Former federal judge is striving for balance

It wasn't the first time Cassell made the national spotlight. In his 2004 decision in United States v. Croxford, Cassell became the first judge in the country to hold that federal sentencing guidelines were unconstitutional. A few months later, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with Cassell in the 2005 landmark case United States v. Booker, which found federal sentencing guidelines should be advisory and not mandated for judges to follow.

But the most difficult case of his career, Cassell said, involved an illegal immigrant. The case involved a man who used a stolen Social Security number to get a job. Federal prosecutors chose the man to be the first in Utah charged under a new aggravated identity theft statute, which imposes a two-year mandatory sentence. Cassell questioned why the man should be sentenced to two mandatory years for using the number to get a job, while others steal Social Security numbers to steal people's money and credit.

"The fact is, in this country there are millions of illegal aliens with phony IDs. Out of these millions of people, in my mind, one defendant had been selected for prosecution," Cassell said. Prosecutors argued that the man used a stolen number that belonged to a real person. Cassell ordered a review of pre-sentence reports on other illegal immigrant cases and found virtually all of them had used numbers that belonged to real people, yet their sentences were less.

Since then, Cassell said the U.S. Attorney's Office in Utah has put in better screening policies for such cases.

Cassell said he found himself questioning some laws at each turn. "I felt like it was proper judicial role to ask questions, even if we weren't necessarily charged with fixing the problem," he said. But he wanted to do more — he wanted to make a change. Being a federal judge, he couldn't do that.

"One of the frustrations about being a trial court judge is that you never set broad principles of law; of course, that's reserved for the appellate courts. ... When I was there for 5 1/2 years, I began to think that maybe I would have more effect in moving the law in a way that I think is desirable by doing appellate litigation."

Becoming a legal advocate is a better fit, he said. "I felt like for the rest of my life, I wasn't sure I could stay in one place doing one kind of thing. There were some issues I wanted to pursue, particularly working on crime victims' rights, which is an area that I felt very passionately about."

Traditionally, criminal cases involve two parties: the state and the defendant. But a growing trend in courts is to give the victims of crimes more of a voice in cases. In addition to teaching at the U., Cassell plans to work with a Washington, D.C., group that deals with crime victims' rights.

It seems being a voice for balance is innate in Cassell. One of the last things he did as a federal judge is speak out on the issue of sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine.