U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein has many priorities, but near the top of list is effectively prosecuting and deterring violent crime throughout Maryland, and particularly in Baltimore and Prince George’s County. What follows are excerpts from my recent interview with Rosenstein. Other excerpts appeared in The Daily Record on June 4 and June 11.
Sandler: Let’s talk about Project Exile.
Rosenstein: Our Maryland Exile program is a unified and comprehensive strategy to reduce gun crime. When I became U.S. Attorney in 2005, one of my first goals was to establish a coordinated program to fight gun crimes in Baltimore and Prince George’s County. … So we sat down with the State’s Attorney’s office and the Police Department and ATF and other agencies and developed a written plan.
What that plan involved was, number one, the law enforcement component. The law enforcement component includes reactive prosecutions....Then there’s the proactive component, which we refer to as the Violent Repeat Offenders Program. The proactive component involves not just waiting for dangerous criminals to get arrested, but actually going out to investigate them and develop cases against them and prosecute them and remove them from the community….
Then there’s the community outreach component. We recognize that we’re not going to prosecute our way out of this problem. We need to deter people from committing crimes in the first place. That involves such things as television commercials, radio advertisements, billboards, placards on city buses and flyers that are handed out by the Baltimore City Police.
It also includes call-ins, where we identify ex-convicts who are now out in the community and who we think are likely to commit new crimes. While they are under judicial supervision they are required to respond when they are told to come in by Parole and Probation. Then we have a meeting at which we make a number of presentations to them. One of the presentations is by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and in our presentation, we compute the lengthy sentence that each person will face if they are convicted of a federal drug or gun violation in the future based on their criminal history.… We’re telling them face-to-face, we know who you are and here’s how much time you will spend in federal prison if you get caught with drugs or a gun.…
We [also] hope to develop outreach to schools. We’re in the process of hiring a coordinator whose primary job will be to work with school officials and help to introduce anti-violence and anti-gang programs into the schools.
Sandler: Recently, the new mayor introduced a new plan to combat crime. Have you had a chance to at least hear about that or read about that?
Rosenstein: Yes.
Sandler: What’s your view?
Rosenstein: Well, we’ve worked closely with Mayor Dixon’s law enforcement liaisons, as we did with Mayor O’Malley’s. I think their most recent plan is going to work well with our Exile program because it recognizes that there are flaws in our state system and there is an important role [for] federal prosecution … in identifying defendants who should spend a long period of time in prison, but might not if they were prosecuted in state court, and in prosecuting those defendants in federal court. It also recognizes that stopping people from becoming criminals requires more than just good law enforcement.
Breaking the cycle
Sandler: If you had to be the mayor of this city, or for some unique happenstance, you were to create a solution to the Baltimore City crime problem, how would you construct your plan? What would your plan include?
Rosenstein: There’s not going to be any single magic solution and there’s not going to be a short-term solution. But I do believe that with concentrated effort, we can make an impact. First, we need to do a better job of punishing armed criminals, and second, we need to change the conditions that create criminals.
Number one, obviously, is law enforcement. How do you identify the most dangerous offenders and incapacitate them by putting them away in prison? I would push for legislative changes to close the revolving door of our state justice system for violent criminals. Armed criminals should not get bail, they should not get suspended sentences, and they should not get automatic parole.
Number two, after you remove the worst criminals, how do you send a message that will deter others from following in their footsteps? You don’t accomplish anything if you take one armed drug dealer off the streets and another armed drug dealer steps in and replaces [him]. The core mission of law enforcement should be preventing crime, not just prosecuting criminals after they victimize someone.
You need to take a broader approach by looking at the conditions that lead people down that road. From a law enforcement perspective, the most significant thing that we can provide is deterrence. I think that is extraordinarily valuable. There are a lot of people in Baltimore who believe, rightly or wrongly, that they can deal drugs and carry guns and that they’re unlikely to suffer much punishment for it. They think that they’re unlikely to get caught. If they get caught, they think they are unlikely to be prosecuted. If they are prosecuted, they think they are unlikely to get convicted. If they get convicted, they think they are unlikely to get significant sentences. If they get significant sentences, they think they are unlikely to serve them because they can get paroled.
So one of our goals is to try to break that cycle by sending a message that if you are a criminal caught carrying a gun in Baltimore, you will get prosecuted, you will get convicted, you will go to prison and you won’t get out for a long time.
Solving the Baltimore City crime problem is challenging because it requires a cultural change to stop children from emulating criminals. I think education is extraordinarily important. …
We need to rebuild a sense of community where people are afraid to break the law because they believe that they will suffer punishment and bring shame to themselves and their families.
On capital punishment
Sandler: You mentioned deterrence. Do you think capital punishment is a deterrent?
Rosenstein: I think that there are some people who can be deterred and some people who can’t. Capital punishment certainly is a deterrent for that group of people who can be deterred.
I think that people who are skeptical about whether you can deter crime really underestimate human intelligence and take an unduly short-term view. Most criminals were not born to be criminals. They became criminals because they saw opportunities and they thought that whatever benefit they would gain by taking those opportunities outweighed the likely adverse consequences. Also, most criminals start with small crimes and become increasingly more brazen. So if we can create a situation where people fear the consequences, I think we can deter many crimes and have fewer criminals. I think human nature operates that way.…
We see hardened criminals who, out on the street, would tell you that they hate law enforcement and they believe in the Stop Snitching campaign. Then suddenly when they get across the table from a federal prosecutor who shows them that they are going to face a minimum sentence of 20 years and a maximum sentence of 30 or 40 years or life in federal prison, they are willing to cooperate. They are willing to tell us everything they know. They are willing to do what they can to try to reduce that sentence.
I believe that human beings, for the most part, make rational choices, and if you fully inform them about the likely penalty, they’ll factor that into their decision-making about whether to commit a crime in the first place.
Think about the impact of speed traps and speed cameras on speeding. Just having a law on the books does not change behavior. Enforcing the law changes behavior.
Sandler: Does it concern you or interest you that this country is one of the only countries in the western part of the world that, if not embraces, utilizes capital punishment?
Rosenstein: It’s a relevant factor, I think, in deciding whether it’s good or bad policy to have capital punishment. But I don’t think the ultimate decision of whether it’s right or wrong should hinge on what everybody else is doing.
I think that we need to be very careful about how we use the death penalty. … When you look at the cases in which we’ve pursued the death penalty here in Maryland, I think you’ll see that they really are very violent and very dangerous offenders… We have a thorough review process, both in our office and the Department of Justice in Washington, before we even file a notice to seek the death penalty. Then, if we do, the defendant is entitled to representation by two extraordinarily talented lawyers.
One of the objections that people lodge against the death penalty is that [it] might be imposed on somebody who hasn’t had a fair trial or hasn’t had zealous representation. I know that’s not happening here. Anybody who faces the death penalty in federal court in Maryland gets excellent lawyers and investigators, with all expenses paid by the government.