Drawing conclusions about the justice system from one criminal sentencing is not an easy thing to do. In fact, it’s a foolish thing to do. But one sentencing last week was a reminder of the potential disparate results that are possible under Oregon’s sentencing guidelines. It was the sentencing of Erik Conn for hitting and killing 16-year-old Forrest Cepeda with his car while driving and texting at the same time.

Conn was charged with second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, reckless endangerment and reckless driving.

Second-degree manslaughter is a Measure 11 offense, which, if he had been convicted, would have called for six years of imprisonment under the state’s guidelines. Instead, Conn pleaded guilty to the lesser charges of criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment.

Not being Measure 11 offenses, this plea led to a sentence of 150 days in the Deschutes County jail, 28 months in state prison and the lifetime loss of his driver’s license. He also has to pay Cepeda’s funeral costs and other fees. But in agreeing to plead guilty to the lesser charges, he escaped a penalty for the most serious charge of second-degree manslaughter and avoided the six-year sentence in state prison mandated by Measure 11. That measure, passed overwhelmingly by voters in 1994, sets mandatory minimum sentences for the most serious offenses. It is not unusual for defendants to agree to plead guilty to lesser charges to avoid the lengthier mandatory minimums stipulated under Measure 11.

There is no such thing as the perfect sentence for the senseless death of an innocent teenager like Cepeda.And a strong case can be made that this is a good one, or a better one than a previous case or two.

Nothing will restore Cepeda to life, and as much as any of us sympathize with his family’s understandable disappointment at a 33-month sentence for Conn, the costs of prosecution and imprisonment, given limited space and dollars, have to be weighed on another scale.

Thirty-three months behind bars may seem puny in one sense, but perfectly rational against the costs of a trial, whose outcome can’t be certain. Added to that would be the costs of a longer jail sentence, the sum of which has to be weighed against the full load of cases to be prosecuted and criminals imprisoned. As heartless as this sounds, one of the many questions raised by Conn’s inexcusable act is the relative application of resources.

Another important question, however, is fairness. The irony is that Measure 11, which was intended to bring certainty and equity in sentencing to the state, has become a metaphor for the reverse. Defense attorneys statewide argue that prosecutors use Measure 11 as a club, elevating infractions to Measure 11 offenses to gain lesser pleas from those trying to avoid harsher punishment. Employed reasonably, that’s a technique used by prosecutors across the nation with justification, sparing costs.

But its unreasonable use can destroy credibility in the application of justice. A classic example was the charging of David Black and Randall Clifford with second-degree manslaughter in the 2006 accident that killed two young women. Black and Clifford were driving separate cars from the women, who were together. All four were leaving the scene of a drag race. Driving away, the women crashed the car into an oncoming van, killing them both, and badly injuring the van’s driver. Clifford plead guilty to a lesser charge and served only three months in county jail. Black refused the plea, arguing he did nothing wrong. He was sentenced to more than six years in prison.

The difference in the disparate sentences was simply the result of Black’s unwillingness to take the plea. The Bulletin discovered many other lawbreakers who were far more culpable than Black yet did less time. The disparity between what happened in those cases and what happened in Conn’s is the real challenge to Measure 11.