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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:31
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Punishment issue splits Ashcroft, judges
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By Gina Holland
Sept. 29, 2003 | WASHINGTON (AP) -- A debate over appropriate punishments for federal crimes and how cases should be pursued by prosecutors has made unlikely foes of conservative judges and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
When similar cases are handled differently a drug peddler in San Diego might get 12 months in jail while one in Texas is sent away for six years. Ashcroft says he wants more uniformity, but judges say his ideas for achieving that will harm a system already struggling with more cases than it can handle.
It's turning into a particularly contentious chapter in the long-running dispute over sentencing.
Last week, federal judges urged repeal of a law that was sought by Ashcroft earlier this year making it more difficult for them to impose lighter sentences than specified in guidelines approved by Congress more than 15 years ago.
The Judicial Conference of the United States, headed by conservative Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, voted unanimously to support overturning the law, which also requires reports to Congress on any judge who departs from the sentencing guidelines. Rehnquist had complained about the law when it was passed.
In another development last week, Ashcroft limited the freedom of prosecutors to strike plea bargains in criminal cases. He said that U.S. attorneys must seek the toughest punishment possible in nearly all cases, using plea bargains only in special situations.
Now, fewer than 5 percent of federal cases go to trial.
"If there were no guilty pleas, the courts could work 365 days a year, 24 hours a day and not try all the cases," said senior U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers Jr. of Oxford, Miss., named to the bench in 1984 by President Reagan.
As for departing from the guidelines, judges are not giving out light sentences willy-nilly, Biggers said. It's prosecutors who request lighter sentences in plea bargains to reward cooperative defendants, he added.
Michael O'Neill, a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, applauds Ashcroft's goal but said judges have legitimate concerns about interference with their authority.
"You're seeing some push back by the judges, as they perceive things to be unfair," said O'Neill, whose commission periodically revises the guidelines.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said Monday the department does not generally respond to judges' comments.
In July, Ashcroft wrote in a memo that the Justice Department "has a solemn obligation to ensure that laws concerning criminal sentencing are faithfully, fairly and consistently enforced."
The guidelines set out a range of possible prison terms, usually leading to sentences much shorter than the maximum a defendant could have received. In addition, for some crimes Congress has established minimum prison sentences, known as mandatory minimums. For example, someone who uses a gun in their crime or is caught with a certain amount of a drug faces a minimum amount of time in prison.
Mandatory minimum sentences have especially angered some judges.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a moderate conservative named to the bench by Reagan, told lawyers in August that mandatory minimum sentences should be abolished and the guidelines should be revised downward.
"Our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too long," Kennedy said.
Kennedy's comments to the American Bar Association have spurred the nation's largest lawyers group to start its own strategy for changes. A commission will be formed in Kennedy's name and hopes to have recommendations by next summer.
Stephen Saltzburg, a criminal law professor at George Washington University who will head the group, said presidential candidates and Washington leaders are not embracing Kennedy's views.
"Law and order, tough on crime, tough on sentencing is still the popular way to go," he said. "It doesn't make it right."
Other judges are speaking out.
Justice Stephen Breyer recently echoed the criticism of mandatory minimum sentences. "There has to be room for the unusual or the exceptional case," Breyer said in a speech.
Earlier this year, a federal judge in New York quit over the latest clash between the judicial branch and Washington, citing in part the new law that limited judges' discretion in sentencing.
"Congress is mandating things simply because they want to show how tough they are on crime with no sense of whether this makes sense or is meaningful," U.S. District Judge John S. Martin, a former federal prosecutor, said after announcing his resignation in June.
In Wichita, Kan., criminal defense attorney Dan Monnat said judges may have some influence in persuading Congress to revise the guidelines. Judges have lifetime appointments, so they can be independent.
"The federal judges don't have to worry about looking soft on crime, but the politicians do," Monnat said.
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CygnusZ
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quote:
Originally posted by Oerdin
Actually Ashcroft's position here makes some sense. As I recall in recent years several liberal groups have attacked the death penalty claiming that Federal prosecutors in different jurisdictions seek different penalties, that means if you commit a murder in Texas they’ll likely hang you but if you commit it in New York you might get 8 years in prison while in California you might get life in prison, and that this could be seen as violating the equal protection clause of the constitution.
Most of the difference in sentencing can be attributed to different juries in different states have different opinions of what constitutes an appropriate punishment for a given offense. That means it will be near impossible to achieve the liberal goal of equal sentences for people who commit the similar crimes.
So any way, the liberals felt that in order to create a more equal system the Federal government should cap the maximum sentences so that juries in harsher districts would have to pass out lighter sentences like the softer jurisdictions do. Ashcroft has taken the opposite approach and has tried to create higher minimum sentences thus forcing the soft districts to hand out the tougher sentences which the harder districts prefer. 
This thinking has now spread out from just capital cases and is now moving into many other sorts of crimes that the Feds prosecute. |
We can agree on one thing here, that an increase in judicial discretion is indeed a step towards the rights of states. It makes sense that each state has its own set of statute's, and that all must confrom to federal law. The US constitution guarantee's for every state a republican form of government, and they are indeed entitled to it.
Getting down to the specific business at hand it's easy to see how your position is wrong. While a hardliner might be attracted the "tough on crime" rhetoric, Ashcroft is doing more than just that. He's requiring federal prosecuter's to always seek the maximum punishment, to increase the workload. This either means that the justice department can hire more lawyer (raising your taxes) to accomodate the influx of work or they can simply do worse work with what they have. Pick your poison. Add on to that all the additional judges and court personell you're going to need to do the prosecutions. I hope you like your bureaucracy THICK.
This legislation would also be unfair to tax payers because it deprives the state of money that would have been obtained as a result of settlements. Less money coming in, more money coming out, lawyers too overworked to give adequete representation to their cases. Republican or Democrat, it is basically agreed that it's better to keep litigation reserved for the most important of matters.
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30-09-2003 19:33
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