close X
12/18/2017

Plea Bargaining and Its Effect on The Sixth Amendment

Earlier blog posts on criminal justice and policing reform focused on overcriminalization, mandatory minimums, and other perverse incentives within our justice system. This post will focus on the Sixth Amendment and Plea Bargaining. For the purposes of this post, “plea bargaining” refers to “agreements between defendants and prosecutors where defendants agree to plead guilty to some or all the charges against them in exchange for concessions from the prosecutors.”[1]  Because of the extensive use of plea bargaining, the Sixth Amendment right to public trial is fading.

Over 200 years ago, the United States Constitution became the supreme law of the land with the later accompaniment of the Bill of Rights. Included in the Bill of Rights is the Sixth Amendment, which states: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed…; and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence [sic].”[2]A criminal defendant’s right to a jury trial exists to prevent the oppression from the government.[3] Further, “providing an accused with the right to be tried by a jury of his peers gave him an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge.”[4]

As mentioned in an earlier post, we have started to see a rise in the use of mandatory minimums. Because of this, there has been a shift from using the trial process, to using a plea bargain.[5] In fact, today only 3% of federal cases are resolved by way of the Sixth Amendment.[6] According to Jenia I. Turner, PLEA BARGAINING, “plea bargains increasingly require defendants to waive important procedural rights that are designed to ensure fair and accurate outcomes.”[7] The right to remain silent, confront witnesses, have a public trial or jury trial are all inherently waived by a guilty plea.[8] Thus roughly 97% of federal cases are resolved without these procedural protections.

In many jurisdictions, judges are prohibited from participating in or commenting on the plea negotiations.[9] Most sentencing power now lies with the prosecutors, who have minimal boundaries. In fact, there is only one restriction placed on prosecutors: they cannot use illegal threats to secure a plea.[10] For example: “If a prosecutor says, ‘I’ll shoot you if you don’t plead guilty, the plea is invalid.”[11] Alternatively, if a prosecutor threatens to charge a defendant with a crime punishable by death at trial, and this threat causes the defendant to accept a plea agreement, this method is lawful.[12] Further, with the presence of probable cause, prosecutors can threaten to bring charges against the defendant’s family[13] Today, individuals who elect to use their Sixth Amendment right, essentially face harsher sentences than those who accept a plea bargain.[14] With mandatory minimums and other sentencing enhancements, prosecutors can often dictate the sentence that will be imposed.[15] According to Bill Cervone, the State Attorney in Gainesville, FL and Chief Prosecutor in Florida’s Eighth Judicial Circuit, “legally, you cannot impose a longer sentence on someone because they exercised their right to trial…factually, there are always ways to do it.”[16]

Unfortunately, as the system currently exists, there are minimal safeguards for those who pick going to trial over accepting a plea bargain. Furthermore, when defendants do accept a plea bargain, judges have limited ability to ensure that their decisions are made knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently. As discussed in earlier posts, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act (“SRCA”), if signed into law, would reduce penalties for non-violent repeat offenders and restore judicial discretion in cases of low-level offenders below the mandatory minimum. These changes are important because, as the use of mandatory minimums decreases, there could be an associated decrease in the use of plea bargaining. While SRCA only addresses a portion of the much-needed criminal justice reform, passing it would be a great first step.

Katie Parr is a law clerk at Cause of Action Institute

[1] Legal Information Institute, Plea Bargain, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/plea_bargain

[2] U.S. const. amend. VI.

[3] See Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 156.

[4] Id. at 155.

[5] 3 Jenia I. Turner, Reforming Criminal Justice, Pretrial and Trial Processes, Plea Bargaining, 2017, at 87.

[6] Dylan Walsh, Why U.S. Criminal Courts Are So Dependent on Plea Bargaining, The Atlantic (May 2, 2017), https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/plea-bargaining-courts-prosecutors/524112/

[7] 3 Jenia I. Turner, Reforming Criminal Justice, Pretrial and Trial Processes, Plea Bargaining, 2017, at 87.

[8] Id.

[9] Turner, supra note 5, at 87.

[10] Walsh, supra note 3, at 1.

[11] Id.

[12] Id.

[13] Id.

[14] Richard A. Oppel Jr., Sentencing Shift Gives New Leverage to Prosecutors, The New York Times (Sept. 25, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/us/tough-sentences-help-prosecutors-push-for-plea-bargains.html

[15] Id.

[16] Id.

Media, Blog Learn More
12/7/2017

The Unintended Consequences of Mandatory Minimums

This blog post will re-examine the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act (SRCA) and focus on mandatory minimums. For the purposes of this blog post, “mandatory minimums” refers to “when a person convicted of a crime must be imprisoned for a minimum term, as opposed to leaving the length of punishment up to judges.”[1] “Mandatory minimum sentencing forces judges to deliver fixed sentences to individuals convicted of a crime, regardless of culpability or other mitigating factors.”[2]

Although originally intended for violent offenders, mandatory minimums now impact non-violent offenders as well.[3] Mandatory minimums are often excessive and unjust, but this is not new.  In 1994, Congress created a “safety valve” for those offenders “who most warrant proportionally lower sentences” and “are least culpable”.[4] The safety valve allows federal judges to go below an otherwise applicable mandatory minimum sentence in low-level drug cases (“essentially non-violent, first time offenders.”)[5] If signed into law, the SRCA will go beyond the 1994 safety valve and reduce penalties for those who are non-violent repeat offenders. Further, under SRCA, federal judges will also gain discretion in the cases of low-level offenders below the 10-year mandatory minimum, and in sentencing those individuals who possess a firearm illegally, provided that the firearm was not brandished or discharged in relation to a crime of violence or drug trafficking.[6]

Earlier this year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, released a memorandum on sentencing guidelines that is inconsistent with the goals of the 1994 safety valve and the proposed SRCA. These sentencing guidelines instruct federal prosecutors to “charge and pursue the most serious readily provable offense”—claiming that this method “affirms…responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency.”[7] In the memorandum, Sessions goes on to say, “the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences”[8]

Despite the influence of the Sessions memo, some of the federal judges (who enforce these mandatory minimums) are speaking out about the grave injustice mandatory minimums are creating. In an interview with Rachel Martin of NPR, Federal Judge Mark Bennett addressed the “consistency claim” suggested by Sessions’ memo by saying “mandatory minimums support unwarranted uniformity by treating everyone alike even though their situations are dramatically different.”[9] In the same interview, Bennett said “mandatory minimums are so incredibly harsh and they’re triggered by such low levels of drugs that they snare at the non-violent, low-level addicts…”[10] According to Judge Bennett, about 80% of the cases involving mandatory minimums are unfair.[11]

One case where Judge Bennett felt the mandatory minimum was too harsh involved 28-year-old Mark Paul Weller. In 2015, Judge Bennett issued a ten-year sentence in response to Mr. Weller’s guilty plea to two counts of distributing methamphetamine (“meth”) in his home town.[12] While Weller did have a brief criminal history, he had made significant efforts to improve his life.[13] Unfortunately, with an unexpected, emotional life event, he turned to drugs and alcohol.[14] This downward spiral led Weller to eventually sell meth.[15] Over the course of eight months, Weller had sold 2.5 kilograms of meth across state lines.[16] Weller had traded meth for his sister’s rent, a used car, gas money, and even an unregistered SKS rifle.[17] The unregistered rifle was still in the car when he was pulled over with 223 grams of meth.[18]

“Weller was charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute 500 grams or more of a methamphetamine mixture which contained 50 grams or more of pure methamphetamine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 841(b)(1)(A), and 846, and distributing 50 grams or more of a methamphetamine mixture which contained 5 grams or more of pure methamphetamine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 841(b)(1)(B).”[19]

Because of Weller’s guilty plea to these charges, his mandatory minimum established by Congress was 10 years. Sadly, his entire sentence involved only the calculation of the following factors: victim impact, criminal history, cost of imprisonment, and the guideline sentence. The answers to this calculation were as follows:  no identifiable victim, minimal criminal history, $2,440.97 per month of imprisonment, and a suggested sentence of 151-188 months.

