The D.C. Council has appointed a patrol killer to a city commission charged with setting guidelines for prison sentences.
On Tuesday, twelve members of the committee that drafts and amends criminal sentencing guidelines voted to elect convicted murderer Joel Caston to the 17-person board.
Caston would be the first person imprisoned to serve on the commission.
The council's appointment of a convicted murderer to lead it comes amid an ongoing crime spike in the area in murders, car thefts and burglaries.
The Washington Times reported that Caston won praise from local leaders while rehabilitating in prison and adjusting to civilian life.
Last year, D.C. had the fifth-highest homicide rate per capita among the nation's largest cities.
In January, U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves rebuked the board for considering Caston's appointment. In a letter dated Jan. 2, Graves advised members that adding a paroled murderer to the council would hamper the city's “gun-door” approach to crime and punishment.
Graves cited data confirming how closely Supreme Court justices adhere to the council's guidelines when they sentence half or no prison terms to half the felons convicted in 2022, Graves told the council.
The board then postponed its scheduled January 9 vote in Caston's favor for a month and on Tuesday elected the convict to the sentencing board anyway.
In 1994, when Caston was 18, Caston shot and killed Washington's 18-year-old companion in a parking lot in Southeast D.C. Caston was sentenced to 35 years to life in prison but was released on parole after 27 years. In 2021.
“It's not just a win for me, it's a win for all returning citizens nationwide,” Caston said. “It sends a resounding message to all returning citizens that you can participate in civic engagement.”
D.C. Democratic lawmakers, including Chairman Phil Mendelsohn and Councilmember Brooke Pinto, celebrated the appointment of the convicted killer during Caston's legislative election meeting on Tuesday.
“These views are also very important, as our Sentencing Commission plays a critical role in guiding the courts on sentencing for crimes committed in our communities,” said Ms. Pinto, a Ward 2 Democrat and chair of the Council’s Public Safety Committee. .
Anita Bond, another lawmaker on the Sentencing Commission, asserts that the appointment was “the right direction for us to move.” “We say as a society that giving people a second chance is the American experiment. Well, here we go.
Democratic D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser acknowledged Caston's appointment as a liability but sided with Graves, noting that she did not know “a lot” about the candidate.
“There has long been a belief that the ideological views of many previous commissioners were skewed toward a lack of accountability, so I encourage the council to focus on the people who want justice in our city for violent crimes,” Bowser said. He added, “Because I don't know much about this candidate, I'm inclined to align myself with the U.S. attorney general on this matter.”
Crime victim advocates have criticized the board's appointment of a paroled murderer to the sentencing board.
Dennis Rucker Cribb, former Ward 6 Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner, warns that the council's decision crushes efforts by local leaders to dispel the crime wave.
“It's another example of the council prioritizing violent criminals over murder victims and rape victims,” Cribb told The Washington Times. “He's not a family member of a murder victim, he's not a rape survivor. He's either a murderer or a rapist, and that makes me angry.”
Caston was the first D.C. resident to be elected while in prison. While in prison, he was elected to office in Washington, D.C., winning a seat on his district's Advisory Neighborhood Committee.
“He also became a mentor and teacher while learning several languages and developed a personal finance curriculum called Currency Catchers,” according to Georgetown University’s Prison and Justice Initiative (PJI). The group offers programs for prisoners and aims to end mass incarceration.
“I didn't spend 27 years waiting to go home,” Caston said shortly after his release from prison in January. “I spent 27 years preparing myself to never go back to prison.”
He added: “I will exercise sound judgment based on the facts presented to me, without being influenced by any outside parties.” It is not fair for me to be put in a box just because I was previously a justice-involved individual. this is not fair.”
Meanwhile, Graves, along with the D.C. Council, continues to hand Trump supporters who demonstrated at the nation's Capitol to “Stop the Steal” on January 6 additional sentences longer than the time Caston served on his January 6 murder sentence.
On January 4, the third anniversary of the Capitol riot, Graves held a press conference in which he touted the Justice Department's convictions of the four Proud Boys leaders on seditious conspiracy charges and the lengthy sentences given to both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
In September, Enrique Tarrio, former national president of the Proud Boys, was sentenced to 22 years in prison after being convicted of seditious conspiracy. The government alleges that Tarrio, his co-defendants, along with Stewart Rhodes, conspired with President Trump to carry out a terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol. In May, Stuart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers, received an 18-year prison sentence for conspiring with other members of his militia to oppose the legal transfer of presidential power.
Most of the statutes of limitations for protesters to sue the government or law enforcement agencies for injuries they sustained on January 6 have passed, while Graves, the federal prosecutor overseeing more than 12,000 cases linked to the January 6 protest, urges Americans to continue to help Investigators are identifying suspects in J6.
Graves served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Department of Justice's Fraud and Public Corruption Section before being appointed by Joe Biden in 2021 to lead the U.S. Attorney's Office.
