Now more case background:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politic...19215142.phpQuote:
Why did an S.F. judge give a 30-day sentence for armed robbery? Here's what case records show
By Bob EgelkoMarch 21, 2024
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer is shown in his chambers at the Phillip Burton Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in San Francisco on March 20, 2024.
Quote:
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer is shown in his chambers at the Phillip Burton Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in San Francisco on March 20, 2024.
Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle
After a federal judge sentenced a San Francisco man to 30 days in jail for holding a gun to a postal worker's head and stealing his mail, U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy called the sentence "unacceptable" and a threat to other postal carriers. A union leader said the judge's decision was "absurd."
The sentence generated outrage, and was held up by DeJoy and others as a prime example of the need for more severe punishment for crimes against mail carriers.
What they didn't mention was that federal prosecutors had acknowledged the defendant, Leroy Wise, would pose little or no danger to the public if released. Though they'd asked for a longer sentence than the judge imposed, prosecutors were seeking far less prison time than the maximum allowed by law. Nearly a year after the crime, the judge commended Wise for his remorse and rehabilitation and said he might avoid further confinement altogether if he continued his good behavior. Stanford criminal law professor Robert Weisberg said the sentence, though short, was far from unprecedented in U.S. courts.
Wise, then 33, entered the postal truck in San Francisco's Ingleside neighborhood in August 2022, threatened to shoot the driver and stole letters, packages and the driver's cellphone. He was accompanied by another man who has not been caught.
Wise was arrested at his home the next day and charged with armed robbery, punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison. He had one previous criminal conviction, for misdemeanor battery of a law enforcement officer in 2011.
A more complex picture emerges from court records in his case. They show, among other things, that Wise had survived a traumatic upbringing by a father who was a gang member and encouraged him to use drugs. While free on bond after his arrest, he has been recovering from a serious illness, supporting two children by working at a nonprofit shelter and expressed deep remorse for the robbery.
"Mr. Wise is a different person now," his lawyer, Assistant Federal Public Defender Elizabeth Falk, said last month in a filing with U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer.
Breyer evidently agreed. At a hearing last July, he praised Wise's post-arrest conduct and told him, "It's really important that you stay on this path. It's basically the difference of whether you go to jail or not."
The judge ultimately imposed a 30-day jail term, telling Wise at his Feb. 14 hearing that some period of confinement was needed to send a message to other would-be postal thieves. He also ordered Wise to pay $1,300 in restitution.
Four weeks later, DeJoy issued a statement calling Breyer's decision "simply unacceptable," and said it "sends a concerning message of encouragement to our nation's criminals and a message of disregard to our loyal public servants."
"This is absurd," Brian Renfroe, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said in a post on X. "It's time for federal sentencing to be strengthened for any and all crimes against letter carriers, especially when a life is threatened."
But Falk, Wise's defense lawyer, said the case must also be viewed through the broader lens of the events that have impacted Wise's life.
He was born in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood to young, unmarried parents. His father was arrested and jailed when Wise was a child, but after the father's release, his mother sent the 14-year-old to live with his father, with "devastating consequences," Falk said in a court filing.
Drug-users visited their home every day, Falk said, and Wise's father encouraged the youth to take marijuana to ease his pain. When Wise was 17, gang members broke in and shot his father in the face, and Wise made the 911 call that helped save the man's life.
Wise's mother refused to take him back, Falk said, so he "couch-surfed between aunts" for years while graduating high school, holding jobs at a hospital, in construction and landscaping, teaching classes, working most recently at a shelter and fathering and raising two children.
The decline of the COVID pandemic cost Wise his job at the shelter in 2022, Falk said, and he fell into anxiety and deep depression that he tried to treat with Xanax. Then in August 2022, Wise "allowed himself to revert to the 17-year-old kid who came to understand violent street crime as routine" and "made the terrible, awful decision to target a postal worker in an armed robbery," a decision that Falk said Wise would do anything to take back.
Wise pleaded guilty to two felonies and, with a federal magistrate's approval, was sent to a halfway house, then to live with his fiancee and their two children while awaiting sentencing. He was hospitalized for a month last summer with a severe stomach infection that required surgery, but has regained his full-time job as a night-shift supervisor at the shelter and has not used drugs for 18 months, Falk said.
"His life has taken a significant upturn as a result of this federal prosecution, and he is grateful for that," Falk said in her sentencing memo to Breyer, who described it as "the most convincing memo I've seen" in his judicial career. Meanwhile, she said, Wise's father has recovered from his life of gangs and drugs and is teaching at a private school.
Considering Wise's "entire life story," Falk said, "the Court should conclude that Mr. Wise's core is that of a rule-following person who has the wherewithal and the determination to live the rest of his life in a law-abiding manner."
Federal prosecutors, somewhat surprisingly, offered a similar assessment.
"The government … acknowledges that Wise has performed well on pretrial release and has thoughtfully expressed an understanding of the harm his actions caused, as well as his remorse," Assistant U.S. Attorney Wendy Garbers said in a court filing. "Wise himself does not appear to pose a significant risk of reoffending."
But she said a prison sentence was needed to deter attacks on postal workers, who "have faced an unprecedented increase in robberies and assaults in recent years," with San Francisco among the hardest-hit areas. Garbers asked for a 28-month sentence, less than half the 57-month minimum recommended by the U.S. Sentencing Commission for the crimes.
Falk countered that federal judges are not bound by the commission's guidelines. She cited recent cases in which Breyer and another judge had examined defendants' records and their behavior and decided not to send them to prison despite guidelines that recommended even longer terms than those covering Wise's crimes.
Weisberg, a legal scholar and co-director of Stanford's Criminal Justice center, said that Wise's sentence was neither extraordinary nor shocking in a system that gives judges considerable latitude.
"Breyer may be bolder than other federal judges, because of his preeminence, but no, I don't think this is unique," Weisberg told the Chronicle, referring to the judge's status as a 26-year court veteran and the brother of now-retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. "I'm sure there are plenty of examples around the country that don't get the attention of a high-level federal official" like the postmaster general.
Posted 03/06/2024 5:18 pm
