Ashcroft Wants List of Lenient Federal Judges Thursday, August 07, 2003 WASHINGTON — Attorney General John Ashcroft (search) wants prosecutors to closely monitor which judges impose more lenient sentences than federal guidelines recommend, a step some critics say could limit judicial independence. Ashcroft directed U.S. attorneys nationwide to promptly report to Justice Department headquarters when a sentence is a "downward departure" from guidelines and not part of a plea agreement in exchange for cooperation. "The Department of Justice has a solemn obligation to ensure that laws concerning criminal sentencing are faithfully, fairly and consistently enforced," Ashcroft wrote in the memo issued July 28. Critics say the result will be more power in the hands of prosecutors and impermissible restraints on judicial discretion. It's telling judges who want to depart from the guidelines "that you will be put on a list and you will be watched," said Ryan King, research associate with The Sentencing Project (search), a nonprofit group seeking alternatives to prison. "We're no longer judging a case on the merits." Prosecutors were told in Ashcroft's memo to make sure the government is prepared to appeal more of these sentences if such a decision is made by lawyers in Solicitor General Theodore Olson's (search) office. The upshot is that more decisions to appeal will be made at "main Justice" in Washington rather than left to prosecutors in the field. Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said the intent is to "get an accurate reporting of how the sentencing guidelines are being applied." "It is an effort to make sure that someone who is convicted of a crime in California is treated no differently than a person who is convicted of the exact same crime in Massachusetts," Corallo said Thursday. The sentencing guidelines were developed by the U.S. Sentencing Commission (search), created by Congress in 1984 to reduce disparities in sentences imposed around the country — subject to some judicial flexibility. The memo, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is part of a Justice Department effort to implement a law passed by Congress earlier this year intended to bring even greater uniformity to federal prison sentences. President Bush in April signed into law the wide-ranging child protection legislation that, among other things, will establish a national "Amber Alert" communications network to respond to child abductions. Tucked into that measure was a provision sponsored by Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla., intended to make it more difficult for federal judges to depart from federal sentencing guidelines and easier to appeal light sentences. Prosecutors have complained for years that judges have too much leeway in imposing sentences. According to the most recent statistics, federal judges in 2001 departed from sentencing guidelines in about 35 percent of cases. About half those cases involved plea bargains endorsed by prosecutors. Feeney's amendment drew opposition from the American Bar Association (search), the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (search) and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist (search), who said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that it "would seriously impair the ability of courts to impose just and reasonable sentences." The U.S. Sentencing Commission also opposed the amendment, urging that it be permitted to complete a lengthy study into the reasons behind judges' decisions to impose lighter sentences. In a letter to the Judiciary Committee, the commission's members noted that in 2001 the total departure figures were skewed higher because of certain federal policies in immigration cases. Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and other Democrats have introduced a bill to essentially undo the Feeney amendment and instead wait for the Sentencing Commission study. "Congress needs to undo the damage that the Justice Department is doing to the federal criminal justice system," Kennedy said. "The independence of the federal judiciary serves the nation well." Will this guy ever stop--will anyone ever stop him?
It's amazing what these guys are getting away with. AMAZING. The scariest part? Most people couldn't care less, as long as it doesn't interfere with American Idol.
If Bush gets rid of Powell or Powell quits it will be the wrong person from the administration. Bush as president has sworn to protect the Constitution of the U.S. The biggest enemy to that document is in Bush's administration.
What's really wrong with going by what guidlines are in place in the punishment phase? Doesn't softening the punishment make the crime more/less easier to get away with? Why is watering down the punishment phase and being "lenient" a good thing? A crime should be duly punished in order to keep a precedent of respect for the laws IMO. Ashcroft or no Ashcroft, I would consider criminals getting the max sentencing allowable more often, a positive. Too many get a slap on the wrist and a "$400 for passing go" book deal. A plea bargain is THE MEANS by which someone gets off lighter... and to break that rule, unwritten or not, is to water down the whole process. Wouldn't Reno do something similar? I mean come on, remember WACO? That response wasn't watered down. If anything, just the opposite... they didn't even get to trial before undue judgement was passed. Upholding the laws already in place is perfect defense of the constitution IMO. Too far in either direction away from a law is possibly "breaking" said law.
The real point is that they are GUIDELINES, subject to circumstances. The article stated that 35% of cases have a lighter sentence than the guideline and that half of those were plea bargains. That leaves 17% for people like the girlfriend of the drug dealer who really didn't have anything to do with the crime other than being present. I think that 17% falls well within judicial discretion and no judge should be put on a list because they give sentences that fit the crime.
Plus, even though there are guidelines, judges shouldn never be obligated to follow them. I think judges should have the power to use their own judgment when setting sentences. It is, to me, part of having a just system of justice. Each case that goes before a particular judge is unique. The judge should take the specific facts of the case into account when handing out punishment. Does that mean that some people will end upwith sentences shorter than what they probably deserve? Of course, just as it probably means that some will end up with longer sentences than they deserve. But that's just what we get when we use human judges instead of the Judge-A-Matic from Ronco. I guess that's really just what andy just said, but still...... Plus, I'm not sure I trust prosecutors to give the true picture. They aren't exactly unbiased observers.
Yeah, prosecutors shouldn't be the ones reporting to Ashcroft, they could easily go after judges they don't like.
IMO, one of the big problems with our criminal justice system is that prosecutors have WAY too much say in the punishment given to convicts. One of the big reasons to have a judge in the first place is to have someone whose mandate is to come up with a just, unbiased punishment that fits the crime. Prosecutors are driven by win/loss ratio and number of prisoners as well as years given out to those prisoners. I would MUCH rather see the judges with the power to set sentences rather than prosecutors.
Come on guys, an arrogant government is only a bad thing when Democrats are the ones in power. We should applaud the Republicans for destroying the Bill of Rights. We should applaud the government for knowing when the Constitution is a hinderance. We should applaud the President's administration for determining when lies are a bad thing (out of Clinton's mouth) vs when they're a good thing (destroying reports from the EPA when they conflict with what 'we already know' which is morally apt intellectually ignorant bible belt conservatism). Most of all, we should applaud the supporters of the administration. Have you guys ever encountered a larger group of ****ing hypocrites in your lives? Die! Die!!
The problem is the federal sentencing guidelines. They were an experiment (ironically, a liberal experiment) from the early 80's to eliminate biases fromt the system that pretty much everybody in the criminal justice system -- regardless of political affilitation-- agrees has failed miserably and are practical disaster and should be phased out. Judicial commentators across the spectrum, from Alan Dershowitz to WIlliam Rehnquist, believe that they should be scrapped. Rehnquist strongly criticized the most recent initiatives to make them tighter. For example, John Martin, a federal judge in the southern district of new york, a Bush 1 appointee, just resigned from his lifetime appointment, because he didn't want anything to do with the "unjust" federal justice system because of the guidelines. The only people who favor them are legislators who want to appear tough on crime, and don't have to deal with the consequences. Nice to see that Ashcroft has forgotten what he learned in law school and is taking the side of the clueless pols. Backseat driving at its finest.
On the one hand I can see the first-blush value of having a firmer standard; ie this crime equals this sentence...but I think that it's sophomoric to assume that all crimes can be reduced to the same level merely because we have to qualify them somewhere using limited legal classification. There will always be crimes which are techically the same but in actual fact very different. But what is interesting here, to me, are these two factors; yet another example of this administration's desire to gather control and power into their own hands, and the fact that, as far as I can tell, no request was made to monitor those judges handing out harsher punishments than the guidelines advised.
Federal judges seem like a powerful group, who won't let Ashcroft push them around and take away their judicial discretion (which really isn't that much today). I'm curious how they will react to all these heavy handed tactics.
