SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Minorities who have been charged with crimes in Utah can argue against lengthy conviction sentences if they can provide proof of racial bias in the criminal justice system.
The Utah Sentencing Commission approved the guideline in January, but it does not appear many defense attorneys have tried to make the argument yet, The Salt Lake Tribune reported Saturday.
Judges look at many factors during sentencing, including a defendant’s age and criminal history, but attorneys can now bring up racial issues.
Under the guidelines, a judge must be convinced that the offender’s minority group is overrepresented in Utah’s prison, and there is some reason to believe that bias, unconscious or not, affected the case.
“If police or anyone else in the criminal justice system displayed some bias in a specific case, a sentencing judge could mitigate the sentence,” former commission Director Marshall Thompson said. “Just knowing that you could be held accountable for racial bias at sentencing will hopefully bring some improvements, even if it isn’t ultimately argued in court.”
Thompson now works for the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole, but was commission director when the rule was first debated in September 2019.
The move came after state data showed that the percentage of minorities among new prisoners was increasing. Despite previous reform efforts, ethnic minorities made up about 45% of new prisoners, increasing from about 35% three years earlier.
The change addressed symptoms of racial bias but doesn’t address the root causes, said Jason Groth, with the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah.
“Implicit bias is going to be extremely hard to show without data analysis,” Groth said. “It’s really hard to figure out what’s going on in someone’s brain.”
