."
posted by Carol Anne at 5:38 AM on March 21, 2008

Can you even be sentenced to "weekends in jail?"

Yes. I had a friend who spent a large portion of his senior year of high school doing this (he got arrested for starting a bar brawl as an 18 year old); he eventually had to miss much of the rest of school year because he stopped showing up for his weekends in jail so they sent him in full time for the rest of his sentence -- serving weekends only is a privilege that can be revoked.

1) In terms of jurisdiction, it looks like Owens was tried on a federal level, while Miranda was tried at a local level. Any idea why?

From the article:

The agency says it has tripled its investigative staff since then, and counts only 165 serious complaints pending. But it stopped posting an e-mail address and phone number for such complaints last year, said Jan Lane, chief of security and integrity, because it lacks the staff to cull the thousands of mostly irrelevant messages that resulted. Immigrants, she advised, should report wrongdoing to any law enforcement agency they trust.

So there is inconsistency from the very beginning, depending on what agency you report the crime to and how they decide to handle it.
posted by Forktine at 7:02 AM on March 21, 2008

“I came from a different country, too,” he said. “I got my green card just like you.”

That's what I was thinking too, Pollomacho. Anyway, I think it's worth noting that this isn't unusual. A lot of USCIS workers that interview green card applicants are recent immigrants.
posted by ob at 7:14 AM on March 21, 2008

Here in Arizona, there are several cases where people who are convicted of DUIs get to be guest of Gestapo Sheriff Joe Arpaio for a series of weekends -- the manager of one of my parents' stores was one of those guests.
posted by notjustfoxybrown at 10:41 AM on March 21, 2008