Picatinny Abuse Sentence 'Defies Common Sense,' Appeals Court Says
ALM Media
Updated
Sentencing for state-law criminal offenses in federal court is no simple matter, as an appeals court's split ruling vacating sentences in a horrific child abuse case shows.
The U.S. Court of Appeals vacated sentences imposed on John and Carolyn Jackson for abuse and neglect of their three foster children, finding the sentencing judge misapplied the Assimilative Crimes Act. The act governs adoption of state criminal law when conduct on federal property is not punishable by federal law.
The ACA requires a judge to pick an analogous federal guideline for sentencing purposes, but the sentencing judge in the Jackson case failed to do so. The judge also neglected to make requisite findings of fact with respect to the guidelines calculation and aggravating or mitigating factors, the appeals court said.
The appeals court was sharply critical of sentences imposed on the pair as unduly lenient: two years of imprisonment and three years of supervised release for Carolyn and two years of probation, a fine and community service for John. The couple he was a major in the U.S. Army were charged with breaking a child's bones, withholding food and water and denying the children medical attention while living at Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County.
Judges Robert Cowen and Julio Fuentes participated in the majority decision, while Judge Theodore McKee issued a dissent that argued U.S. District Judge Katharine Hayden handled the sentencing properly.
The couple were each charged with two counts of assault under federal law, but were acquitted of those charges. They also were tried on 13 counts of endangering the welfare of a child under state law. Carolyn was convicted of 12 of those counts and John was convicted of 10.
Cowen, writing for the majority, said the assault guideline was sufficiently analogous to the offenses the Jacksons were convicted of, rejecting Hayden's conclusion that no sufficiently analogous guideline existed. Cowen said Hayden committed reversible error under a requirement of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines that a judge find an analogous guideline in any felony case where no guideline has been expressly promulgated. Hayden found no sufficiently analogous guideline exists in the case, but the appeals court said the assault guideline fit that definition. In addition, Hayden again committed reversible error by refusing to engage in the requisite fact-finding to determine if guideline adjustments applied, Cowen said. Furthermore, Hayden erred by focusing on state sentencing practices, to the exclusion of federal sentencing principles, Cowen wrote.
"Instead of acting as a federal court applying the well-established federal sentencing scheme, [Hayden] essentially acted as a state court applying the various intricate aspects of New Jersey's sentencing practices," the appeals court said.
While Fuentes would vacate the sentences based on the procedural errors without considering their unreasonableness, Cowen found them substantively unreasonable and that Hayden substituted her own view of the evidence for the jury's verdict. He noted that the couple forced the children to ingest hot sauce and red pepper flakes and to consumer large amounts of sodium. One of the children was hospitalized for hypernatremia, an excessive sodium level. Another, Joshua, had a life-threatening bile duct perforation, a serious brain injury, a fractured skull, a fractured right arm, a spinal problem and a finger that had to be partly amputated due to gangrene. He was also admitted to a hospital with scalded skin syndrome. Joshua died a few days before his third birthday, although the Jacksons were not charged with his death.
"It defies common sense to believe that the jury found that defendants physically assaulted their adopted children, withheld sufficient nourishment and water from them, and forced them to ingest hot sauce, red pepper flakes and raw onion but that such conduct did not cause the marks and bruises, the malnourishment, the hypernatremia, and the children's other injuries and medical issues," Cowen wrote. "Given these circumstances, the District Court committed reversible error by downplaying the severity of defendants' criminal conduct."
McKee, writing in his dissent, said the federal assault guideline was not sufficiently analogous to the state statute criminalizing endangering the welfare of a child. He also said the lack of a sufficiently analogous guideline meant Hayden did not need to conduct fact-finding to determine whether guideline adjustments applied.
Herbert Waldman of Javerbaum, Wurgaft, Hicks, Kahn, Wikstrom & Sinins in Springfield, who represented Carolyn Jackson, said he was considering seeking en banc review of the decision by the Third Circuit. He said the ACA is "very rarely used" and that was a factor in the decision. But the case was also impacted by the difficulty of interpreting the endangering statute, which he called "a mess" and "very confusing and poorly drafted."
Waldman added that the majority opinion appeared to allow a determination by a preponderance of the evidence that the parents caused Joshua's perforated bile duct, a question that was not put before the jury. The government said that injury was caused by a blunt instrument, but a defense expert argued that the bile duct sometimes ruptures spontaneously, according to Waldman. "That implicates the right to a trial by jury," Waldman said.
Louise Arkel of the Office of the Federal Public Defender represented John Jackson. She did not return a call. John Romano argued for the state, assisted by Mark Coyne. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, William Skaggs, declined to comment on the ruling.
