Not Letting Felons Vote Damages Democracy for All Citizens

AUSTIN SARAT

Austin Sarat—Associate Provost, Associate Dean of the Faculty, and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College—argues that disenfranchising felons, as most American states do in some way, does substantial harm to everyone in our democracy. Sarat praises a recent decision by a federal district court in Florida striking down a state law requiring people with serious criminal convictions to pay court fines and fees before they can register to vote, but he cautions that but much more needs to be done to ensure that those who commit serious crimes can exercise one of the essential rights of citizenship.

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State v. Cott

Docket: 120075

Opinion Date: May 29, 2020

Judge: Eric S. Rosen

Areas of Law: Criminal Law

The Supreme Court affirmed the order of the district court denying Defendant's postsentence motion to withdraw his pleas of guilty to two counts of premeditated murder, holding that the district court did not abuse its discretion and did not commit reversible error. Pursuant to a plea agreement, Defendant pleaded guilty to two premeditated murder charges for the death of his wife and the unborn child she was carrying. The district court accepted the terms of the agreement and sentenced Defendant to two concurrent hard fifty terms of life imprisonment. Defendant subsequently filed a pro se motion to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing that manifest injustice warranted voiding the plea agreement. The district court denied the motion after a hearing. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that Defendant did not demonstrate that the district court's findings were arbitrary or unreasonable, were based on an error of law, or were based on an error of fact.