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Be tough, and smart, on crime

EDITORIAL | Nancy Gertner

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

February 22, 2012|By Nancy Gertner

IT WAS a despicable crime, and ended a life full of promise. A young woman, 27, was raped and killed in 1999 by a violent criminal who had picked her up on the side of the road after her car broke down.The perpetrator deserved to be caught, tried, and punished severely.

But the murder of Melissa Gosule - horrible as it was - does not justify the “three strikes and you’re out’’ bill that state lawmakers are considering. “Melissa’s bill,’’ as it is called, is supposedly aimed at keeping the most dangerous repeat offenders behind bars, without the possibility of parole. Its backers insist the bill is designed only for the worst of the worst, the habitually violent offenders presumably like Michael Gentile, the man convicted of Melissa’s murder.

What few are saying, however, is that Gentile’s record did not fit the “worst of the worst’’ profile. He had a non-violent adult record - petty larcenies, breaking and entering, marijuana possession, disorderly conduct, trespassing, and shoplifting - and the dispositions imposed by the various courts reflected the petty nature of the crimes. Should the judge who had Gentile before him on the second disorderly conduct charge, or the second trespassing charge, have thrown the book at him? Should the judge who sentenced Gentile for breaking and entering and larceny have given him more than two years in prison, when that was his first incarceration? In fact, nothing about his criminal record would have predicted that he was capable of murder.

Here is the problem: If the goal of the bill is to incapacitate people like Gentile, then Massachusetts will be locking up nonviolent repeat offenders for a long time. If the goal is to target “the worst of the worst,’’ Gentile would not have been among them.

Still, some say that repeat offenders should be put in jail for years in order to stop them from a life of crime. But that’s how California started on a path to overcrowded and dangerous prisons, leading to a court decree requiring the release of thousands of prisoners. California had used its three-strikes law to jail far more offenders than all the other states and the federal government combined.