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20 U. Dayton L. Rev. 779 (1994-1995)
Truth in Sentencing - Why States Should Make Violent Criminals Do Their Time

handle is hein.journals/udlr20 and id is 787 raw text is: TRUTH IN SENTENCING-WHY STATES SHOULD MAKE VIOLENT CRIMINALS DO THEIR TIME James Wootton* I. INTRODUCTION More and more state legislators are coming to realize that America's criminal justice system is failing, and that too many Americans literally are dying from a severe case of bad public policy. ITEM: Consider a heinous crime that has shocked the nation. Twelve-year- old Polly Klaas of Petaluma, California, was abducted from her home during a sleepover with two friends on October 1, 1993. During the abduction, both of Polly's friends were gagged and bound by the assailant. Little Polly, forcibly taken into the night, was later murdered. Richard Allen Davis, the alleged assailant, already had been sentenced to sixteen years in prison for kidnapping, but was released on June 27, 1993, after serving only eight years of that sentence.' ITEM: James Jordan, the fifty-six-year-old father of basketball star Michael Jordan, was fatally shot in the chest on Interstate 95 in North Carolina on July 23, 1993. Charged in the murder of James Jordan were Larry Martin Demery and Daniel Andre Green. Demery had been charged in three previous cases involving theft, robbery, and forgery. Green had been paroled after serving two years of a six-year sentence for an assault in which he had hit a man in the head with an axe, leaving his victim in a coma.' ITEM: Sister Mary Ann Glinka, aged fifty and a member of the Franciscan Sisters of Baltimore Motherhouse in Baltimore, Maryland, was strangled to death at the convent. Baltimore police concluded that Sister Mary Ann was murdered during a robbery at the convent. On March 21, 1993, Melvin L. Jones was arrested and subsequently charged with robbery and the murder of Sister Mary Ann. The alleged assailant had been sentenced in North Carolina in 1979 to eighteen to twenty years in prison for voluntary manslaughter, but had escaped on November 27, 1986. In 1989, Jones was arrested again in Baltimore for three burglaries, but let out on parole in 1990. In 1991, the North Carolina judiciary sentenced Jones to a year in jail on the escape charge, and contacted Maryland * President, Safe Streets Alliance, Washington, D.C. This Article is based upon an article prepared by Mr. Wootton for The Heritage Foundation. 1. Press Release, Representative Jim Chapman (D-TX), December 6, 1993. 2. Michael Tackett & Bob Sakamoto, Suspects in Jordan Slaying Have Previous Records, The Two Teenagers Charged in the Killing of Michael Jordan's Father Were Arraigned on Monday, CHICAGO TRIB., Aug. 17, 1993, at D1.

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