Could a judge sentence a criminal to nothing?

Question

In the reboot of Night Court (which is obviously not realistic at all), a defendant is found guilty, but Judge Stone says, “I’ll let you off with a warning.” Does a judge really have the ability to do that?

I know that some crimes have mandatory minimums, but there are also crimes that don’t.

I also know that a judge can issue a suspended sentence, but that isn’t the same thing because it could be reinstated later.

Does a judge really have the ability to issue effectively no sentence? And if not, what is the “minimum”?

Answer 1

canada

The judge may enter an absolute discharge. See Section 730 of the Criminal Code.

730 (1) Where an accused, other than an organization, pleads guilty to or is found guilty of an offence, other than an offence for which a minimum punishment is prescribed by law or an offence punishable by imprisonment for fourteen years or for life, the court before which the accused appears may, if it considers it to be in the best interests of the accused and not contrary to the public interest, instead of convicting the accused, by order direct that the accused be discharged absolutely or on the conditions prescribed in a probation order made under subsection 731(2).

Answer 2

Yes

new-south-wales

s10(1) of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 allows a court to not record a conviction against a guilty defendant, with or without a Conditional Release Order (CRO) or an agreement by the defendant to enter into an intervention program.

This is not available for crimes where Parliament has imposed mandatory sentences:

1. killing a police officer has a mandatory life sentence, and
2. assualt causing death while drunk has a minimum sentence of eight years in prison.

However, those aren't the sort of offences that get tried in "night court".

Answer 3

germany

Exactly that happened in a spectacular case in 2002 which was widely discussed. The setting resembled the basic premise of the TV series 24: How far can — or must! — a policeman go to prevent a tragedy when time runs out?

In this concrete case, a man abducted a child of a rich family and tried to blackmail them. He was soon apprehended and refused to disclose the location of the boy. In order to locate the child and potentially save his life, the Frankfurt police chief ordered a subordinate to threaten the perpetrator with torture, which he did. In the end, the boy had long been dead; but the torture threat had a legal aftermath.

Torture, including its threat, is directly forbidden by Art. 1 GG which famously guarantees that "human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority." Criminally, it falls under §240 StGB as coercion (Nötigung), with stricter minimum sentences if performed by government officials. Both the subordinate and the chief were charged, with coercion resp. instigating coercion in an official function.

The decision and sentence is remarkable. For the sake of this discussion I want to focus on the fact that the court, even though it considered the defendants guilty, sentenced them only to a monetary fine, below the minimum prescribed by the law (for a government official, the minimal sentence would be 6 months in prison for the subordinate). That sentence then was suspended, on condition of a one year probation period. The court justified this with the massively mitigating circumstances. In effect, the policemen were not punished at all even though the court made clear that they were guilty as charged.—

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Another, less spectacular possibility is §60 StGB which says (emphasis mine):

Das Gericht sieht von Strafe ab, wenn die Folgen der Tat, die den Täter getroffen haben, so schwer sind, daß die Verhängung einer Strafe offensichtlich verfehlt wäre. Dies gilt nicht, wenn der Täter für die Tat eine Freiheitsstrafe von mehr als einem Jahr verwirkt hat.

Deepl translates this (and I agree) as:

The court will refrain from imposing a penalty if the consequences of the crime that have affected the offender are so severe that imposing a penalty would be clearly inappropriate. This does not apply if the offender has incurred a prison sentence of more than one year for the crime.

Trish had a better example than I did originally: In a car accident caused by negligence a bystander is injured, which constitutes bodily harm caused by negligence. But in the same accident, the culprit is crippled for life. The law considers that punishment enough.

Note that this is not optional but binding; the purpose of the law is not retribution.

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This last topic is not about a trial; instead, in Germany the paradox of a criminal act that can nonetheless be committed with impunity is even part of the criminal code. It is the way in which the government tried to square the circle regarding abortion.

After the reunification with the GDR in which abortion during the first 12 weeks had been legalized in 1972 (the only law ever which had opposing votes in parliament), the "unified" (in fact West German) law was changed to include essentially the same provision. The conservative state of Bavaria, outvoted in the legislative process, called upon the Constitutional Court for redress. The court stated that the constitution demands the protection of all human life, including the unborn, and declared the law unconstitutional. In response, the parliament changed the wording of the $218a from "the abortion is not unlawful" to "the offense has not been committed" (der Tatbestand [...] ist nicht verwirklicht).

This contorted wording apparently satisfies the Constitutional Court's demand that the state protect the unborn life. The effect is that abortion under certain conditions is still unlawful but not punishable, exactly the split you asked for, albeit legislatively, not jurisdictionally.

Answer 4

united-states

In the United States there are several caveats to answer this question.

First, both at the federal and at most state levels, there are minimum sentencing policies. This usually restricts a judge to sentencing within a range of punishments for both financial fines and jail time. BUT in some states these minimums are mandatory, and others they are recommendations.

Second, is that these minimums are specific to the charge(s). So, depending on the charge, a warning (or in almost every case, at least the court fees) could be all the Judge slaps them with.

Third, a lot of jurisdictions will have a phrase similar to "Judge's discretion" in the sentencing section of the legislative code. This gives a lot of subjective leeway to the Judge presiding over the case.

Finally, in the Night Court example, the judge is almost certainly dismissing a case, and thus, not convicting the individual of a crime. Rather than creating a conviction on the defendant's record, and imposing a sentence of only a warning.

In conclusion, a judge could level a sentence of a warning, if some of these other barriers are not applicable to the specific case.

A good example of this happening is the televised traffic court, where the judge has infrequently forgiven the fine, despite the individually clearly committing the infraction. One such example was the judge not enforcing a penalty because the driver turned on a red light where not allowed while rushing to the hospital. This probably falls in line with the Night Court example where the charges are dismissed, instead of a conviction with a sentence of "warning".