Update on Gementera

Judge Walker denied Gementera's petition today to eliminate the shaming condition.  The order was unpersuasive, to my mind.  Earlier in the case, Judge Walker had said he would reconsider the shaming condition if there was evidence that "this condition would likely impose upon defendant psychological harm or effect or result in unwarranted risk of harm to" the defendant.  The court's order relied upon language in the expert's report, which I discussed earlier today, stating that the defendant would not likely experience "permanent psychic maiming." It was essentially upon this slim reed that Walker leaned. For Walker's order mentions nothing about the expert's conclusions that the sandwich board condition will redouble Gementera's cycle of depression, self-loathing and substance abuse; that it had no rehabilitative value; and that it will only "strengthen his pathology and promote an already weakened and humiliated man to behave rashly."  I guess the judge's reasoning is that because those effects fall short of "permanent psychic maiming," they're not worth replacing with an alternative.

I wish Walker would have articulated earlier that his standard for revisiting the condition would be so forbidding.  After all, the Ninth Circuit relied in part on the notion that this supervised release condition would be rehabilitative and that Walker said he would reconsider the condition in light of evidence of harm or potential harm.  Well, now you have an expert saying this condition will serve no rehabilitative purpose and this will cause harm.  Alas.