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Longer sentences for gang members are unconstitutional after ruling, Pinkston says
KNOXVILLE – Using a Knox County case, an appellate court has struck down as unconstitutional a Tennessee law that allows harsher penalties for crime-committing gang members.
The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in an opinion released Thursday the state’s gang enhancement law is so broad it allows gang members to suffer extra punishment for crimes that had nothing to do with the gang or gang activity and the misdeeds of other gang members in which they weren’t even involved.
The court noted the 2012 law pushed by prosecutors and police was passed with good intent – to seek to quell gang violence – but was crafted so poorly it could apply to a member of a college fraternity. Like street gangs, fraternities use color schemes and symbols to show affiliation, and its members sometimes commit crimes that meet the law’s overly broad definition of “gang-related crime,” the court stated. The law defines “gang-related crime” as any offense in which a person either hurts or kills someone or threatens to hurt or kill someone while committing a crime. Hazing, the court noted, could qualify.