Opinion

Need A Reason For Mandatory Minimums? Meet One Of The Worst Judges In America

Getty Images

Scott Greer Contributor
Font Size:

As Congress considered criminal justice reform legislation last week, a Kentucky judge was flaunting the kind of power that prompted legislators to institute mandatory minimums in the first place.

Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Olu Stevens made headlines after he dismissed a jury for a drug trial because it lacked diversity — against the objections of both the prosecution and defense. This was the second time Stevens, who is African-American, threw out a jury for lacking a sufficient number of minorities.

Last November, the Louisville-based judge got a whole new set of jurors for a theft trial after the previously-selected panel didn’t have any black participants. Stevens called it “troublesome” because the defendant happened to be black, which was enough of a reason to pick jurors based on the color of their skin.

The Kentucky Supreme Court is looking into the incident, investigating whether the judge has the authority to dismiss a jury for not being diverse enough. If the state court rules in favor of Stevens, that could give activist judges a disturbing precedent for arbitrary court rule.

But Stevens — who’s earned the nickname “Judge Selfie” for his photo-crazed social media presence — made a decision earlier this year that’s even worse than dismissing a jury for insufficient diversity, and directly relates to the need for mandatory minimum sentences. (RELATED: Criminal Justice Reform Is Bipartisanship At Its Worst)

Back in February, Stevens sentenced an African-American man convicted of participating in an armed home invasion to probation. Some of the reasoning behind the decision: One of the victims expressed fear around black males as a result of the traumatic experience. That victim was the five-year-old daughter of the family that was robbed at gun point.

This fear was mentioned in the family’s testimony to the court on how the home invasion continues to affect their lives. The then-three-year-old was watching cartoons when two men broke into her home with guns and terrorized her and her parents. The mother, Jordan Gray, wrote in a court testimony that the experience had made the daughter live “in constant fear of black men.”

“Whenever we are running errands, if we come across a black male, she holds me tight and begs me to leave,” Gray testified.

The judge was so incensed by the young child’s fear caused by the intense trauma, he rebuked the whole family for their prejudice. “I am offended… I am deeply offended that they would be victimized by an individual and express some kind of fear of all black men,” he said in his sentencing decision. (RELATED: Do Racial Slurs Justify Murder?)

He then gave the assailant, Gregory Wallace, five years of probation. Wallace was convicted of second-degree burglary, a Class C felony in Kentucky which often carries a sentence of five to ten years in jail. His accomplice, who was out on parole when the Gray family was robbed, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Stevens doubled down on his decision when he received backlash for the judgment and implied that the parents were racist. Legal experts interviewed by local media outlets said Stevens’s comments were unethical. While the prosecuting attorney for the case said that the sentence was outrageous because Wallace “put a gun in that little girl’s father’s face.”

That father, Tommy Gray, agreed with the prosecutor.

“If holding a little girl at gunpoint gets you probation, then our system is flawed.”

But Stevens did receive praise from some corners for his ruling.

“Racism is a repugnant disease that will not be cured until we have more people like Olu Stevens,” Aubrey Williams, a former head of Louisville’s NAACP chapter, told The (Louisville) Courier-Journal in response to the kerfuffle. Furthermore, Williams described the judge as a “breath of fresh air for the bench, for us as a people, and for the community in general.”

According to The Courier-Journal, several lawyers who’ve found themselves in Olu Stevens’s court have described him as a sanctimonious blowhard who has no tolerance for being told he’s wrong. Stevens even demanded when he was president of the local bar association that the organization become more “diverse.” He also has a record of leniency on convicts who have come before him, and several lawyers even say he makes decisions based on personal relationships.

Now imagine this judge deciding how much time drug dealers and other “non-violent” offenders should face if America did away with mandatory minimums. The supporters of extensive criminal justice reform want to banish mandated sentences for all non-violent offenders and give the judges the power to rule on a case-by-case basis.

If a judge held the clear bias of Olu Stevens, who has a record going light on violent offenders, obvious threats to society will be given slaps on the wrists and justice won’t be served.

In case you think Stevens is an extreme outlier and the vast majority of judges are actually objective arbiters of the law, here’s another recent example of judicial leniency.

The man who killed a New York City police officer last week was able to stay on the street due to a judge sentencing the criminal to rehab instead of jail time. The killer, Tyrone Howard, was convicted of dealing drugs, but Judge Edward McLaughlin was convinced it was a matter of addiction rather than criminality — even though the future cop-killer had been pushing poison most of his life and was considered a suspect in a 2009 shooting.

McLaughlin defended his decision by saying, “I don’t get a crystal ball when I get a robe.”

He’s right on that point.

That’s why it’s imperative to maintain mandatory minimums, even for non-violent offenders. Judges can have loopy ideas and power trips. Their decisions can be impaired by defendants’ sob stories and a desire to stand up for the latest social justice trend. Many times judges can overlook the good of the community in favor of the good of the moment.

Mandatory minimums check the potentially destructive consequences of a biased judgement by setting a clear standard on what punishment fits a crime. Rather than leaving it up to one man or one woman, it puts that all-important power in the hands of the people and ensures their interests are served.

The fact that one man has become so power-mad and racially-biased, he’s willing to dismiss an entire jury based on the color of their skin should serve as a serious wake-up call.

Follow Scott on Twitter

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel