Carroll: This is justice?

By Vincent Carroll, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published April 4, 2007 at midnight

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"There is no question that (Craig DeBiase) utilized his high school coaching position to seduce high school girls. No question this was and is highly improper."

- Denver District Judge Herbert Stern

At least the judge got that much straight while he was busy releasing the former Machebeuf girls basketball coach from prison after only 16 months.

Notice Stern referred to "girls." Although DeBiase was convicted in a plea agreement of assaulting one girl, he is actually a predator who, the prosecution emphasized, had been pursuing female students in his care for nearly 15 years.

"He has done this again and again," prosecutor Kerri Lombardi said at his trial two years ago. "He preyed on victims who were young and vulnerable." No doubt that's one reason Stern originally sentenced him to 15 years to life.

Critics of Colorado's tough sentencing laws probably have a different opinion of the judge's decision to resentence DeBiase to probation. After all, he'll remain in therapy and under intense supervision and may very well be an excellent candidate for community-based treatment, just as Stern suggests. Reformers are repeatedly telling us we've got to get prisoners out of cells and into alternative supervision.

But even if DeBiase succeeds in rehabilitating himself, even if he'll vacate a badly needed prison cell - heck, even if 15-to-life is too harsh - is 16 months to become the going standard for a serial sexual predator?

Surely even some reformers would rebel at that possibility.

A persuasive dissent

Some of the most important, contentious debates of the 21st century will involve setting policy on global climate change. We could do little as a society or we could do lots. At the aggressive end of the spectrum, we could make driving very expensive or even phase out the internal combustion engine by government fiat.

It would be nice if such decisions were reached democratically, through elected leaders in Congress and the White House. That in part is what Chief Justice John Roberts was getting at Monday in his dissent from the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision prodding the Environmental Protection Agency to get moving on regulating greenhouse gases.

"Global warming may be a 'crisis,' " Roberts wrote, "even 'the most pressing environmental problem of our time.' Indeed, it may ultimately affect nearly everyone on the planet in some potentially adverse way, and it may be that governments have done too little to address it. It is not a problem, however, that escaped the attention of policy-makers in the executive and legislative branches of our government, who continue to consider regulatory, legislative and treaty-based means of addressing global climate change."

Because Roberts' faction failed to carry the day, we may be in for a court-driven regulatory answer to global warming as opposed to a democratic-driven response. True, the court did not dictate what the EPA must do to curb greenhouse gases emitted from vehicles; the majority even said the agency needn't act at all if it provided a "reasonable explanation" that is science-based.

But the majority's impatience with the EPA was palpable. Moreover, since the EPA in fact offered, in part, a scientific explanation for its hands-off approach, it's possible the court won't be satisfied with anything less than dramatic regulations. And since those rules will in turn be challenged, judges are likely to end up supervising and shaping a key element of the nation's global warming strategy, which is not their proper role.

Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.

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