Pubdate: Mon, 11 Nov 2013
Source: Idaho Statesman, The (ID)
Copyright: 2013 The Idaho Statesman
Contact:  http://www.idahostatesman.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/204

LABRADOR LAUNCHES BATTLE WORTH FIGHTING

Fear of being labeled "soft on crime" has led state and federal
politicians on a three-decade-long odyssey through a morass of laws
that transformed the criminal courts into chambers of
arbitrariness.

Caught with 500 grams of cocaine? Or 100 marijuana plants? How about
28 grams of crack?

You're going to a federal penitentiary for five years. No questions
asked.

Say you were arrested with 5 kilos of cocaine. Or 1,000 pot plants. Or
280 grams of crack?

Say goodbye for 10 years.

Throw in a gun. It may or may not be yours. If it's in the room or
belongs to a co-defendant, add another five to 25 years to your prison
term, depending on the circumstances.

Of course, if you're a kingpin, you can bargain away the names of
fellow drug traffickers in your network in exchange for a more lenient
sentence. But if you just happen to be a mule at the bottom of the
organization who has no information to trade, you're going away.

Don't ask the judge to help you. Degrees of culpability don't matter.
Sheer volume and weight of the contraband are all that count. Under
the federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws, the judge has no discretion.

These laws were passed in the waning days of the Reagan
administration's war on drugs, when the country was hysterical about
the scourge of crack cocaine. But imposing minimum sentences are part
of a long American tradition - extending as far back as the
anti-piracy laws of the 18th century.

Rather than put drug lords out of business, these laws filled the
federal prisons and drained the taxpayers' pockets.

In 1980, about 24,000 people were serving time in federal
penitentiaries.

That's now up to 219,000 - and 47 percent of those are doing time for
drug offenses.

Each one costs about $30,000 a year to hold in prison - to say nothing
of the waste in years and lives.

Recently, a handful of conservatives - such as columnist George Will
and Heritage Action - have linked up with the American Civil Liberties
Union and the NAACP to begin rolling back these laws.

The latest convert to the cause is Congressman Raul Labrador, R-Idaho.
Last week, Labrador introduced a bill to:

- - Cut the length of the minimum sentences for drug offenses in
half.

- - Apply an earlier-passed measure imposing a more lenient standard for
crack cocaine possession retroactively upon people convicted and
sentenced under the harsher statutes, a regimen that fell more harshly
on African-Americans.

- - Allow federal judges more discretion to disregard a defendant's
earlier criminal record if the offenses were minor.

Joining Labrador are eight co-sponsors - tea party conservatives on
the right, inner city Democrats on the left. Among them are Reps.
Robert Scott, D-Va., and John Conyers, D-Mich.

Labrador's bill is less ambitious than an earlier version backed by
Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Pat Leahy, D-Vt. Their measure would
essentially empower federal judges to waive the mandatory minimum laws
for more offenses, including guns. But Labrador told the Statesman
that his version "might be something we can pass now rather than wait
several years."

This is not Labrador acting in his own narrow political self-interest.
Odds are no one will vote for a congressman who took a step toward
compassion and fiscal sanity. As such, he merits no small amount of
credit.
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MAP posted-by: Matt