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Attorney General Eric Holder has infuriated U.S. Assistant Attorneys by not waiting for the U.S. Sentencing Commission to recommend reductions of sentencing guidelines for drug offenders and pushing them to prosecute based on his new guidelines. “We do not join with others who regard our federal justice system as ‘broken’ or in need of major reconstruction,” the National Association of U.S. Assistant Attorneys said in a letter to Mr. Holder in January. “Instead we consider the current federal mandatory minimum sentence framework well constructed and worth preserving.” In August, Mr. Holder unveiled his “Smart on Crime” initiative, seeking to “reserve

A day after U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended mandatory federal sentencing laws, four of his predecessors filed a court brief Wednesday saying a Utah drug dealer received an unconstitutionally long prison term. More than 150 other ex-Justice Department officials also signed the "friend of the court" brief with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which seeks to overturn a 55-year sentence given to a man for carrying a pistol during a string of marijuana deals. Weldon Angelos, 25, of Salt Lake City, was convicted in 2003 of three counts of possessing a firearm while involved in a drug...

WASHINGTON, May 10 - Just months after the Supreme Court struck down federal sentencing formulas, the House is moving to institute new mandatory minimum sentences, beginning with a sweeping bill to fight street gangs. The bill, which the House is expected to approve on Wednesday, would greatly increase federal penalties for gang-related crimes. It would change the definition of a criminal street gang to three people who have committed at least two crimes together, at least one of them violent, from five. Also pending is a bill passed by the House Judiciary Committee that would apply much harsher mandatory minimums...

Shirley Maye Rollow would have been better off if she had never taken the witness stand. Rollow, 55, testified in her own defense to federal charges of possessing and distributing pseudoephedrine for making methamphetamine. An Oklahoma City jury found her guilty in October 2002 of nine felony counts. Had Rollow been sentenced on just those convictions, federal guidelines would have recommended a sentence of 10 to 16 months in prison, said her attorney, Bill Zuhdi. But Rollow was sentenced to 15 years when a judge added prison time because of enhancements that were never proved to a jury. One of...

Mandatory Sentencing Reconsidered Mandatory sentencing and three strikes laws have always been controversial subjects. Legislators who favor these laws reason that they are successfully curbing judges who are considered to be too lenient on criminals, and that they serve to counter a rising wave of crime. Prosecutors appreciate such laws because the laws give them discretion concerning whether or not to pursue mandatory-minimum charges when indicting someone. The general public tends to approve of mandatory sentencing because it feels good to think that some offenses bring a certain punishment, regardless of the circumstances of the case. Why do we have...

Congress should have sought the judiciary's advice before limiting the ability of judges to impose lighter sentences than specified in federal guidelines, the nation's top judge says. "During the last year, it seems that the traditional interchange between the Congress and the Judiciary broke down when Congress enacted what is known as the Protect Act, making some rather dramatic changes to the laws governing the federal sentencing process," Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote Thursday in his annual report on the state of the judiciary. The changes that Rehnquist objects to were tucked into an anti-crime bill passed by Congress...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist on Thursday lashed out at Congress for not seeking input from the judiciary before it approved a law aimed at forcing judges to follow tougher sentencing guidelines. "During the last year, it seems that the traditional interchange between the Congress and the judiciary broke down when Congress enacted what is known as the PROTECT Act, making some rather dramatic changes to the laws governing the federal sentencing process," Rehnquist said in his 2003 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary. Rehnquist, who heads a group of 27 judges that in September called...

As the nation copes with growing budget deficits resulting from the economic downturn, more and more states are scaling back on mandatory minimum sentencing in favor of "smart on crime" policies, according to a new report commissioned by a group opposed to mandatory sentencing laws. But the move is not always motivated by money, said Laura Sager, executive director of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. "The growing movement toward 'smart on crime' sentencing and corrections policies is not driven solely by dollars," she said. "In the last few years, there has been a major shift in public opinion and political will...

