JULY 12, 2016: Justice will never be legislated. Laws can be enacted, sentencing guidelines can be set, but ultimately, justice is relegated to a judge in our legal system. The judge learns the law and the guidelines and then makes a judgment on a case-by-case basis, applying the law and the guidelines in a given case with its unique circumstances and personalities.
Take my case for example. The magistrate judge in my case, Louise LaMothe, knew the law (trespassing on a military base) and the guidelines (a maximum of a $5,000 fine and six months in prison) and then heard my case. Actually she didn't hear much of the facts of my case because I freely chose to plead "no contest" which meant no trial. But in order to get a better sense of how to sentence me, she ordered a presentencing report from the probation office.
The forms for this report are some 42 pages long, and this one covered pretty much every aspect of my life: income, education, occupation, details of my immediate family as well as my extended family, my childhood, prior arrests, convictions, and much more. It's fair to say that the report gave LaMothe a good sense of me.