Emiliano Flores-González was sentenced to four years in prison for a non-violent gun possession crime – an entirely outsized sentence that was rooted largely in negative stereotypes about Mr. Flores-González’s home of Puerto Rico. The MacArthur Justice Center is advocating for the end of disproportionate, harsh sentencing imposed particularly on marginalized communities.
Emiliano Flores-González, a 19-year-old with no criminal history, was sentenced to four years in prison for a non-violent gun possession crime — a far longer sentence than recommended by the federal sentencing guidelines or sought by the prosecution.
The district court imposed this harsh sentence based solely on its erroneous views about violent crime rates in Puerto Rico, where Mr. Flores-González’s crime occurred. At Mr. Flores-González’s sentencing, the court even played a highly inflammatory, unverified, and irrelevant YouTube video of a completely unrelated crime in a city hours away from where Mr. Flores-González was arrested. In effect, the district court punished Mr. Flores-González not for what he did, but for where he was from.
The bedrock of modern sentencing law is the requirement for an individualized sentence that is no greater than necessary to accomplish the goals of sentencing, also known as the parsimony principle. The district court’s sentence violated this fundamental principle of sentencing. And by relying on community stereotypes, inaccurate data, and inflammatory evidence, Mr. Flores-González’s sentence also undermines respect for the law, erodes public confidence in the criminal legal system, and ultimately makes communities less safe.
The MacArthur Justice Center, along with the ACLU and the ACLU of Puerto Rico, filed an amici brief before the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, laying out why Mr. Flores-González’s sentence cannot be upheld and why sentencing must be based on the individual person — not inflammatory assumptions about their community.
UPDATE
Oral argument was held before the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in November 2022. The Court’s decision is pending.