After sentencing Weller to 120 months, Bennett considered the result of this punishment: “one more nonviolent offender packed into an overcrowded prison; another $300,000 in government money spent.” “I would have given him a year in rehab if I could…How does 10 years make anything better? What good are we doing?” Judge Bennett noted, there were many mitigating factors in Mr. Weller’s case, like neglect and abuse by his mother, addiction, and remorse. Yet, even after consideration of those mitigating factors, he was forced to give Mr. Weller the 10-year sentence. Judge Bennett had absolutely no power to shorten or change the sentence type, i.e.: rehab instead of prison.[20], [21]

If passed, SRCA would scale back police and prosecutor power by restoring the use of judicial discretion.

Katie Parr is a law clerk at Cause of Action Institute.

 

[1] U.S. Legal, https://definitions.uslegal.com/m/mandatory-minimum-sentencing/

[2] See Id.

[3] See 4, Erik Luna, Reforming Criminal Justice, Punishment, Incarceration and Release, Mandatory Minimums, 2017, at 126.

[4] Id. at 122.

[5] Id.

[6] Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2017, S.1917, 115th Cong. (1st Sess. 2017)

[7]  Memorandum from Jefferson B. Sessions, Att’y Gem., U.S. Dep’t of Justice, to All Federal Prosecutors, Department Charging and Sentencing Policy 1 (May 10, 2017).

[8] Id.

[9] A Federal Judge Says Mandatory Minimums Don’t Fit The Crime, Rachel Martin, NPR (June 1, 2017), https://www.npr.org/2017/06/01/531004316/a-federal-judge-says-mandatory-minimum-sentences-often-dont-fit-the-crime

[10] Id.

[11] Mallory Simon, Sara Sidner, The judge who says he’s part of the gravest injustice in America, CNN, updated: (June 3, 2017).

[12] Against His Better Judgment, Eli Saslow, The Washington Post (June 6, 2017) http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/06/06/against-his-better-judgment/?utm_term=.0adf2f2f412d

[13] Id.

[14] Id.

[15] Id.

[16] Id.

[17] Id.

[18] Id.

[19] Weller v. United States of America, No. CR-14-4059-1-MWB, 2015 U.S. Dist.

[20] See Luna supra, note 12 at 2.

[21] In addition to unfair sentencing, mandatory minimums may also help to maintain job security for prison guards. Some prison guard unions have sponsored and lobbied for harsher sentencing laws. supra note 3 at 131, at 1.

 

Media, Blog Learn More
11/29/2017

Inaccessible Criminal Codes and Their Domino Effects

On October 4, 2017, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2017 (“SRCA”) was reintroduced in the Senate with bipartisan support. A version of the bill was first introduced in the Senate in October of 2015, but never received a vote. If signed into law, SRCA would reduce and restrict enhanced penalties for non-violent repeat drug offenders and eliminate the so-called “three-strike” mandatory life provision. SRCA also would apply to pending cases, “where the offense was committed before the date of enactment of this Act,” if a sentence has not been imposed as of the date of enactment,[1] and, would apply to past cases where, before the date of enactment, the defendant “was convicted of an offense for which the penalty is amended…and was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for the offense.”[2] Imprisonment terms may be reduced only if, “the defendant has not been convicted of any serious violent felony, and the sentencing court, after considering the nature and seriousness of the danger to any person, the community, or any crime victims, and the post sentencing conduct of the defendant, finds a reduction is consistent with SRCA and its amendments.”[3] This bill would also provide judicial discretion in the sentencing of certain low-level offenders below the 10-year mandatory minimum.[4]

The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act is just the beginning of a much-needed conversation regarding reform of the criminal justice system. This post, the first in a series of posts on criminal justice reform, will focus on overcriminalization. For the purposes of this blog post, “overcriminalization,” means “the act of imposing unbalanced penalties with no relation to the gravity of the offense committed or the culpability of the wrong doer. It is the imposition of excessive punishment or sentences without adequate justification.”[5]

Over the past forty years, America has seen a dramatic increase in duplicative federal criminal laws.[6] While many have sought to enumerate federal crimes, the exact count remains unknown.[7] One estimate suggests that there are more than 4,000 federal criminal statutes.[8] Many of these statutes, include mandatory minimums.[9] With the use of mandatory minimums on the rise, the federal prison population has increased tenfold and the average federal sentence more than doubled since 1980.[10] The effects of overcriminalization do not end with the criminal code and excessive mandatory minimums; as many as 300,000 regulatory offenses now have criminal penalties that include prison time.[11]

If SRCA is signed into law, then the Attorney General will be required to submit a comprehensive list of “all criminal statutory offenses” to Congress, within one year.[12] Such a list will be the first of many tools available to begin reining in the ever-expanding criminal code and regulatory offenses.

Overcriminalization does not just affect those who end up behind bars, but also those who are unreasonably prosecuted. A few examples:

  • Bobby Unser, retired racecar driver was prosecuted by federal authorities for driving his snowmobile on protected federal land. Unser and a friend got lost during a snowstorm and were seeking shelter or assistance.[13]
  • In a Ft. Lauderdale park, members of a Christian outreach group were arrested and prosecuted for feeding the homeless. Local rules restricted food sharing.[14]
  • Christian Stanfield, who suffers from ADHD and was a victim of extreme bullying at South Fayette High School, PA, was charged with disorderly conduct under a wiretapping statute, because he recorded the abuse and went to school officials. Charges were eventually dropped.[15]

As these examples show, current application of criminal statutes reaches even the most innocent and sympathetic of “offenders.” Surely the statutes that produced these prosecutions were not intended to criminalize self-protection or charitable acts, and yet they did.[16],[17]

Overcriminalization needs to be stopped and reversed. Legislation like the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act is a good first step.

Katie Parr is law clerk at Cause of Action Institute.

[1] Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2017, S.1917, 115th Cong. (1st Sess. 2017)

[2] Id.

[3] Id.

[4] Id.

[5] U.S. Legal, https://definitions.uslegal.com/o/over-criminalization/

[6] Cato Institute, Cato Handbook for Policymakers, Chapter 17, Overcriminalization, 8th ed. 2017.

[7] See Ilya Shapiro, Not Everything Can Be a Federal Crime, Cato Institute (March 8, 2012), https://www.cato.org/blog/not-everything-can-be-federal-crime

[8] Overcriminalization, Right on Crime, http://rightoncrime.com/category/priority-issues/overcriminalization/

[9] FAMM, What are Mandatory Minimums?, http://famm.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Chart-All-Fed-MMs-NW.pdf

[10] See 4, Erik Luna, Reforming Criminal Justice, Punishment, Incarceration and Release, Mandatory Minimums, 2017, at 137.

[11] Supra note 6 at 1.

[12] Supra note 1, at 1.

[13] Cato, supra note 4 at 1.

[14] Id.

[15] Sasha Goldstein, Criminal charge dropped against Pennsylvania bullying victim with learning disability who recorded his abusers, New York Daily News (April 14, 2014), http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/charge-dropped-penn-bullying-victim-recorded-abusers-article-1.1760448

[16] Luna, supra note 5 at 133.

[17] With overcriminalization on the rise, the potential for undercriminalization may also rise. As Douglas Husak put it, “some conduct that should not incur penal liability will be subject to it, and some conduct that should incur penal liability will not be subject to it.” 1, Douglas Husak, Reforming Criminal Justice, Introduction and Criminalization, Overcriminalization, 2017, at 28.

Media, Blog Learn More
10/19/2017

Congress should reject flawed Back the Blue Act

On May 16, 2017, Representative Ted Poe (R-Texas) introduced the Back the Blue Act in Congress.[1]  The bill has since been referred to the House Judiciary Committee.  The Back the Blue Act of 2017 (“BBA”) creates new federal crimes for killing and assaulting police officers—conduct that is already illegal under the law in all fifty states and has been punished in state courts for years.  The proposed bill goes further, and establishes mandatory minimum sentences for such crimes even though mandatory minimums have been proven to be ineffective at curtailing criminal conduct.  The BBA, as currently written, does not require that the defendant even knew he or she was assaulting a police officer, which means it lacks any mens rea, or “guilty mind,” requirement.

