The pending order allows for plea bargains in six exceptions, most notably in cases where the defendants cooperate extensively in an investigation. Current Justice policy allows prosecutors to file lesser charges based on their individualized assessment of charges, circumstances and federal code, a senior Justice official said. "This very broad measure of individualized discretion allows both for too much leniency and too much inconsistency."
E.E. Edwards, a Nashville, Tenn., attorney who is president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said eliminating plea bargains will clog the court system because few defendants will enter guilty pleas if they face harsher sentences. According to U.S. Sentencing Commission statistics, the vast majority of federal criminal cases now end in guilty pleas. Of 59,642 federal cases in 2001, the most recent year for which statistics are available, just 2,035 went to trial.
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Original Post, 9/21
We haven't seen this in the print or online media yet, but it's been on Fox News all Sunday night, so we'll assume it's true and update with links when available.
Attorney General John Ashcroft is delivering a memo to every federal proseuctor tomorrow demanding that they file the most serious charges possible in every case, beginning immediately. "Most serious charges" are those bringing the heaviest sentence under the sentencing guidelines.
Our opinion on such a memo follows:
Ashcroft claims this will reduce disparity in sentencing around the country for similar cases. That's what Congress said when it enacted the federal sentencing guidelines in 1987. It didn't happen then and it won't happen now. So long as federal prosecutors, and only federal prosecutors, have the authority to reduce sentences below the guidelines for those who cooperate to their satisfaction (i.e. for snitches who tell the "truth,"--meaning the version of the truth proseuctors want to hear) --and the authority to determine how much of a reduction will be granted, we never will have sentencing parity.
Earlier this year, Ashcroft and Congress limited downward departures in federal sentencing though its stealth insertion of the Feeney Amendment into the Amber Alert bill. Many of the grounds upon which judges have been able to individualize sentences based on characteristics of the particular offender standing in front of them are now gone.
Achieving sentencing parity by relying almost exclusively on the nature of the offense is a sham. One- size- fits- all justice is no justice at all. Two million persons in this country now wake up in prison every day. How many more does Ashcroft want to cram in? Why can't he be content with being the most powerful crime cop in the country? Instead he continues to strip our Article III judges of their powers by reducing their role to calculating guideline sentences purusant to a mathematical formula that robots could do just as well. What ever happened to judicial discretion in sentencing? To making the punishment fit the crime? To granting deference, or even leeway, to the presiding judge of a case who is in the best position to assess the defendant and his crime.
Attorney General John Ashcroft has become a threat and a menace to our criminal justice system and to the civil liberties that have been the hallmark of this country for more than 200 years.
If you think his actions won't reach you because you haven't done anything wrong, just remember the 133 factually innocent people released from prisons and death row in recent years due to DNA testing showing they could not have committed the crime. It can happen to you, your neighbor, your co-worker, your spouse and your child.
What can you do to stop Ashcroft? Boot Bush in 2004.
