Fed. Judge Blasts Mandatory Minimum Sentences
The defendant is 32, with an IQ of 72. He's a low level drug dealer. Under the federal mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, the Judge had no choice but to impose a sentence of life without parole. The Judge is angry.
Judge David N. Hurd said child rapists and murderers will go free on parole while Justin D. Powell languishes in prison for life, largely because the defendant was convicted of drug crimes twice during his teenage years, more than a decade before the instant offense. Because of those prior convictions, the sole sentencing option was life, Hurd said.
"The increment of harm in this case bears no rational relationship to the increment of punishment that I must impose," Hurd said at a sentencing proceeding last week in Utica, N.Y. "This is what occurs when Congress sets [a] mandatory minimum sentence which distorts the entire judicial process... . As a result, I am obligated to and will now impose this unfair and, more important, unjust sentence."
How did this happen?
Court records show Powell was caught up in a sting operation orchestrated by a drug dealer looking for leniency. Powell was, in the words of a prosecutor, a "worker bee" for his boss, a crack dealer named Leon Henry. Both were arrested as a result of their dealings with the confidential informant and both were convicted of dealing in 50 or more grams of crack cocaine.
The boss only got 20 years, because he didn't have two teenage convictions. In an earlier opinion in the case, the Second Circuit declared,
"It is ... Congress' prerogative to set mandatory minimums, and in this case the mandatory minimum is life imprisonment."
This is a common occurrence in federal courts around the country. Last week I was part of a sentencing hearing of five defendants who had pleaded guilty in a cocaine conspiracy. I watched as the girlfriend of one of the major players who cooperated with the government but had priors years ago got a ten year sentence, while my client in the same case, who did not cooperate and had no priors, got 27 months.
Unlike the federal sentencing guidelines which are no longer mandatory since Booker, mandatory minimum sentencing statutes are still unassailable. They need to be changed.
As I wrote here, they came in under Reagan, but were expanded under Clinton. If either Gore or Hillary are going to get my vote, they will first need to pledge to repeal them and make them presumptive, with Judges having the option to depart below them in cases in which they deem it appropriate.
One other horror story: Dracy McKneely, who got a life sentence on a conviction of 251 grams of crack. I did not represent him at trial, only in his appeal. The last words of the opinon affirming his conviction are:
Although it is tragic for a twenty-three-year-old to spend the rest of his life in prison, Congress has provided this penalty for drug crimes involving large quantities of cocaine. We must follow the law.
The law must be changed.
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