Because of its duplicative nature, adoption of mandatory minimums, and lack of any mens rea requirement, Congress should reject the current version of the BBA.  The lives and working conditions of police officers are at stake.  As a 34-year veteran of the Baltimore and Maryland State Police Departments put it, “the bill would make us less safe and less effective by worsening what is already the greatest threat to policing today: the downward spiral of police-community relations.”[2]

The Back the Blue Act attaches a mandatory minimum of ten years for the attempted killing of a law enforcement officer or for “conspiring” to kill a law enforcement officer.  The BBA also turns any assault on an officer that works for a state or local police department that receives federal funding into a federal crime.  Most definitions of assault make spitting on someone an act of assault, so the potential application of the new law is vast.  Under the BBA, if any injury occurs during the assault, the mandatory minimum sentence is two years.  And if “serious bodily injury” occurs, the defendant faces a mandatory minimum of ten years in prison.  Further, a twenty-year mandatory minimum sentence applies if a deadly weapon is used during the assault.

Mandatory minimums take away sentencing discretion from judges and give it to prosecutors.[3]  This results in arbitrary and severe punishments that undermine the public’s faith in America’s criminal justice system.[4]  Further, evidence shows that mandatory minimums do not deter criminal conduct.[5]

As mentioned, the lack of any mens rea requirement means that a person could be charged by federal prosecutors without even knowing that the person allegedly assaulted was a law enforcement officer.  This risk is particularly high for the charge of conspiracy to kill a law enforcement officer, which imputes liability for actions taken to any person involved in the alleged conspiracy, even if the actual act was not performed by that defendant.  Mens rea has been a key element of American criminal law for centuries.  As the Supreme Court has stated, “we must construe [an imprisonment] statute in light of the background rules of the common law in which the requirement of some mens rea for a crime is firmly embedded.”[6]  Requiring a “guilty mind” in addition to a “guilty act” protects someone who engaged in accidental or innocent behavior from criminal prosecution and it is at the center of our criminal jurisprudence.[7]

Since the bill is duplicative of laws already on the books in all fifty states and the District of Columbia, the Back the Blue Act would waste federal resources and threaten state autonomy.  State and local jurisdictions have the expertise to deal with issues involving their own law enforcement officers.  The “federalization” of their local policing efforts will only deter from their ability to meet the ever-changing needs of local police forces.  Moreover, as laid out by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States.”[8]  Policing power is not one specifically delegated to federal government, therefore, it is reserved to the states.

The assault provision requires the federal prosecutor to “certify” that either the state lacks jurisdiction, has requested the federal government assume jurisdiction, the verdict obtained by the state left an “unvindicated” federal interest, or that prosecution by the federal government “is in the public interest and necessary to secure substantial justice.”  However, these certification requirements are vague and do not meaningfully limit federal intervention into state interests.

States like Virginia and Wisconsin, for example, have laws nearly identical to the Back the Blue Act except that they also include a mens rea element.  Virginia’s statute states: “if any person commits an assault…against another knowing or having reason to know that such other person is… a law-enforcement officer… such person is guilty of a Class 6 felony, and… the sentence of such person shall include a mandatory minimum term of confinement of six months.”[9]  Wisconsin’s statute uses similar language to also acknowledge the importance of mens rea.[10]

If signed into law, the Back the Blue Act would create waste in the judiciary and in society, deteriorate working conditions for law enforcement officers, and impose costly mandatory minimums unrelated to the severity of the crime.  It would also impede state and local efforts to protect police officers and fail to honor the punishment that a state has assigned for identical crimes on its own law enforcement officers.  For these reasons, Congress should reject the Back the Blue Act in its current form.

Katie Parr is a law clerk and Erica L. Marshall is counsel at Cause of Action Institute.

 

[1] Back the Blue Act of 2017, H.R. 2437, 115th Cong. (1st Sess. 2017).

[2] Neill Franklin, For the sake of police, don’t back the Back the Blue Act, The Hill (Aug. 30, 2017), available at http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/335815-dont-back-the-back-the-blue-act

[3] Paul Larkin, Evan Bernick, Reconsidering Mandatory Minimum Sentences: The Arguments for and Against Potential Reforms, The Heritage Foundation (Feb. 10, 2014), available at http://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/report/reconsidering-mandatory-minimum-sentences-the-arguments-and-against.

[4] Id.

[5] See Barbara S. Vincent & Paul J. Hofer, The Consequences of Mandatory Minimum Prison Terms: A Summary of Recent Findings, Federal Judicial Center (1994), available at http://www.fjc.gov/public/pdf.nsf/lookup/conmanmin.pdf/$file/conmanmin.pdf.

