TN: Under new law, certain sex offenses will have to serve 100% of sentence.
Tennessee lawmakers passed a “Truth in Sentencing” law that requires certain violent or sexual offenders to serve 100% of their sentence. The law affects offenses such as rape, sexual battery, continuous sexual abuse of a child, sexual battery by an authority figure, incest, promoting prostitution, aggravated child abuse, domestic assault, aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor and trafficking for a commercial sex act.
Well this would make a great reason to go to trial. Prosecutors just lost a bargining chip by making deals. Now if someone has no choice, why would they not go to trial? No deals means courts will be backed up with cases as the defense lawyers drag things out for as long as possible.
Will also force witnesses who could have otherwise not had to show up to court (IE young children) to now have to testify in court. This really hurts the victims as well as the accused. A lose-lose situation.
CherokeeJack, I am not sure that is the case in that usually the plea is something like we offer you 3 years or go to trial it is 20 years. The deal is the same, it is just where ever you end up you do the full time. Personally I just have an issue with all these carve outs all the time. Whether it is a sexual offense or not. The rules should be the same. imho.
It also never makes sense to me that the people they consider the worst are the ones they offer little to no help in rehabilitation, which means to me they don’t care if they cause harm again. They are willing to put their constituents at more of a risk.
Mp
Just like the news, reporters and some so called experts throwing out 70 to 90% recidivism rates for sex offenses. That is a total bull crap. They also say once a sex offender always a sex offender.
The prosector slipped in something during my hearing “Oh I am going to dig up your secrects, I am sure there are more victims”. Guess what, she found nothing.
This may offend some but just going to make some comparisons to prove a point how judgemental society is:
All sex offenders will reoffend and cannot help themselves
All black people steal
All homeless people are lazy and need to find a job
All Jews are stingy
All white people are racists
Once a felon, always a felon
Or how about the ,All blonde chicks are ditzy
I could go on and on. Some people, you can never change their mind, others just need to be shown with proof of success.
They used to have the same type sentencing in Georgia in the late 90’s. They called it the “7 Deadly Sins”. It consisted of murder, sex offenses,armed robbery etc. An inmate was required to serve 90% of their sentence before being eligible for ANYTHING. It was later found unconstitutional and was done away with.
Michigan had “truth in sentencing” years ago for all offenses, but all it did was overcrowd the prisons.
If Tennessee is doing this for one class of crimes, it should be for all. Oh wait, only sex offenders are violent and dangerous.
Florida’s prison system quietly added a rule in 2014 that prevented most types of sex offenses from being eligible for gain time awards…
Sc
I was sent to prison in February of 2014. I served 18 months of my 21 month sentence. I earned gain time working in the kitchen. I earned gained time after I had reduced my time to the mandatory time that I had to serve. When in 2014 was this rule implemented,
@bwj,
Charges (not convictions) that occurred after October 1,2014.
100% is redefined every two years, After the Fact, with an impunity that has become, like handing out traffic tickets