Repeal Mandatory Minimums Now!

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Utah Judge Tells Congress to Repeal Mandatory Sentences
April 18, 2006


Judge Paul Cassell, a U.S. District Court judge from Utah, told the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Criminal Law that mandatory minimum drug sentences are irrational and should be repealed, the Salt Lake Tribune reported April 17.

Cassell illustrated his point by detailing two cases he handled on a single day: a murderer who was sentenced to a maximum term of 22 years in prison, and a smalltime marijuana dealer who received a mandatory minimum sentence of 55 years in prison because he carried a gun during drug sales.

"It is hard to explain why a federal judge is required to give a longer sentence to a first offender who carried a gun to several marijuana deals than to a man who deliberately killed an elderly woman by hitting her over the head with a log," said Cassell, recently elected chairman of the Committee on Criminal Law of the Judicial Conference of the United States, which makes policy decisions for the federal courts.

Cassell advised Congress to be cautious about overreacting to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that made sentencing guidelines advisory rather than mandatory.

"Judging generally, and sentencing particularly, should never become an act of bureaucratic administration," he said. "Sentencing is a quintessentially human event -- a sentencing judge literally looks a defendant in the eyes when imposing a sentence. There would be a very high cost to our system of justice if responsibility for sentencing were simply shuttled off to appellate judges to be done on the basis of paper pleadings."

http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2006/utah-judge-tells-congress-to.html
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