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Sentencing delayed is sentencing reduced (with victim's help)

By Douglas A. Berman

It is often said that justice delayed is justice denied, but this remarkable sentencing story from today's New York Times, headlined "4 Decades After Shooting, Effort to Make Punishment Fit the Crime," puts a different spin on that aphorism.  Here are snippets:What punishment should be imposed on a man who shot a police officer almost 40 years ago and fled to Canada, but went on to live an upstanding life as a husband and father who worked in a library? There was a rare answer here on Friday: Require him to give $250,000 to a foundation that helps the families of injured Chicago police officers. Joseph Pannell, 58, who admits that he shot a police officer here in 1969, will serve just 30 days in jail and two years? probation as part of a plea bargain that legal experts called extremely unusual...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on February 23, 2008 (boomark / email).