[6] Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 600, 605 (U.S. 1994).

[7] John Malcolm, Michael B. Mukasey, The Importance of Meaningful Mens Rea Reform, The Heritage Foundation (Feb. 17, 2016), available at http://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/commentary/the-importance-meaningful-mens-rea-reform.

[8] U.S. Const. amend. X

[9] Va. Code Ann. § 18.2-57(C) (2017).

[10] Wis. Stat. § 940.203(2)(a) (2017).

Media, Blog Learn More
10/13/2017

HUD Ignores the Law for 3 years: A Closer Look

Cause of Action Institute (“CoA Institute”) is investigating the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) for its failure to comply with a 2014 court decision requiring the agency to award contracts based on a competitive bidding process. The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that HUD unlawfully categorized Performance Based Annual Contribution Contracts as “cooperative agreements” instead of procurement contracts.[1] Despite this ruling, HUD has continued to treat these contracts as cooperative agreements for the last three years, allowing unelected bureaucrats to award public housing funds to favored groups and blocking others from competing for the contracts. CoA Institute urges Secretary Ben Carson to bring HUD back into compliance immediately.

Cooperative Agreement v. Procurement Contract

The agency’s use of Performance Based Annual Contribution Contracts’s comports with the statutory definition of a procurement contract. A procurement contract exists when “(1) the principal purpose of the instrument is to acquire (by purchase, lease, or barter) property or services for the direct benefit or use of the United States Government; or (2) the agency decides in a specific instance that the use of a procurement contract is appropriate.”[2] Conversely, a cooperative agreement exists when, “the purpose of the relationship is to transfer a thing of value, to carry out a public purpose of support.”[3] When HUD or any other federal agency uses a procurement contract, it must comply with federal procurement laws, such as the Competition in Contracting Act and the Federal Acquisition Regulation.[4] By improperly classifying Performance Based Annual Contribution Contracts’s, HUD was able to ignore these important contracting safeguards and to select any recipient it wished, making it ripe for cronyism.

Waste of taxpayer dollars

In addition to its defiance of a court order, HUD also harmed its relationship with PHAs like Navigate Affordable Housing Partners (“Navigate”), which had previously been eligible to compete for housing assistance dollars across state lines. HUD’s decision to alter its long-standing classification of these contracts was intended to generate an estimated savings of $208 million in voucher programs and $250 million in the public housing program.[5] Moreover, HUD announced it was not going to allow PHAs to compete for Performance Based Annual Contribution Contracts’s outside of their home states even though some, like Navigate, had competed beyond state lines and were able to provide the government with the best value.[6]

Change on the Horizon

According to a recent Washington Examiner article, discussions of HUD’s return to the competitive bidding process has already begun. HUD officials, however, have failed to elaborate on when the necessary changes will take place. CoA Institute will continue to monitor HUD’s unacceptable delay in complying with the court’s orders. Additionally, CoA Institute will continue to examine whether other government agencies are partaking in the same or similar unlawful activity as HUD.

HUD should take immediate action to ensure that its policies are in line with federal law to ensure money intended for public housing isn’t wasted on bureaucrats’ favored PHAs.

Travis Millsaps is counsel and Katie Parr is a law clerk at the Cause of Action Institute

 

[1] See United States v. CMS Contract Mgmt. Servs., 745 F.3d 1379, 1380 (Fed. Cir. 2014) cert. denied subnom.

[2] 31 U.S.C. § 6303.

[3] See 31 U.S.C. § 6305.

[4] See CMS Contract Mgmt. Servs, supra note 1, at 1381; see also Competition in Contracting Act, P.L. 98-369, §§ 2701-2753, 98 Stat. 1175 (1984) and 48 C.F.R. 31 2017 et seq.

[5] Press Release, Nat’l Ass’n of Hous. & Redevelopment Officials, NAHRO Analyzes Impact of HUD Proposed Savings (Oct. 31, 2012), available at http://www.nahro.org/nahro-analyzes-impact-hud-proposed-savings.

[6] See CMS Contract Mgmt. Servs., supra note 1 at 1383.

Blog, Media Learn More