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Indiana Supreme Court addresses use of risk assessment tools in state sentencing

By Douglas A. Berman

The Indiana Supreme Court yesterday handed down an interesting and important decision concerning the use at sentencing of the kind of risk-assessment tools that are become increasingly more popular in those states adopting evidence-based sentencing practices.  Here is how the Court's unanimous ruling in Malenchik v. Indiana, No. 79S02-0908-CR-365 (Ind. June 9, 2010) (available here), gets started: Following his plea of guilty to Receiving Stolen Property, a class D felony, and his admission to being a Habitual Offender, the defendant was sentenced to a total of six years, with two years suspended.  The defendant appeals his sentence and presents two claims: (1) the trial court erroneously considered as an aggravating circumstance the numerical scores reported by the Tippecanoe County Probation Department after it conducted evaluations of the defendant using certain offender risk evaluation and assessment instruments; and (2) his sentence was inappropriate and should be revised...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on June 10, 2010 (boomark / email).