How long will Black really serve?

If you’re in big trouble with the law, Ken Bell would be a good lawyer to have on your side. Bell’s determined defense of former Speaker Jim Black probably kept the former Mecklenburg lawmaker free a couple extra months while his sentencing hearing was postponed and may have helped persuade a federal judge to impose a somewhat shorter sentence than Black might have gotten.
This is conjecture, of course.
And Bell wasn’t able to get Black off the hook. At Black’s level of crimes – which presiding Judge Terrence Boyle concluded was closer to bribery than the legal terms involving “accepting illegal gratuities” implied for taking cash contributions from contributors – a stiff prison sentence was clearly in order. If Black had gotten off, or had been sentenced to an unusually short sentence, it would have mocked our criminal justice system and served as a sign that it’s okay to buy and sell votes and pull any kind of shenanigans just to stay in power.
Judge Boyle gave Black 63 months in prison plus a $50,000 fine. That’s five years and three months, but it was at the low end of a sentencing range that Judge Boyle said could have landed Black in prison for 78 months – or six and a half years.
There are those who believe Judge James Dever, who handled the Michael Decker case when former Rep. Decker pleaded guilty to accepting a $50,000 bribe to switch parties and help keep Black in power, would have given Black a longer sentence. Dever gave Decker a four-year sentence and issued a blistering description of Black’s actions as a selfish lust for power that corrupted the political process.
That’s when Ken Bell filed a motion asking that Judge Dever recuse himself from further proceedings. Judge Dever denied Bell’s assertion that he would be biased against Black because his and Decker’s scheme essentially reversed a lawsuit that then-private-attorney Dever helped win in a state court case over legislative redistricting. But Dever stepped aside anyway in the interests of putting this case to rest.
Judge Boyle took over the case, culminating Wednesday with his imposing a 63-month sentence. Dever, some courtroom observers thought, might have given Black a year or two longer in prison. We’ll never know.
Now: How long will Black serve? If he earns the normal federal good-time-off credit of up to 15 percent, he could be released in about 54 months – making his sentence about four years and six months.
There is no federal parole, but there is such a thing as time off for good behavior. Here’s a May 9 blog entry I wrote on this topic:
How long will Decker, Geddings serve?
U.S. District Judge James Dever has sentenced former N.C. Rep. Michael Decker and former N.C. Lottery Commissioner Kevin Geddings to four years in prison for their unrelated roles in a political scandal involving former Speaker Jim Black. Black has yet to be sentenced, but already readers are wondering what a federal sentence really means.
One reader asks:
“Nowhere in the Observer or on TV have I heard anything but Geddings has been sentenced to ‘four years.’ Now, the public are not dummies.... how long will he realistically be in jail, serving what has been called a longer then recommended sentence?
“When will the parole eligibility kick in? 6 months? Less?
“We all know that white collar criminals rarely serve a sentence that will disrupt their careers or personal lives. You know he will behave himself while he is locked up, (probably while writing a book about his innocence and perceived miscarriage of justice.) Let us know what the real sentence we can expect him to serve truly is.”
That’s a good question. Some years ago, inmates in both state and federal prison served a fraction of their nominal sentences, but that changed when both the federal government and North Carolina government rewrote their sentencing laws and did away with the parole system for crimes committed after the mid-1990s.
This is a federal case. I’ve looked up the guidelines and practice on the U.S. Department of Justice Web site and, if what I read is correct, federal prisoners can expect to serve roughly 85 percent of their sentences. That means both Decker and Geddings could expect to serve about 41 months in prison. They would be eligible for a “good conduct time credit” of up to 54 days per year in prison.
There is no such thing as federal parole. Both Decker and Geddings will also serve a two-year tem of supervised release, and each will also be responsible for paying a fine – $50,000 in Decker’s case and $25,000 in Geddings’ case.