Motion to Preclude Consideration at Sentencing of Defendant’s Record of Prior Police Contacts that Did not Result in Criminal Convictions

This ten-page sample motion argues that judges should not consider a client’s record of prior police contacts, including arrests, that did not result in criminal convictions for purposes of sentencing because such records are (1) inherently unreliable/ambiguous and (2) likely to exacerbate existing racial disparities in the criminal legal system. The motion draws on national data and jurisdiction-specific case studies to show that people of color, particularly Black Americans, are stopped, searched, arrested, and charged at disproportionately high rates, not because of higher rates of crime commission but because of implicit bias in law enforcement. This sample motion also uses local data from Washtenaw County, Michigan, that defenders should replace with their own jurisdiction’s data when available, to demonstrate that these national trends are reflected in the defendant’s jurisdiction as well.  Data from this motion could also be useful to defenders drafting 4th Amendment suppression motions or making evidentiary arguments at trial to exclude evidence of prior police contacts.  To the extent that the court or the prosecutor bring up prior police contacts at pre-trial release hearings, this data could also be useful to argue for exclusion of prior contacts during bail/pretrial release assessments.