Trump Nominee For Sentencing Commission Wanted To Abolish It

Georgetown University Law Professor William G. Otis, a former prosecutor who once called for the abolishment of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, has been nominated by the President for a seat on Commission. An article about his nomination in the ABA Journal calls him a “flamboyant advocate of the tougher-on-crime views endorsed by President Trump” and says he has “infuriated criminal justice reformers and prodded some senators to consider trying to block the appointment.” Otis has been called a racist, notably after writing a blog post defending then Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Edith Jones, after she reportedly said in a speech that minorities are responsible for more violent crime than are whites. In the comments section of the blog post in defense of Judge Jones, Otis defends himself against the racism charge, maintaining that it’s “precisely because race and criminality have no causative relationship that our side cannot be cowed when the other side starts bellowing about racial disparities in imprisonment … they are not caused by race. They are caused by making choices.” Liberal academics, he has said, “don’t have to live in crime racked neighborhoods — a fate foisted off on Lesser People.” Otis’s nomination has infuriated criminal justice reformers. The group Families Against Mandatory Minimums calls him an ideologue and says it will lobby to prevent senate approval of his nomination. FAMM maintains his claim that more prisons lead to less crime ignores data that shows that both crime and incarceration rates have declined for most of the last decade.