This bill would repeal Alabama's Habitual Felony Offender Act (HFOA), provide for resentencing for defendants whose sentences were based on HFOA, and make nonsubstantive, technical revisions to update the existing code language to current style. Show Currently, HFOA creates widespread sentencing disparity and unjustly incarcerates too many people for far too long. Overly punitive policies like the habitual offender law have contributed to Alabama's horrendously overcrowded prisons. StatusOn February 2, HB 107 was read and assigned to the House Judiciary Committee where it pended committee action. On May 17, HB 107 failed due to the legislative session being officially declared "sine die", or in other words finished. Take ActionBackground on HFOAIn 2020, more than 500 people were serving life without parole under Alabama’s draconian “Habitual Felony Offender Act” or HFOA. The law — passed at the dawn of the tough-on-crime era — mandates longer sentences each time someone commits a felony, regardless of the time between offenses. The law was amended in 2000, ostensibly to make it less severe, but it still mandates a life without parole (LWOP) sentence for anyone convicted of a Class A offense if they have three prior felonies on their record and one of them is a Class A offense, even if the prior offenses were committed decades ago. Class A offenses include murder and rape, but also robbery, burglary, drug trafficking and manufacturing of a controlled substance. This means someone could be sentenced to die in prison for a single burglary or robbery and three prior forgery or drug convictions. This outsized punishment has resulted in hundreds of people being sent to prison for the rest of their natural lives for a handful of offenses committed when they were young, many involving no bodily injury. In 2014, Alabama’s legislature repealed the retroactive application of the 2000 amendment to the HFOA, taking away the only avenue available for this population to apply for a sentence reduction. The legislature did this at the request of Alabama’s Court of Criminal Appeals, which complained that the law was being used by “prolific pro se litigants to file frivolous petitions.” The result of the repeal means hundreds of people who wouldn’t be sentenced to LWOP today are trapped in Alabama’s violent and overcrowded prisons until they die with no legal means for release. Visit our Alabama Smart Justice website for the full Habitual Felony Offender Act report. Additional Ways To Get InvolvedNews
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This bill would repeal Alabama's Habitual Felony Offender Act (HFOA), provide for resentencing for defendants whose sentences were based on HFOA, and revise sentencing standards in certain circumstances. Our PositionWe support this bill. Currently, HFOA creates widespread sentencing disparity and unjustly incarcerates too many people for far too long. Overly punitive policies like the habitual offender law have contributed to Alabama's horrendously overcrowded prisons. Despite new sentencing guidelines, lawmakers left HFOA on the books for prosecutors to use at their discretion. This adds to sentencing disparities and creates a “trial tax,” in which individuals who don’t accept plea deals face a much longer possible sentence. HFOA has essentially been weaponized to pressure people to plead guilty. Follow Along on FastDemocracy!Click the play button below to see more information about HB 56 and other priority criminal legal reform bills — including where they are in the Legislature, the latest versions, and how you can sign up for e-mail updates from Fast Democracy.
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As part of the Justice Reinvestment project, analysts from the Council of State Governments (CSG) looked at how the habitual felon law is used in North Carolina. In general, the analysts recognized the law as a valuable tool for prosecutors (its use was on the rise between 2005 and 2009), but they also cited some indications that the law could benefit from a little recalibration. For instance, they noted that a clear majority of defendants convicted under the law get sentenced in the mitigated range. According to N.C. Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission data from fiscal year 2009-2010, 69 percent of habitual felons received mitigated sentences (compared to 27 percent of felonies generally), with an additional 11 percent sentenced at the very bottom of the presumptive range. That large percentage of mitigated-range sentences was viewed as an indication that the system is uncomfortable with cliff effect that exists under current law: all habitualized crimes, regardless of offense class, are sentenced as Class C felonies—even though most principal felonies triggering the law’s application are Class G, H, or I offenses. At the same time, CSG focus group meetings with prosecutors and law enforcement officials indicated that for some offenders—especially those involved in breaking or entering crimes—the habitual punishment was appropriate and couldn’t come soon enough. Based on those findings, the Justice Reinvestment Act (S.L. 2011-192) made two key changes related to the habitual felon law. The first change is an amendment to our existing habitual felon law. The second is the creation of a new habitual breaking and entering status offense. I’ll discuss the first change today and then walk through the new habitual B & E law in a post next week. Under the revised habitual felon law, effective for principal felonies committed on or after December 1, 2011, a habitualized crime will be punished “at a felony class level that is four classes higher than the principal felony . . . but under no circumstances . . . higher than a Class C felony.” G.S. 14-7.6. The practical result of that change is that habitualized Class I felonies will be sentenced as Class E felonies; Class H felonies will be sentenced as Class D felonies; and everything else will be Class C, just like under existing law. (A few readers may remember that the Sentencing Commission offered a similar alternative—a three-class enhancement—back in 2002.) A novelty of the new graduated enhancement is that some Class I felons habitualized to Class E will fall into “I/A” cells on the sentencing grid, making it possible for the first time that a habitual felon could get probation. It’s not obvious how the law’s requirement that habitual sentences run consecutively to any sentence being served applies to a suspended sentence. It could mean that the probation period itself cannot begin until any other sentence being served is completed (a so-called “contingent” case under G.S. 15A-1346(a), described here). Or it could mean that the suspended sentence must be set to run consecutively to other sentences being served in the event of activation. I have already received a number of inquiries, many of them from inmates, about whether the changes to the habitual felon law apply retroactively. The effective date clause in the Justice Reinvestment Act makes pretty clear that the changes apply only to principal (fourth or subsequent) felonies that occur on or after December 1, 2011. S.L. 2011-192, sec. 3.(e). That section goes on to state explicitly that “[p]rosecutions for offenses committed before the effective date of this act are not abated or affected by this act,” making it pretty clear to me that no retroactive application was intended. I am sometimes asked whether the “retroactive application” provision for “significant change[s] in law” in the motion for appropriate relief article (specifically, G.S. 15A-1415(b)(7)) allows a judge to apply the law to someone already convicted and sentenced. For the reasons stated in this prior post, I don’t think it does. |
Which of the following statements best explains habitual-felon laws?
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