The judge’s style sucked, but to be fair, he does have a valid point.
Here is a comment at Abovethelaw.com by a guy who worked for a federal prosecutor as a law student:
“Speaking as someone who worked for a federal prosecutor back in law school, I can tell you that I could tell a person’s race by looking at their rapsheet. How? If someone had a number of serious initial accusations, (sometimes even dozens) that were all plead down to misdemeanors or just flat-out dismissed, he was white. If someone had a number of unserious accusations, none of which were ever dropped our pled down, he was black.
The sentencing guidelines were implemented in part to end race-based disparities in sentencing, and have done some good work on that (well, except for the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparities). People are doing this stuff unconsciously, and DA’s, PD’s and judges should really be focused on identifying and counteracting their own unconscious biases. Because most of us do have them. And they aren’t all about race, but those tend to be the most profound.”
I can tell you the part time law clerk’s observations are exactly inverse in some jurisdictions, where black defendants are clearly career criminals, and sometimes violent ones, who have spent only a few months in custody.
There often IS a disparity in outcomes between comparable offenses, usually to the disadvantage of the black defendants. This is often due to the quality of legal counsel they had, and poor whites will have fared just as badly.
I am with you on this. The judge may have been less than tactful and possibly coming from an emotional, instead of a rational place, but in my area, I have seen so many people (generally white, often middle class, but even lower class) skate on crimes when they should have served even some time. My dad and I both are conservative, but both served on juries where the black defendent was being charged with a felony: one was for a domestic abuse, where the case wasn’t clear-cut (she was also fighting him and admitted as much, had broken up with him and didn’t want anything to do with the case), and the other was for a minor SHOPLIFTING (!!) where the guy happened to tell the guard he was going to punch him. This turned it into a felony.
In the meantime, my spousal abuser was allowed a deferred prosecution, so he has a completely clear record, and there were independent witnesses to his actions! I also know of drug dealers who have been caught with major amounts in their cars, who get work release or deferred prosecutions, and end up with the charges dropped or lowered. So, the dude who stole shrimp drunk goes to prison but the guy selling meth and oxy gets a clean record after 2 years of probation?
All you have to do is spend a day or so in a courtroom to know that what this judge said is true. Not all the time, certainly, but generally, 90%, true.
Not that I think he should have said as much from the bench of course. He probably was just having a bad day.