A U.S. district judge gave Frederick Turner a 40-year sentence because the laws around stacked charges and mandatory minimums didn’t allow him discretion to change the punishment, according to an article by Clark Neily in Free Society. 

Turner’s charges were “two counts related to dealing methamphetamine and two counts of possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime,” wrote Neily. 

“The only thing I can do is express my displeasure,” said Judge T. S. Ellis III. “I chafe a bit at that, but I follow the law.”

Turner received five years for possessing a firearm on the first count and 25 years for the second firearm count. He also received 10 years for the methamphetamine charges with all of this sentencing “stacked.” 

Following the trial, prosecutors expressed remorse and said that if Turner waived his appeal and gave them names of other drug dealers, they’d support a reduced sentence. Paul St. Louis, a man who sat on the jury that convicted Turner in 2018, said he would have opted for jury nullification if he had known the punishment.

“If anyone who sat in that trial said that person deserved 40 years, I’d question their judgment about everything in their life,” said St. Louis. “The reality is: I didn’t have all the information, and if I did, I’m not sending that man to prison for 40 years. Just no way.”

Due to the lengthy sentence, Turner landed in a maximum-security prison. In June 2019, Turner died in prison. The official cause of death was suicide.

“Turner’s four-decade sentence seems less like a punishment for a crime and more like a warning to other defendants: Either take the plea deal or experience the terror of the trial penalty,” the article said.

According to Neily, who is the senior vice-president for legal studies at the Cato Institute, the language of today’s criminal legal system is far from the original language described in the Bill of Rights, which focused on the resolution of criminal charges more than any other topic. Today’s system is similar to an industrial assembly line that excludes fairness or ordinary citizens in the process, he wrote.

“What on earth would persuade nearly everyone who gets prosecuted in our system to exchange the possibility of acquittal and freedom—especially in a system bristling with defendant-favoring procedural protections—for the certainty of conviction and punishment? The answer is pressure, and lots of it,” reported Free Society.

Scholars at the Cato Institute have documented many devices used by prosecutors to convince defendants to condemn themselves. These devices include threats of the death penalty, a lengthy mandatory minimum prison sentence, pretrial detention, and threats of indicting family members if the defendant goes to trial. 

According to Neily, the role of ordinary citizens in criminal juries has transformed from determining the wisdom, fairness, or legitimacy of any given prosecution to matching facts in a case. Citizens no longer have a voice in the punishment of criminal defendants because most defendants refuse to participate in a public and adversarial trial.

The judge, prosecutors, and other players in the legal system feed juries misleading narratives during orientation. Juries hear that they don’t have the power to decide to acquit or convict a defendant, only to find the facts and match them to the law, wrote Neily.

“They may even be asked whether they are familiar with the concept of ‘jury nullification’ and dismissed from the process of jury selection if they evince support for the concept.”

Neily described the work of scholars at the Cato Institute on two reforms, both of which aimed to counter the plea-bargaining process in an effort to return juries to their original role. One, described below, requires support from policymakers, judges, and legislatures. The second is a video campaign to educate jurors on jury independence and the historic role of jurors in the criminal legal system.

Evidence of the much-needed reform is that 15% of the 4,000 registrants of the National Registry of Exonerations were convicted via false plea deals.

Professors Kiel Brennan-Marquez, Darryl Brown, and Stephen Henderson said the first reform would be to audit the plea deal process by holding a “trial lottery.” 

The goal is to take several cases where the prosecutor and defense attorney reached a plea deal but had not yet entered it, then send the case to trial and see if the government could persuade a 12-person jury to reach a conviction.

If the case results in a conviction, the defendant still receives the agreed upon plea deal, but if the trial results in acquittal, the defendant is released.

“A criminal justice system can function properly only when it earns and enjoys the confidence of the citizenry it serves,” said the article. “A system that routinely cuts corners, flouts constitutional guarantees of due process, coerces guilty pleas, and systemically misleads citizen-jurors about their true role in the adjudicative process does not merit the trust, support, or confidence of the public. Fortunately, we can change that—and we will.”