SADO saved the taxpayers and DOC over $6.5 million in 2015

SADO attorneys raise sentencing issues in nearly one-third of filings, on appeals from their clients’ trial and guilty plea convictions.  Many sentencing claims allege mistakes in scoring of sentencing guidelines, or overly high sentences based on inaccurate information about the defendant or the crime.  Often, mistakes are corrected by returning immediately to the trial court to provide another opportunity to impose an accurate and just sentence.  Correcting sentencing mistakes is a high priority for SADO.

When a sentence is corrected downward, to produce a lower minimum term, the defendant becomes eligible for parole sooner.  Each individual defendant will consume fewer state resources, the cost of prison confinement, through such a reduction in the minimum sentence.  SADO conservatively computes such reductions: if a defendant is serving multiple sentences and receives correction of just one, the impact is not computed.  Only real reductions in the minimum terms are counted in SADO’s projections.

Savings are a function of cumulative reductions in "real" minimum terms for SADO clients, multiplied by the cost of prison incarceration.