Judge orders release from jail of man who attacked congresswoman.

Attacker assigned to unlocked treatment facility with no security guards

In February, Kendrick Hamlin, also known as Hamlin Khalil Hamlin, assaulted Rep. Angie Craig (D. Minn.) in the elevator of the congresswoman’s apartment building. The assault occurred on the morning of the day the U.S. House voted to reject Washington D.C.’s soft-on-crime revisions to the criminal code. The House would have disapproved the revisions even absent the assault on Craig, but the timing of the two events drew extra attention to the attack.

Since the attack on Craig, attention has been diverted by two other high-profile assaults in D.C. First, one of Sen. Rand Paul’s staff members was stabbed repeatedly on the streets of Washington. Then, a Virginia woman was stabbed to death in a D.C. hotel by a man who had recently been released from jail after pleading guilty to attempted robbery.

But now, Kendrick Hamlin is back in the news. A D.C. federal court magistrate judge ordered that Hamlin be released from jail and sent to an inpatient treatment center.

Hamlin has a long criminal history. According to CBS News:

A review of court records shows nearly a decade of criminal cases involving Hamlin. Several of the incidents and arrests occurred in particularly close proximity to the grounds of the Capitol. 

In one case last November, police accused Hamlin of spitting blood at several Capitol Police officers during an altercation. According to a police affidavit, Hamlin was spotted by Capitol police lying on the ground on a sidewalk near the Capitol and taken to a hospital for medical care. The affidavit said Hamlin "became combative" with police while leaving the hospital and bit one officer, spit blood on others and kicked another in the groin.

Court filings indicate Hamlin pleaded guilty in the case and was sentenced to serve 35 days in jail. He was scheduled to be released about two weeks before his alleged attack against Craig.

Apparently, then, Hamlin was only able to restrain himself for two weeks before resuming his criminal activity. And this assumes his attack on Craig was his first post-release crime.

There’s more.

Weeks before the November incident, Hamlin was accused of theft from a Capitol Hill supermarket, just north of the Senate. According to a police report, Hamlin filled a bag with frozen food and menthol cigarettes and bolted without paying. Capitol Police reported finding the items in Hamlin's possession when he was stopped outside. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department told CBS News the charges in the theft were dropped when Hamlin eventually pleaded guilty in the blood-spitting assault case.

Hamlin also faced charges for entering a different woman's residence without permission inside an apartment in northeast Washington, D.C.  He pleaded guilty to this and to stealing the woman's computer.  

Court records show Hamlin also pleaded guilty to engaging in a lewd, obscene sexual act while in northwest Washington late last year. Hamlin failed to appear in court, prompting a bench warrant for his arrest. 

Include serial failure to appear in court among Hamlin’s offenses:

He has faced other bench warrants for failing to appear in court in cases originating in Maryland, Virginia and Washington dating back to 2017. His lengthy arrest record in Washington began in 2015 with a drug case in which he eventually pleaded guilty.

A decent regard for public safety — indeed, any regard at all — would require that Hamlin be jailed for a long time. What rationale did his attorneys conjure up for keeping him out of jail?

They argued that Hamlin has never been offered “the combination of location monitoring and a stable residence where he would receive mental health services and addiction treatment.” Does this mean Hamlin has to be offered every possible alternative to jail (shock therapy?) before D.C. residents and visitors to the nation’s capital can finally be confident he poses no danger to them?

In reality, said prosecutors, Hamlin has been ordered several times to receive treatment. In each case, he failed to comply.

Hamlin’s lawyers also claimed that treatment followed by GPS monitoring with home incarceration gives Hamlin the best chance of avoiding recidivism. But criminal sentencing should not be based on guesses about what’s the best means of avoiding recidivism in a particular case. Otherwise, life sentences should be the punishment of choice.

In Hamlin’s case, given his demonstrated inability to resist both treatment and crime, a very long stay in jail is clearly the best way to minimize recidivism.

And what about Hamlin’s long record of not showing up for court dates? The federal prosecutor pointed out that the treatment facility to which Hamlin apparently will be assigned isn’t even locked, and patients are monitored by staff, not security guards.

The magistrate judge, Zia M.Faruqui, responded that the law only requires him to have “reasonable assurance” that a defendant will appear for his next court date. But given the 25 bench warrants issued to Hamlin for previous failures to appear and the absence of genuine security at the treatment facility, how can the court have any confidence this defendant will show up for his next court date?

The judge sniffed that “to say this is a close call is not doing it justice.” But calling the case “close” will be no consolation to Hamlin’s next victim. It’s Judge Faruqui who isn’t doing justice.

Fortunately, he stayed his release order pending appeal to the chief judge of the district court. We can only hope the chief judge will overturn the order.

Crime is rampant in Washington, D.C. these days and the city’s police department is, by the mayor’s admission, insufficiently staffed to counter the problem.

One might hope that judges would at least see to it that the criminals officers do apprehend are incarcerated and thus unable to commit further mayhem. But Hamlin’s case suggests that D.C. judges can’t be counted on, either.