[NYTr] Blanket ban on alcohol verboten, court rules

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Forensic Psychologist - Dec 14, 2007
http://forensicpsychologist.blogspot.com/2007/12/blanket-ban-on-alcohol-verboten-court.html


Blanket ban on alcohol verboten, court rules

by Karen Franklin, Ph.D.

For those of you who are involved with parolees and probationers: How
many times have you seen a blanket prohibition on alcohol consumption
as a condition of someone's supervised release? Do you ever see the
prohibition imposed on people who have no documented history of alcohol
abuse, with random urinalyses to ensure compliance? I see it quite
often.

Such blanket prohibitions will be a thing of the past if the courts
follow the law as dictated today by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals.

Perhaps emboldened by the Supreme Court's dramatic rulings earlier this
week on individualized sentencing (which some are calling as monumental
to civil rights as was Brown v. Board of Education a half-century ago),
the Ninth Circuit today extended the logic of individualized sentencing
to alcohol bans.

The case of U.S. v. Betts involves white-collar criminal Marcus Betts,
who accepted bribes to increase people's credit ratings while he worked
for the TransUnion credit agency.

The judge imposed as a condition of his probation that he abstain from
alcohol, despite acknowledging on the record that there was no evidence
that Betts had a liquor problem.

Explaining its logic, the appellate court wrote:

    "[There is nothing] wrong generally with supervised release
conditions requiring abstention from alcohol. Many people commit crimes
when they drink too much and such conditions are often necessary to
protect the public and provide correctional treatment. We have upheld
abstention conditions where there is some indication in the record of a
problem of abuse…. But the decision has to be individualized, not a
matter of policy application without regard to the individual
defendant."

Those of you who read my blog regularly will recall that only three
months ago, the Ninth Circuit held that parolees cannot be required to
attend 12-step treatment programs. More on that ruling is here:
http://forensicpsychologist.blogspot.com/2007/09/court-strikes-down-mandated-12-step.html

The Appellate Law & Practice blog
http://appellate.typepad.com/appellate/2007/12/ca9-supervised.html
and and Sentencing Law & Policy blog
http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2007/12/ninth-circuit-r.html
have posts on today's ruling, which is also available online here:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/D42FB6D0D43A560E882573B0008074FD/$file/0650205.pdf?openelement

An interesting Newsweek magazine story on the import of this week's U.S.
Supreme Court's sentencing rulings is here:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/77820/page/1