What keeps a judge from making whatever decision they want when dealing with criminal court cases?
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Crooked judgements can get them kicked out.
Also, trial by jury. The guilty or not guilty conclusion comes from a jury of peers.
That’s why there are appeals. If a judge goes against legal precedent or makes some otherwise unreasonable or unjust ruling, the aggrieved party can appeal to a higher court to argue that the judge is wrong.
And from a personal perspective, judges can get punished with sanctions, such as being removed from the bench or being disbarred.
Judicial rulings are subject to an appeals process. There are two main reasons that you can appeal a decision – error in fact, or error in law. If the judge “made up whatever decision they wanted,” you would have grounds to appeal for error in law – error in law essentially means that the judge didn’t apply the law properly.
A judge who constantly has his decisions tossed out on appeal isn’t going to be a judge for much longer.
The 8th Amendment blocks “excessive” and “cruel and unusual” punishment at the highest level of government in the US.
More generally, jurisdictions often have sentencing guidelines and minimum and maximum sentencing laws that a judge must operate within.
Should they violate this, the sentencing will be overturned on appeal. If this happens repeatedly the judge will likely lose their next retaining election, and may risk more personal sanctions, penalties, and disbarment for breaking the law themselves.
If a judge abuses their discretion or makes a decisions that’s plainly contrary to the law, an appeals court will step in to correct it, either by ordering a new trial or some other remedy. If a judge is just brazenly doing whatever they want, they will very quickly be removed from office. Federal judges can be removed by impeachment, and states have their own procedures from removing judges from office for misconduct.
First what things judges can rule on in the first place. Judges rarely rule on innocence/guilt because you have the right to trial by jury.
They can make rulings on including/excluding some evidence or testimonies, but that’s normally subject to specific criteria described in law and precedents (previous similar rulings).
Often when determining sentencing, judges can be formally bound by mandatory sentences (like mandatory minimums) or can be informally expected to remain within sentencing guidelines set by the law.
And if judges decide to go rogue, those that are elected have the challenge of not being re-elected; those that are appointed can still be impeached if their decisions are thought to be from bad behavior or some impeachable offense (like letting friends and family off); and of course all your decisions as a judge (at least until you get to SCOTUS) can be appealed. So if you make a habit of making decisions that get appealed that comes across in your record and it makes it even easier for future decisions to be overturned on appeal.
Everyone’s talking about going overboard with sentencing, but let’s talk about judges like Aaron Persky. He gave Brock Turner 6 months for rape, and Turner was released in 3.
One of the results of the Turner wrist slap was the signing of AB2888, but even with that, penal code 1203.965 section b still leaves it up to a judges discretion whether he has to care about AB2888.
I still can’t wrap my head around those events years later. Except the part where Persky also went to Stanford, nothing else made sense.
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