USN&WR's Take on Project Exile

[Drizzt]

Ready, Aim, Misfire
A once vaunted plan to stop gun violence isn't all it's cracked up to be

By Chitra Ragavan


RICHMOND, VA.–Charlton Heston and Sarah Brady were for it. A hot-plate federal prosecutor was set to run it. The media loved it. Project Exile seemed to have it all. And it didn't hurt that the antigun program really got results–at least at first. Since its creation in 1997, more than 700 gun offenders here have been indicted and more than 850 guns confiscated. The buzz over Project Exile has been so great that President George W. Bush announced plans to take it national.


But the raves may be premature. An analysis by U.S. News shows that over the past four years, Exile's performance has suffered:


The number of defendants indicted by the feds has dropped by nearly half, from 254 to 140; prosecutors blame a drop in gun arrests by Richmond police.


The conviction rates for gun possession have plummeted by half.


More defendants are getting pretrial release. Four years ago, 90 percent of all Exile defendants were detained after arrest; today just 67 percent are jailed.


Launched in response to an alarming increase in murders, Project Exile's premise was simple: Make gun crimes a federal offense and punish criminals with swift prosecutions and stiff sentences. "To us," says Managing Assistant U.S. Attorney James Comey, "gun possession itself is a crime of violence."


That kind of red-meat rhetoric made Exile an early hit with conservatives. The program was so popular that the state of Virginia developed its own spinoff. But the imitation hasn't lived up to expectations, and the federal program now has also come under fire. Critics say Project Exile unfairly targets African-American men and fails to distinguish between big- and small-time crooks. A private coalition that raised nearly $500,000 to promote federal and state Exile programs suspended funding for its advertising campaign this year, citing Virginia Exile's lousy performance. Nevertheless, this week Bush is expected to announce that he's making Project Exile a model for gun prosecutions in all 50 states. Bush is expected to announce a series of Exile-inspired prosecution initiatives (leavened by some gang- and youth-intervention programs).


Crafted by a special Justice Department task force, the initiatives include a budget request for fiscal 2001 of $75 million to create Exile-type progeny. Bush also will announce the hiring of more than 100 new federal prosecutors dedicated to gun cases. The core of the Bush initiative is a federal-state partnership to prosecute gun crimes. But if the Virginia experience is a guide, such a partnership has distinct perils.


During its first year, federal prosecutors in Richmond aggressively targeted every gun offender caught in their sights, indicting 254 gun violators. But the very next year, there were 78 fewer indictments, followed by successive drops each year. So from the time Exile began, there has been a nearly 50 percent drop in the number of indictments. Has the feds' commitment to Exile waned? No, says Comey. He believes the feds are victims of their own success. He says today's small-time hoods and addicts are getting shorter sentences or being denied bond less often because Richmond's criminal profile has changed.


But not everyone agrees. "I think during the first years," says defense attorney Steven Benjamin, "they needed to generate numbers in order to tout the success of the initiative." Now, he adds, "the greater utility of Project Exile is to coerce confessions and cooperation." The average sentence imposed under Project Exile is five years, with sentences ranging from 12 to 290 months. That means a significant number of the defendants are getting less than what Project Exile's original promotional slogan promised.


To some extent, Project Exile has become a victim of its own sloganeering. Virginia lawmakers were so taken with its apparent success that they created a state equivalent two years ago. When Virginia Exile started, federal prosecutors hoped that they could slowly develop an exit strategy. But according to many state, local, and federal law enforcement sources, Virginia Exile has largely failed. Some of the problems:


While the federal conviction rate has stayed steady at around 80 percent, Richmond's conviction rate is approximately 40 percent.


Despite Virginia's speedy trial laws, there are long delays and some judges have started granting pretrial release, counter to Exile's stated philosophy.


Some state judges are setting aside the mandatory five-year sentences where only traces of drugs are involved or are asking prosecutors to propose less draconian punishments.


Only a fraction of state cases have gone forward.


"I've had very few state Exile trials, probably only one or two since the laws changed in 1999," says Chief Judge Margaret Spencer of the Richmond Circuit Court. Commonwealth's attorneys–the local prosecutors–say one reason is they are besieged by more-serious cases, like rapes, homicides, and robberies.


David Lassiter, a senior assistant commonwealth's attorney who recently inherited the troubled Virginia program, says all Exile cases originate with a Richmond police arrest and subsequently go to the commonwealth's attorneys for processing. Lassiter says it's his job to drop cases that are not prosecutable. The feds, he says, don't have that burden. "I wouldn't say our conviction rate is low. It's just different," says Lassiter.


