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Sentencing Guidelines Commission workshops draft legislative changes, takes no formal votes
Summary
At a Nov. 20 workshop, the Sentencing Guidelines Commission reviewed draft legislative recommendations — including a new severity-tier for intentional great bodily harm, changes to assault and vehicular offense rankings, and statutory-maximum adjustments — and gave staff direction; no policy votes were taken.
MINNEAPOLIS — The Sentencing Guidelines Commission met in a special workshop on Nov. 20 to review draft legislative recommendations the panel plans to include in its January report to the Legislature, but commissioners did not take formal action on the proposals.
Chair Mitchell opened the meeting and said the session was intended as an informal opportunity to "workshop" ideas and give staff direction, not to adopt final language. Commissioner Middlebrook moved to approve the agenda; Commissioner Keith seconded the motion, and Director Reitz announced the agenda passed by an 8-0 roll-call vote.
Director Reitz, the commission's staff director, led a page-by-page review of the draft package. He said recommendation 1 would require submission of sentencing worksheets to the commission to complete its dataset and noted that, while Minnesota law excludes the Guidelines from mandatory-life cases, the commission has tracked life sentences since 2005. Reitz pointed out one apparent omission in the staff's prior lists: "first-degree murder of an unborn child" carries a mandatory life sentence in statute and should be included for data completeness.
The panel discussed a proposed change to first-degree assault in recommendation 2: the staff recommends creating a new severity-level-9 offense for intentionally inflicting great bodily harm and moving some elements and the current 20-year statutory maximum to the new offense while lowering the statutory maximum for the existing first-degree-assault offense to 15 years. Reitz said the change would restore an older form of the offense and that his review of a year's complaints suggested about two-thirds of current first-degree-assault cases would still qualify for the higher tier.
Reitz also summarized an impact analysis estimating that if the commission's recommendations were adopted by the Legislature, net prison-bed savings originally estimated at about 875 beds would be reduced by roughly 41 beds because many cases would shift into the new higher tier, yielding a net projection of about 834 beds avoided.
Commissioners pressed staff on how specific the commission should be about statutory maxima. Chair Mitchell and Commissioner Middlebrook expressed concern that the commission's role is to rank offenses and advise the Legislature, not necessarily to prescribe precise statutory-maximum terms. "I'm wondering if in that situation, it's an overstep for us to tell [the Legislature] what to change it to," Mitchell said. Several members suggested the commission should explain how rankings interact with statutory maximums and urge the Legislature to review relevant statutes rather than setting specific numbers in every instance.
Other proposals under discussion included increasing the statutory maximum for domestic assault by strangulation from three to five years to match an uprating from severity level 4 to 5; a uniform three-year maximum for felony fourth-degree assault crimes when the commission's grid ranking warrants it; defining "demonstrable bodily harm" in statute; and adding higher tiers and selected DWI-style sentencing and pretrial-release conditions for certain criminal vehicular operation and criminal vehicular-homicide cases.
On recommendation 8, which would incorporate several DWI sentencing and release requirements into certain criminal-vehicular offenses, multiple commissioners said they were uncomfortable with the commission drafting detailed statutory language for the Legislature. Commissioner Middlebrook said she preferred the commission identify specific points for legislative review (for example, that conditional release applies in felony DWI but not in some vehicular-homicide provisions) rather than submit complete statutory text.
No motions to adopt any of the draft legislative recommendations were made or voted on at the workshop. The commission agreed to incorporate members' comments into staff drafts and to revisit the report at the commission's December meeting. Director Reitz provided logistical instructions for the separate public hearing planned to begin at 2 p.m., and Chair Mitchell adjourned the special meeting.
What's next: The commission will review a revised report at its Dec. 17 meeting and hold a public hearing later the same day; any formal legislative recommendations would be finalized and transmitted in the commission's January report to the Legislature.
