Misdemeanor Probation Revocations and Proportionality

This wikilog article is a draft, it was not published yet.

by: Ryan • August 7, 2012 • no comments

I'm linking to a post from the old website, because I'm not sure if this one made the transition to the new website.

Very straightforward issue: is giving someone a year on a misdemeanor revocation a violation of the proportionality clause because the most they could get on a felony revocation would be six months (or in some cases 60 days)?

This is an easy issue to preserve but a hard issue to keep from mooting out. But in two cases (that I know of) the issue has made it to the Court of Appeals. One of the cases has been under advisement for 9-10 months. The other has been briefed and is awaiting oral argument, having survived the state's motion to dismiss as moot.

At the trial level, the state routinely makes an argument that relies on the post-prison supervision period that is attached to a felony revocation. Unfortunately, for the state, that argument was rejected some time ago by the Court of Appeals, which I mention in a footnote in the memo attached to the post I linked to above.