BALTIMORE (AP) - Fourteen years ago, Maryland opened its ultramodern Supermax prison, a high-tech fortress to hold the "worst of the worst." In contrast, a few blocks away stood the Maryland Penitentiary, a dark, gothic, castle-like structure built nearly 200 years ago when inmates were supposed to contemplate their sins in solitude and disgrace. But when Mary Ann Saar, Maryland's secretary of public safety and correctional services, recently described a Maryland institution as so out of step with modern correctional philosophy that it ought to be razed, she was talking about Supermax. "First of all, it's inhumane. Second, it has...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Beginning this week, federal judges have less freedom to treat some defendants more leniently because of special circumstances, such as gambling addiction. Judges had been able to hand out lighter punishments than outlined in national guidelines if the defendant had a gambling addiction, had merely a bit part in a crime or accepted responsibility for wrongdoing. The U.S. Sentencing Commission banned those exceptions and restricted when judges can give convicted criminals leniency for claiming hardship because of their families or aberrant behavior. The rules are a spinoff of a law passed by Congress last spring to...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Published on Tuesday, September 23, 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Printer-friendly version -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN ASHCROFT is not only on a collision course with civil libertarians in this country because of his implementation of the Patriot Act, but he is well on his way to colliding with at least one conservative Supreme Court justice. Ashcroft's Justice Department is compiling data on judges who give lighter sentences than federal guidelines prescribe. The new policy requires prosecutors to notify officials in the Justice Department whenever a federal judge issues sentences below these guidelines. But Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, a person no one...

Justice Criticizes Mandatory Sentencing By MARTIN FINUCANE Associated Press Writer BOSTON (AP) - Mandatory minimum sentences are unfair and take away flexibility needed in the judicial process, said Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer. "There has to be oil in the gears. ... There has to be room for the unusual or the exceptional case," he told about 550 people Sunday at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. Breyer said Congress had passed a number of mandatory minimum statutes where "there is no room for flexibility on the downside." "That is not a helpful thing to do," he said....

<p>Attorney General John Ashcroft is directing federal prosecutors to seek maximum charges and penalties in more criminal cases and to limit use of plea bargains to get convictions.</p> <p>"Federal prosecutors must charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offenses that are supported by the facts," Ashcroft said in a memo to U.S. attorneys released Monday. "Charges should not be filed simply to exert leverage to get a plea."</p>

<p>BOSTON — Mandatory minimum sentences are unfair and take away flexibility needed in the judicial process, said Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer.</p> <p>"There has to be oil in the gears. ... There has to be room for the unusual or the exceptional case," he told about 550 people Sunday at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum (search).</p>

<p>A new report from the Justice Department is welcome ammunition for the growing debate over lengthy prison sentences for career criminals. Last year, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, violent and property crimes fell to their lowest levels in thirty years. As a result, 21 million fewer Americans were victimized last year than in 1973, when 44 million of our fellow citizens were victims of violent or property crimes. The survey measures crimes committed against U.S. residents age twelve and up. The decrease applied in every region of the country, in suburbs and inner cities, at all income levels, and across all racial and ethnic groups.</p>

Here's an item to confound those who say suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore must cave to a federal court's order against his monument to the Ten Commandments: Thousands of bleeding-heart leftist judges routinely break the law and get away with it. More than 10,000 of nearly 55,000 federal sentences in fiscal 2001, about 18 percent, were "downward departures" from mandatory sentencing laws, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, a federal agency created in 1984 to implement the rules. President Bush, a frequent critic of activist judges who do whatever they feel like, in April signed a law designed...

<p>Criminal sentences mirror moral judgments about the wretchedness of the crime and the depravity of the offender. Neither judges nor prosecutors nor penologists nor moral philosophers command any greater sentencing wisdom than do legislators or common citizens, for example, whether to sentence a recidivist robber to life imprisonment or some lesser punishment. Professional expertise in sentencing is an illusion with false promises of rehabilitation and deterrence with lenity.</p>

<p>Testifying before Congress in April, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy tried to explain why it's important for judges to have discretion in sentencing. He cited the case of "a young man raising marijuana in the woods. That makes him a distributor. He's got his dad's hunting rifle in the car &#8212; he forgot about it and wanted to do target practice. That makes him armed. He's looking at 15 years. An 18-year-old doesn't know how long 15 years is."</p>

Ashcroft's Power Grows In Terrorist Witch Hunt POSTED: 3:52 p.m. EDT August 15, 2003 UPDATED: 3:55 p.m. EDT August 15, 2003 WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft doesn't have enough to do, hunting down terrorists. With the help of a rollover Congress, he now has a new and bigger club to go after federal judges who impose lighter sentences in criminal cases than he would like. As a faithful lord high executioner of the administration's much touted "compassionate conservatism," Ashcroft wants to clamp down on those judges. At issue are the sentencing guidelines laid down by a federal commission that...

Testifying before Congress in April, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy tried to explain why it's important for judges to have discretion in sentencing. He cited the case of "a young man raising marijuana in the woods. That makes him a distributor. He's got his dad's hunting rifle in the car -- he forgot about it and wanted to do target practice. That makes him armed. He's looking at 15 years. An 18-year-old doesn't know how long 15 years is." Members of Congress apparently did not grasp Kennedy's point. The next day, almost all of them voted to impose new restrictions...