Richmond Police Chief Jerry Oliver says local authorities can't compete with the federal prosecutors' resources and authority. Plus, he says, unlike the federal program, state law does not allow denial of bail or sending convicts to out-of-state prisons. "When you mess with any one of those elements, it's kind of like the legs of a stool. It falls over," says Oliver. Defense attorney Benjamin offers a more acid critique: "All it is," he says, "is a passage of laws."


Disappointed by Virginia's poor record, some police officers are demanding that the feds handle all the Exile cases. They may get their wish. Angry that their best cases have been dropped or mishandled by the state or dismissed by judges, the feds have begun to hold back their most important cases. They're also anxiously scouring the daily homicide statistics. "The worst thing that could happen after we invested in this brand called Exile," says Comey, "is that the criminal element get the idea it's OK to carry guns in Richmond again."


Beyond the police, though, even judges have weighed in against the program. Senior federal district Judge Richard Williams put his complaint in writing to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, saying that Project Exile had turned his court into a "minor grade state police court."


Sitting in his chambers, desk covered with legal documents, Williams, 78, a Carter appointee, muses over the change Exile has wrought. Before Exile, Williams and his two Republican-appointed colleagues were steeped in complicated espionage, terrorism, organized crime, and antitrust cases. Now their dockets are clogged with gun cases. Should the federal courts "be saddled" with cases that are "totally lacking in federal significance?" asks Williams. "I've been a lawyer and judge for 50 years. Should I be handling these issues?"


These federal judges also put their views about Exile in a unanimous 1999 opinion, writing that Exile forces federal taxpayers to subsidize Virginia's law enforcement activities. At the same time, the commonwealth is leasing its overbuilt prisons at a hefty profit back to the feds, who are strapped for prison space.


Finally, the judges wrote that Project Exile also has not lived up to its promise to "exile" criminals far away from Richmond. On the contrary, federal statistics show that 45 percent of Project Exile prisoners are held in three federal prisons in Petersburg, Va.; Beckley, W.Va.; and Cumberland, Md.


Richmond's state judges say they are equally bothered by the program, although they are less outspoken than Williams is. They and some prosecutors contend that the mandatory minimum sentences are too harsh for the current crop of offenders, primarily drug users and addicts or other small-time offenders.


Even some prosecutors and cops express concern about fairness, to the point that they sometimes game the system. For example, according to law enforcement sources, a few police officers have split the gun and drug charges and submitted them separately or failed to complete the paperwork, to avoid Exile charges for less serious offenders who may be cooperating. Says one prosecutor, reflecting the views of many state and federal colleagues, "I think the laws are on the books. We should definitely use them. But use them sparingly." Several prosecutors and judges added that perhaps Exile should be modified in light of the dropping homicide rate and changing demographics.


But the program's supporters say that would be a big mistake. They believe Exile's toughness has transformed the gun-toting culture of Richmond criminals. Bill Dunham, resident agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms' Richmond office, says that last year, police not only recovered fewer guns; a greater percentage of them were "found" weapons, hidden behind dumpsters or in bushes or above doorways, proving that crooks were afraid of being "exiled." U.S. Attorney Comey believes Project Exile has made the difference in one simple way. "It has affected the crime wave by keeping them from shooting people and keeping them from being shot," says Comey. "A lot of people we put in jail would be Richmond homicide stats."


That said, in other cities in Virginia and across the country, like New Orleans, there have been similar declines in violent-crime rates without Exile. Most experts attribute much of the drop in violent-crime rates to a better economy, lower unemployment, prohibition of parole, and truth-in-sentencing laws. Still, Georgetown University economist Jens Ludwig, an expert on the costs to society of gun violence, says Exile deserves some credit. Ludwig believes Exile may have been responsible for a 10 percent to 15 percent reduction in gun homicides in Richmond. (In fact, says Ludwig, as the program spreads in Virginia and nationwide, that number could further drop as Exile gets watered down.) He says from 1997 to 1999, Project Exile cost the feds $39 million. But there was a $150 to $240 million benefit to society in tangible and intangible ways. Ludwig says, "We think the effect of the program is smaller than people are claiming but produces a big benefit because the costs of gun violence are so substantial." And for that reason alone, says Ludwig, Project Exile is a good idea.




http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/0...news/exile.htm

[Hal]

Drizzt,
Thank you for posting this. I've used part of the article in my sig as a reminder of what the ultimate goal of this program is.

[MikeK]

I have never been a fan of mandatory sentencing. Mandatory sentencing for 'gun crimes' can always be turned against us. I am an NRA member and support much of what they do, but not PE.

[JimR]

Robert Teesdale is on his war horse on this issue on FreeRepublic. See:

Project Exile Promotes Prison Rape