‘Not a biased person’

Former Jacksonville prosecutor helped sentence blacks to far more time behind bars

T

hose who know Christine Bustamante say there’s nothing racist about her.

Before becoming an attorney, she spent four years teaching students with disabilities at public schools in Florida and Tennessee.

She volunteered at homeless shelters and organized fundraising drives to help children who couldn’t afford winter clothes.

The daughter of Brazilian immigrants, her Facebook page reveals friends of many races, nationalities and creeds.

“She is truly not a biased person,” said her husband, Michael Sweet.

But as an assistant state attorney in Jacksonville’s 4th Judicial Circuit, Bustamante prosecuted hundreds of cases that sent away black drug offenders for three times as long as whites.

In 2015 and 2016 alone — when she handled more than 100 felony drug cases — blacks received sentences that were nearly four times as long on average as those handed down to white offenders.

That put her at the top of a list of Duval County prosecutors’ racial disparities in sentencing for felony drug crimes, according to a nine-month investigation by the Herald-Tribune and the Florida Times-Union.

Academics and judges argue that prosecutors are the most powerful players in the criminal justice system and most to blame for bias. But at 34 and just three years out of law school in 2016, was Bustamante really responsible for locking up black defendants for nearly quadruple the time of whites?

The Herald-Tribune and Times-Union set out to answer this question by measuring the influence of other players in the criminal justice system on cases prosecuted by Bustamante.

Those players include two powerful judges she appeared before; her former boss, Angela Corey — regarded as one of the toughest state attorneys in the nation; the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, which heavily polices minority communities; and residents of the city’s black neighborhoods, notorious for gun violence.

Each of those individuals and groups had the power to influence Bustamante’s sentencing record.

The judges could have influenced her numbers because they controlled decision-making in a quarter of Bustamante’s cases — cases where defendants either went to trial or threw themselves at the mercy of the court through what are known as open pleas.

Corey could have influenced her numbers because she had a reputation for micromanaging line prosecutors, permitting them little discretion.

The Sheriff’s Office could have influenced her numbers because deputies arrest a much higher percentage of blacks for felony drug crimes.

And the statistics could have been skewed by black defendants themselves, many of whom are repeat offenders and more likely to be busted with a gun, leading to longer sentences.