United States v. O'DRISCOLL, 84-CR-14-1
| Decision Date | 25 May 1984 |
| Docket Number | No. 84-CR-14-1,83-CR-63-1.,84-CR-14-1 |
| Citation | 586 F. Supp. 1486 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Michael James O'DRISCOLL, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Colorado |
Robert N. Miller, U.S. Atty., and Richard T. Spriggs, Asst. U.S. Atty., Denver, Colo., for plaintiff.
Isaac H. Kaiser, Berenbaum & Weinshienk, Denver, Colo., for defendant.
The responsibility for imposing condign sentence upon a defendant convicted of crime rests upon the judge who has presided over the trial in which the verdict was rendered or, in the absence of trial, who accepted the plea of guilty to the charge. In the instant proceeding, the defendant was convicted of the crime of kidnapping in a jury trial and also entered a plea of guilty to the crime of armed bank robbery. I know of no more excruciating decision for a judge to make than whether to confine and, if so, for how long and under what terms and conditions.
I am keenly aware of the imperfections of the judicial process and my own fallibility of perception when called upon to impose a final and awesome judgment. I can deal only with the defendant who stands before me and not with the society that helped to form and nurture him.1 Whatever sentence I impose must be limited to that which is authorized by law. As best I am able, I must purge myself of any inappropriate emotions or motivations. No sentence which is imposed for the purpose of vengeance or to satisfy a public demand for vengeance is worthy of respect.
Justice consists in meting out a sentence which is threatened by law and deserved by the guilt of one who voluntarily ran the risk of conviction. It is, therefore, the responsibility of a judge to sentence not for the sake of the individual, but for the sake of justice — to carry out the threat of the law and to deter others from committing the same or similar acts. As Tolstoy observed, the seeds of every crime are in everyone of us. All of us need to be restrained from doing what may tempt us by seeing what happens to one who has in fact done it. The law's warnings must be real. The grim consequence of imprisonment must be shown to be inevitable. To do otherwise is to trivialize the seriousness of crime and depreciate the humane principles by which integrity and dignity are recognized in all of us.2
In furtherance of these principles and in determining the particular sentence to be imposed in this case, I have chosen to be guided by proposals presently pending before the Congress of the United States which would require any federal judge to state in open court the reasons for the particular sentence imposed.3 These proposals suggest that I consider the nature and circumstances of the offenses; the history and characteristics of the defendant; the need for the sentence to afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct; the need to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant; and the need to reflect the seriousness of the offense so that the law will be respected.
When the defendant entered the Western Federal Savings and Loan Association on December 20, 1982, he was carrying a handgun in each hand. He was accompanied by Christine Marie Blake who was also carrying a handgun. Blake maintained a relatively low profile throughout the robbery, but the defendant was very aggressive, pushing people around and making numerous demands using loud profanities. When people did not move fast enough for him, he would bang one of his guns. On one occasion, after ordering everyone down on the floor, he noticed an elderly man who had instead buried his face in his hands at the check writing counter. Defendant went over, yelled at the man and then slammed the butt of his own gun on the top of the check writing counter, smashing the glass. The bank lost $3,384 from the robbery. In addition, repairs cost approximately $250 to replace a handle on the vault, which the defendant broke; to replace the glass, which defendant smashed on top of the check writing counter; and to replace a large picture-type glass window, through which the defendant fired a shot. The fear defendant instilled in all the employees was by far the worst part.
Sheri Larson, age 24, had started working at the bank only four days before the robbery. She was five months pregnant at the time. She states:
First he grabbed me by the arm and forced me to help him take money out of the drawers. When I ran out of money and gave him some rolls of coins, he became very angry and elbowed me in the stomach. He hit me so hard it doubled me over and then he pushed me down on the floor. My doctor monitored me closely for a week because I was having a lot of pain in my stomach. For a very long time, I had nightmares and trouble sleeping and even now I sometimes get so afraid of a suspicious stranger that I have to go to another room to get control of myself. Before, I was never like that. I was afraid he would kill one of us and when he fired the shot, that possibility became even more real. But the worst part was that I never stopped worrying about the possibility of injury to my baby until he was born and I could see that everything was OK.
While leaving the bank, the defendant fired the shot through the window and threatened to kill all the bank personnel.
The defendant was identified as the perpetrator of the robbery by means of surveillance photographs taken by cameras in place during the commission of the crime. Thereafter, Christine Blake was apprehended and admitted her participation in the offense. After his arrest, the defendant likewise admitted his guilt in a signed statement given to an FBI agent in Springfield, Massachusetts.
During the summer and fall of 1982, the defendant was living in Denver, Colorado with a paramour by the name of Karen Tietjens. During this time he was a fugitive wanted for a number of bank robberies in the Springfield, Massachusetts vicinity.
On October 11, 1982, he purchased a yellow 1976 Dodge van from a private party, using a Colorado driver's license which he had acquired in the name of Gregory Dean Sanders. On November 12, 1982 at Mile High Pawn Shop in Denver, he purchased a 9mm Model 459 Smith & Wesson automatic, likewise using the false Sanders driver's license for identification purposes. On December 16, 1982, he purchased a Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 magnum revolver at Tyrol Sport Arms Company in Denver, using for identification another false driver's license in the name of Michael Maher.
On December 20, 1982, after the armed robbery at the Western Federal Savings and Loan Association offices in Denver, the defendant fled with Blake and Tietjens to Salt Lake City. Blake then returned to the Springfield, Massachusetts area. The defendant and Tietjens continued on to the west coast.
On January 19, 1983, Tietjens and the defendant returned to Denver, driving the 1976 Dodge van. The defendant was out of funds. He could not pay the full price for a motel room so he secured accommodations with an agreement to pay the balance the following day.
On the next day he tried to sell the 1976 van. Failing that, he went to the Lakewood Gem and Trading Post located in Lakewood, Colorado. He attempted to pawn the .44 magnum, but the proprietor, Irwin Kass, said that he did not have a pawn license and directed the defendant to other establishments. At approximately noon the defendant and Tietjens returned to the Lakewood Gem and Trading Post in the 1976 van. The defendant entered the store alone under the pretext of selling the .44 magnum. Encountering Mr. Kass alone in the store, he announced a stick-up and forced Mr. Kass to get down on his hands and knees. After obtaining about $400 from the cash box, he proceeded to pistol whip Mr. Kass with the .44 magnum. The victim sustained numerous lacerations to the scalp requiring more than 100 stitches, a blood transfusion, the capping of three broken teeth, two broken fingers, one of which has remained noticeably disfigured due to bones which were smashed beyond repair, and a severely torn ear which had to be sewn back. Mr. Kass testified that his fingers were smashed when he attempted to shield his head with his hands.
"I am sure the only reason he quit beating me was because he thought I was dead," Mr. Kass stated. He was an inpatient at St. Anthony's Hospital for one week and medically unable to return to work for 3½ months. When he was medically cleared to return to work the memories were so painfully difficult that he ran ads for two months attempting to sell the store, but was unsuccessful in finding a buyer. Mr. Kass now experiences significantly less anxiety in the store, although he still experiences some anxiety whenever suspicious strangers enter. The biggest problem he now has is getting a good night's sleep. Approximately every other night he wakes up. When he does, he cannot get back to sleep without first checking around his house to see if someone is there who might harm him. Before the beating, Mr. Kass never had trouble sleeping.
Immediately following the holdup and pistol whipping of Mr. Kass, the defendant and Tietjens fled down a busy thoroughfare to a shopping center. As they pulled into a parking space in front of a J.C. Penney store, Kent Leslie Martin, a salesman, was pulling into an adjacent parking space in his 1976 Oldsmobile sedan. The defendant got out of the van and entered Mr. Martin's car kidnapping him at gunpoint. Tietjens then entered Mr. Martin's car and the three of them departed. They returned to the motel, paid the bill and obtained their luggage with Mr. Martin still held at gunpoint. They then proceeded straight east on Interstate 70 across Colorado and into the State of Kansas.
Upon arriving at Salina, Kansas, the defendant dropped Tietjens off at a truck stop, advising her that he was going to take Mr....
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U.S. v. O'Driscoll
...of 25 years for armed bank robbery and a consecutive term of imprisonment of 300 years for kidnapping. United States v. O'Driscoll, 586 F.Supp. 1486, 1494-1495 (D.Colo.1984)(Kane, J.). Those sentences were affirmed by the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. United States v. O'Driscoll, ......
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U.S. v. O'Driscoll
...of ninety-nine years, is outside the applicable statutory limits and thus illegal and an abuse of the trial court's discretion. 586 F.Supp. 1486 (1984). O'Driscoll entered a guilty plea to a charge of armed robbery prior to his trial on the kidnapping charge. A review of the facts relative ......
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U.S. v. O'Driscoll
...of 25 years for armed bank robbery and a consecutive term of imprisonment of 300 years for kidnapping. United States v. O'Driscoll, 586 F.Supp. 1486, 1494-1495 (D.Colo. 1984) (Kane, J.). Those sentences were affirmed by the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. United States v. O'Driscoll......
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U.S. v. O'Driscoll
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