As the media tackles the news of the recent Supreme Court decision, do not ignore the legal analysts (See http://www.november.org/Blakely), as they point out it was more of an indecision that came down from the high court.
What troubles me however, is how quickly spokespersons from the District Attorney’s offices are getting quoted. For instance, out of Billings, Montana, The Gazette Reporter uses local U.S. Attorney Bill Mercer to comment on the recent Supreme court decision.
"U.S. Attorney Bill Mercer, who was out of town Wednesday, said in a statement that since the passage of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, the goal of sentencing in the federal criminal justice system has been to reduce the disparity in sentences of defendants with similar criminal records who had committed similar crimes no matter where they committed the crime.
"This was achieved through sentencing guidelines which federal judges had to apply," Mercer said. "With today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Sentencing Guidelines are merely advisory. Because the Guidelines do not have the force of law, it is probable that significant disparity in sentencing outcomes will once again occur."
Perhaps the public should intervene to help reporters understand how the Guidelines worked in practical means, and for almost 20 years now, prosecutors have been judge and jury. The public can help clarify this subject for the press.
A history of the US Sentencing Guidelines, that includes A Case for Reform, is on our website at:
http://www.november.org/parole/guidelinesentencing.html
Quoting in part:
"Another particularly urgent problem is the shift of sentencing power to the prosecutor’s office. Prior to the Guidelines, prosecutors charged people with crimes, and then judges sentenced people for those crimes. The two tier system created checks and balances that left neither party with too much power. Under the Guidelines, however, the charging decision becomes for all practical purposes the sentencing decision.
A prosecutor who opts to charge a person with one crime rather than another determines the base offense level and thus for all practical purposes the sentence. Because there are thousands of offenses in the federal criminal code and because individual crimes often violate more than one section of the code, the prosecutor’s decision about which section to charge under, or how many counts to bring, effectively determines the sentence. The concentration of power into a single party invites distortion in the system.
Another reason power shifts to the prosecutor is that only the prosecutor can reward suspects for providing information on other suspects. The judge cannot initiate the process and has only the smallest oversight. Unfortunately, many crime kingpins have substantial information to trade for lesser charges; whereas the low level participants have little information to trade. That is one reason our prisons are filled with low grade drug offenders while kingpins sometimes get off easy."
End of quote
That is what people writing professionally about this subject, as they report and analyze need to remember in discussions. Not what the guidelines were supposed to do - but what actually happened.
Write your local newspapers - set the record straight.
In Struggle, Nora
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