Joseph Dixon III
Assistant U.S. Attorney
600 United States Courthouse
300 South Fourth Street
Minneapolis, MN 55415
R.E. United States v. Adam Fuchs
Dear Mr. Dixon,
I’m writing this letter in hopes that some agreement can be reached concerning the Career Criminal aspects of my case. I have wanted to plead guilty and speed the trial process along as quickly as I could from the start. However, I can not in good conscience accept a plea agreement containing the Career Criminal Enhancement. I can understand your desire to punish me to the fullest extent of the law, but such an endorsement benefits no one. Especially when issues are as cloudy as they are in this case. It does not benefit me to serve the extra 100 or so months that such an endorsement adds to my sentence; and it does not benefit the government to pay to have me incarcerated that extra amount of time, especially when there are so many drug dealers and truly violent criminals striving for the chance to take my place.
Mr Dixon, I am not a violent criminal. I have not physically harmed anyone in my entire life. I have spent most of my adult life plaqued by depression and suicidal thoughts. Many times in the past I have run from those thoughts — sometimes by test driving a car and using it to travel as far as I could. But I have never struck out to hurt anyone — ever. Usually I was over 100 miles away by the time the vehicles owner even suspected theft. How is that violent?
In fact, Circuit Courts all across the country have ruled that auto theft is not a crime of violence. This is affirmed in the Fifth Circuit case of U.S. v. Charles. Is it fair that a crime can be technically considered violent depending not on the conditions of the crime, but on the part of the country in which it was committed? Should not the same determination of what constitutes a crime of violence be used for all Federal defendants regardless of what Circuit they are being charged in?
I do not write this letter in hopes of avoiding just punishment for the crime I committed. I fully accept the responsibility for the bank robbery. In fact I thank those responsible for arrest. Even in the short time that I have been in jail; I have reconnected with my family and laid the basis for a loving restorative relationship with them. I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, and I have established an auspicious plan to turn my life around and prepare me for re-entry into the community once my debt to society is paid.
When I committed this crime, I was depressed, lonely and scared of ending up back on the streets or in a homeless shelter. I had given up on life. Now I have taken the first tentative steps on the road to a new life. I know I can make it and I do not need 151-188 months to do it. Might justice not be better served by letting a drug dealer, murderer, or child molester take my bunk after I have served my time for the bank robbery, rather than making me serve so much extra time in an already over-crowded prison system — merely for test driving cars and not returning them? I am not a danger to society, and I know in my heart that I have committed my last criminal act. Yet, I have heard news of murderers servings as little as half the time that I would serve if enhanced as a Career Criminal. Does this make sense?
I implore you to allow me to plead guilty to bank robbery without being sentenced as a Career Criminal. If I were sentenced as a Career Offender, I would almost serve more time for having test-driven some cars, than I would as a bank robber. Is it right to strive so tenaciously to see me receive such an unnecessary harsh sentence on murky issues that the courts have been so divided on? I appeal to you both as a prosecutor and as a man — can we settle this? Is not 25 levels enough? Thank you, sir, for your time.
Sincerely,
Adam Fuchs