Pubdate: Sun, 19 Sep 2004
Source: Roanoke Times (VA)
Copyright: 2004 Roanoke Times
Contact:  http://www.roanoke.com/roatimes/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/368
Author: Jen McCaffery, The Roanoke Times
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)

ATTORNEY: LAW AFTER BIAS' DEATH CAUSED PRISON SWELL

The law that has resulted in the swelling of the federal prison population 
over the last two decades was sponsored by Democrats eager to look tough on 
crime for political gain, said an attorney who advised lawmakers on the 
legislation.

Lawmakers were stunned at the overdose death of University of Maryland 
basketball star Len Bias in June 1986, said Eric Sterling, who was then 
counsel to the House of Representatives' Committee on the Judiciary. Bias 
had just signed with the NBA champion Boston Celtics when he overdosed on 
cocaine.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tip O'Neill, returned to 
Massachusetts that summer and talked to his constituents, Sterling said. 
When O'Neill returned to Congress in July, he was determined to pass some 
serious anti-drug legislation, Sterling said.

"The summer of 1986 was all about drugs," Sterling said.

Lawmakers competed for media attention on who could best put drug dealers 
away. It was also an election year, and the Democrats wanted to win back 
control of the Republican-controlled Senate, Sterling said.

"It was with a very deliberate partisan motivation that this whole thing 
got kicked off," Sterling said.

The committee came up with the drug quantities for specific drugs and 
penalties for trafficking in those drugs - including mandatory minimum 
sentences and the death or serious bodily injury provision - "on the fly," 
said Sterling, who is now president of the Criminal Justice Policy 
Foundation in Maryland.

The committee held no hearings on whether the drug amounts they picked made 
sense. The lawmakers never solicited comment on the wisdom of their 
proposals from the Drug Enforcement Administration, federal judges, 
prosecutors, defense attorneys, public defenders or anybody else, Sterling 
said. The legislation passed through the Senate with few changes and became 
law.

It transformed the federal system, Sterling said. In the late 1970s, about 
25,000 people were housed in the federal prison system, Sterling said. The 
number had remained relatively steady for at least 25 years, he said. Now 
there are more than 180,000 people in the federal prison system, according 
to Sterling.

Many federal judges have also been critical of minimum mandatory 
sentencing, Sterling said. In a speech to the American Bar Association in 
2003, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy argued that in the federal 
system, "our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our 
sentences too long.

"When it costs so much more to incarcerate a prisoner than to educate a 
child, we should take special care to ensure that we are not incarcerating 
people for too long," Kennedy also said.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager