Retired judge and legislator works to correct his 'biggest mistake'

At the end of a task force meeting on prison reform at the State Capitol on Wednesday, a man casually dressed in a sport coat, turtleneck and clean New Balance sneakers moved to the podium to address legislators.

In a room filled with dark-suited men carrying expensive briefcases, the senior citizen seemed an unlikely lobbyist, yet everybody seemed to know him.

"No tie, no business cards, no cellphone," Jack Davies said later. "So I guess I'm an amateur."

Nothing could be further from the truth. John Thomas "Jack" Davies served in the Minnesota Senate from 1959 to 1982. He was chair of the Judiciary Committee and helped pass the sentencing guidelines that have affected people's lives ever since. The lawyer originally from Harvey, N.D., was later appointed to the Court of Appeals, where he saw scores of men and women pass through the justice system, heard their stories of hardship and woe.

But now he was coming before the legislative body, as he has so many times since he left the court in 2000, to try to persuade it to correct what he calls "the biggest mistake I ever made."

The establishment of the legal guidelines, intended to make sentencing consistent throughout the state, inadvertently prompted the Legislature to later abolish the parole board, and with it the hopes of many prison inmates for an early release. Davies' message is particularly salient now, as the state tries to figure out how to deal with crowded prisons. Last December, the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission voted to drastically change how long some drug users and sellers spend in prison, but that's being challenged in the Legislature.

Davies has proposed a bill, carried by Sen. Kathy Sheran, DFL-Mankato, that would restore a parole board of three retired or sitting district or appellate judges who would hear inmates' petitions for release and decide who to let out. "The goal of the program is to release inmates who no longer need to be incarcerated to protect the public," the legislation says.

Given that he's failed several times to pass similar legislation, Davies realizes he's tilting at windmills. That doesn't deter him one bit from addressing what he calls "a plague of prisons." In a letter he intends to send to task force members soon, Davies states: "It seems tragically shortsighted to bar any consideration of changes in an inmate's character, self-control, maturity, chemical dependencies, ethical attitudes, empathy for others and religious underpinnings. People do change."

He should know. In 10 years on the bench, Davies saw countless cases where the main cause of strife and criminal behavior was mental illness or drugs. A speaker from the state's Department of Corrections, in fact, testified that while the number of people in the general population who have had addiction problems is around 10 percent, in prison it is the opposite: only 10 to 15 percent have not had addiction problems. Some of them successfully completed treatment years ago.

"Give them treatment right away, then let them go," said Davies.

"It's just not going to happen, no matter how much Jack Davies pursues it," said Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Vernon Center. "I hate to say that because he's a nice guy. There is just no appetite for it."

Cornish, a former law officer who co-chairs the prison task force, disagrees with Davies on whether the guidelines are sufficient. "This would undo the guidelines," said Cornish. "It would treat people differently and create another bureaucracy."

Sitting in a restaurant the day after the hearing, Davies waved a hand across the room. "I bet if you asked everyone here if we had a parole board, at least half would say yes," he said. "Guidelines were supposed to make sentencing consistent, but they never did. The variations in charging decisions across the state is appalling."

Those disparities arise from prosecutors' charging decisions and plea-bargain practices, Davies said. He believes the guidelines, in combination with a new parole board, would help negate any biases of individual judges or prosecutors.

"The parole board was a good tool," he said.

While Davies will talk for hours about the challenges of the criminal justice system, he's a bit more coy when discussing personal matters. He said his wife, Pat, doesn't like him giving out their ages, but he acknowledges "it's easily discoverable (he's 84). Just don't make me sound old."

Asked how long he and Pat have been married, Davies paused and said: "Oh, decades."

A question about his pastimes when he's not working on criminal justice issues was met with, "hardly anything."

He did divulge that he and his wife had been to a fundraiser at the home of a famous Minnesotan the previous evening.

"My wife and I were talking the other day," Davies said. "How can people not be involved in politics? It's unbelievably fun."

jtevlin@startribune.com • 612-673-1702