COVINGTON — A Kenton County judge has re-sentenced two black men convicted of burglaries, saying the prosecutor-recommended sentences were inconsistent with a lesser punishment recommended for a white man convicted of the same crime.

        Kenton Circuit Judge Patricia Summe said the disparity in the sentencing recommendations from the prosecutor's office were apparent to her because the three men were sentenced on the same day, Aug. 20.

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        A week later, she re-sentenced the two black defendants — Shelby Glover and Otis Walker — to five years' probation and a year in the county jail — the same sentence that Dustin Russell, a white man from Covington who also was convicted of burglary, had received on Aug. 20 in her court.

        “If you go back and look at the whole year in retrospect (under Kenton Commonwealth Attorney Bill Crockett), I think the four judges appear to be looking for consistency (in terms of the recommended punishments),” Judge Summe said Monday. “Consistency has been an issue all across the board, and that was such a clear exam ple.”

        Judge Summe's action prompted Mr. Glover to send her his handwritten thanks.

        “I will surely take advantage of the chance you have given me by seeking drug and alcohol treatment,” Mr. Glover wrote the judge in a note enclosed in his court file. “I just can't express how I feel at this moment. I would just like to say God bless you.”

        In his 27 years of practicing law, Mike Williams, who served as Mr. Glover's public defender, said that he had never heard of a judge re-sentencing a defendant because of a perceived disparity in the prosecution's sentencing recommendations.

        “If there is an unconscious bias in sentencing recommendations, it would be the court that would see it first,” Mr. Williams said. “We don't keep those kinds of statistics.”

        He latter added: “I know all those guys (in the prosecutor's office).” “I don't think there's a conscious effort to discriminate between black defendants and white defendants ...

        “Is there an unconscious bias?” Mr. Williams asked. “I don't know. The judge is at a higher vantage point — both literally and figuratively — and must have acted the way she did for a reason. But in all my years of practicing law, I've never heard Mike Folk (the assistant common wealth attorney who prosecuted Mr. Glover's case) ever say anything that sounded racist.”

        In a Nov. 7 order, the judge overruled a commonwealth motion to change the sentence in Mr. Glover's case.

        “The court reviewed all the defendants' records and determined that although they were different in some particularities it was not consistent and did not meet the standard for equal protection/treatment or constitutional due process under the law to sentence the defendants Glover, Russell and Walker in so vastly a different manner,” Judge Summe wrote in her order.

        In a Monday interview, Judge Summe declined to answer questions about what factor the race of the defendants might have played in the cases, adding she preferred to let her written record speak for itself.

        Mr. Crockett, who took over as Kenton County commonwealth attorney on Jan. 1, said the defendants in the three cases in question entered their pleas “knowingly and voluntarily” and with the consent of their attorneys, who did not file objections. He added it was the facts of the cases — not the race of the defendants — that prompted the sentencing recommendations from the prosecutors in the three cases.

        “It's the facts of the crime, and what they do that drives each case — not whether they're back or white, young or old, or whatever,” Mr. Crockett said. He described himself as “a strong proponent of equal protection,” and added: “Anyone who knows me knows to imply anything else is clearly out of touch with reality.”

        The defense attorneys for Mr. Glover and Mr. Walker said that they had no problems with the commonwealth attorney's office in the negotiations of those cases, or in their handling of other cases. Both said their clients were caught in the commission of a crime and didn't have room for bargaining.

        The judge ruled that a five- year sentence prosecutors had recommended for a fourth burglary defendant, Billy Cowart, who is black, was “appropriate” because of Mr. Cowart's extensive criminal history.

        In her Nov. 7 order, Judge Summe noted that the commonwealth had recommended a four-year prison term for Mr. Glover, who had one prior felony and three misdemeanors. The commonwealth stood moot, or made no recommendation, on the sentence of Mr. Walker, who had three prior felonies and four prior misdemeanors. On Mr. Russell, who had one prior felony and seven misdemeanors and a history of six domestic emergency protective orders, the commonwealth recommended that he serve one year in the county jail and be placed on five years' probation. On Mr. Cowart, who had an extensive felony record, the commonwealth recommended a five-year sentence.

        “These were counseled pleas,” Mr. Crockett said of the cases. “These were agreements we had with their attorneys and their attorneys thought they were good deals.”

        In the case of Mr. Russell, the white burglary defendant, Mr. Crockett said that nine of the charges the judge referred to arose from a single traffic stop in Grant County.

        Mr. Crockett said that Mr. Russell actually was sentenced to three years in prison because the year he was sentenced to in Judge Summe's court was to run concurrent to two years he had received for unrelated charges in another judge's division.

        “We felt that the disposition of those cases was fair and we stand by those decisions,” Mr. Crockett said.

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