Jane Doe January by Emily Winslow

Author:Emily Winslow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-04-18T16:00:00+00:00

11

Evan looks older on this call, and more tired. Maybe it’s only because I turned the brightness of the screen to max, but this time he has a bit of five o’clock shadow. That’s appropriate, I suppose, as for him it will be five o’clock in about an hour. For me, it’s after nine.

He clarifies the sentencing forms for me.

The Prior Record Score is a handwritten three instead of an automatic four because that’s what it would have been in 1992. He points out that the results of a PRS of three when applied to the 1992 guidelines are very similar to the way a current PRS of four interacts with the current guidelines, so that makes sense.

The sentencing Guideline Ranges, which come in “mitigated,” “standard,” and “aggravated” versions, have no concrete rules about which column certain kinds of cases must be put into. It will be the defense’s job at sentencing to argue for mitigated, our job to try for aggravated, and the judge’s job to choose.

I assume that the Guideline Ranges are what’s recommended, and that the Statutory Limits are the absolute extremes to which sentences can be pushed outside of those recommended ranges. I’m not quite right. Instead of the Statutory Limits being the absolute lowest and highest that sentences can go, meaning the lowest that the minimum can be and the highest that the maximum can be, they’re actually both highests: the highest that the maximum sentence can be, yes, and also the highest that the minimum can be. They’re there to protect from draconian sentences.

Evan tells me that, in the case of a negotiated plea, he’ll likely start with an offer of thirty to sixty years, for all charges in both of our cases combined, and go no lower than accepting twenty to forty.

He asks me not to worry about the minimum being too low. He says that Fryar is unlikely to be given parole, and that he, Evan, will speak against Fryar at any future parole hearings. Evan’s youth suddenly becomes valuable. He’ll still be working then, after I’m old.

If it comes to a jury conviction, Evan will present to the judge how the low ends of the mitigated, standard, and aggravated sentence ranges add up if served consecutively, and argue for standard and consecutive at least, really for aggravated and consecutive. For my half of the case alone, the minimums in the standard range add up to almost nineteen years, and the minimums in the aggravated range add up to over thirty-one. Georgia’s charges, which are slightly fewer, would probably come in at about three quarters of that, so together the standard would start at something over thirty years, and, within guidelines, could hit an aggravated maximum around seventy. Eschewing the guidelines, which the judge has the right to do, and obeying only the absolute Statutory Limits, the sentence could break a hundred years.

Serial stranger-rape cases in Pittsburgh, of which there are more than I expected, routinely do get sentences that high—dramatic, reassuringly punitive sentences—but not from this judge.

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