Pubdate: Mon, 19 Aug 2013
Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal (NV)
Copyright: 2013 Las Vegas Review-Journal
Contact: http://www.reviewjournal.com/about/print/press/letterstoeditor.html
Website: http://www.lvrj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/233

RETHINKING SENTENCES FOR DRUG-RELATED CRIMES

With an eye toward reducing what even many conservatives concede is 
excessive incarceration of minor drug offenders, Attorney General 
Eric Holder announced last week that federal prosecutors would be 
directed to file charges in a way that would spare many defendants 
from mandatory minimum sentences. That policy is a sound and 
compassionate response to the fact that too many people are being 
imprisoned for too long, by state and federal governments alike, 
because of a war on drugs that has been prosecuted not wisely but too well.

In a speech to the American Bar Association, Holder said that 
henceforth, "low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who have no ties to 
large-scale organizations, gangs or cartels will no longer be charged 
with offenses that impose draconian mandatory minimum sentences."

One way to accomplish that is for prosecutors to omit from 
drug-trafficking indictments the specific quantities of drugs found 
in the defendants' possession. Holder also told the ABA that he would 
instruct federal prosecutors to be more selective in asserting 
jurisdiction in drug cases and that the federal prison system would 
expedite the "compassionate release" of elderly, nonviolent inmates.

In the 1980s, after the cocaine overdose of basketball star Len Bias, 
Congress enacted mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses that 
take discretion away from federal judges and limit the ability of the 
U.S. Sentencing Commission to adopt more lenient guidelines. 
Mandatory minimums also, as Holder said in his speech, "oftentimes 
generate unfairly long sentences (and) breed disrespect for the 
system." Incarceration for drug offenses also has devastated many 
minority communities, breaking up families and depriving children of 
their fathers.

Ideally, Congress would revisit the issue of mandatory minimums, and 
not just for drug crimes. In 1994, it did enact a "safety valve" law 
that instructs judges to disregard mandatory minimums if a drug 
defendant has little or no criminal history and meets several other 
exacting conditions. As Holder noted in his speech, legislation 
recently introduced in Congress would provide additional leeway for 
judges and would "ultimately save our country billions of dollars 
while keeping us safe."

The attorney general said he and President Barack Obama would work 
with Congress to advance such proposals, but he was right to act in 
the absence of congressional action. If members of Congress resent 
Holder's exercise of prosecutorial discretion to restore a sense of 
proportion to drug prosecutions, they can reassert their authority by 
accomplishing the same objective through legislation.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom