Mandatory sentencing frustrated

The Washington Times ^ | January 18, 2005 | Bruce Fein

[neverdem]

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The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

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Mandatory sentencing frustrated

By Bruce Fein
Published January 18, 2005

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Mandatory sentencing slashes crime. The multiple decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court in United States vs. Booker (Jan. 12, 2005) obtusely upended mandatory Federal Sentencing Guidelines in the name of honoring both the Sixth Amendment right to jury trial and congressional intent in enacting the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (SRA).

    Congress should race to restore federal mandatory sentences, but with juries finding facts that would determine the severity of punishment.

    Career criminals commit the bulk of offenses. Their incarceration forecloses new crimes. Mandatory sentencing also captures noncareer criminals. That misfortune is inescapable because criminology is an infant science. Too little is known of the personalities or circumstances that earmark recidivists to risk mandatory sentencing exceptions. But the overbreadth is worth the price of protecting the innocent.

    Since the displacement of Great Society sentencing indulgence with mandatory schemes in the 1980s, the incidence of crime has plunged dramatically. Countless murders have been avoided, endless rapes prevented, innumerable robberies thwarted, and hundreds of thousands of other crimes foiled because of mandatory sentencing.

    Congress followed the post-Great Society tide in 1984 with the SRA to stiffen sentences and to make them more uniform. A Federal Sentencing Commission was created to promulgate mandatory Federal Sentencing Guidelines (FSG). They identified characteristics of the offender and the offense found by a jury in the trial phase that translated into a base sentence.

    In post-trial proceedings, the presiding judge could depart upward (or downward) by making additional findings that aggravated or mitigated the crime by a preponderance of the....

[bassmaner]

If mandatory sentencing can be applied *ONLY* and *EXCLUSIVELY* to violent criminals, whose sociopathic acts actually have VICTIMS, then yes, restore mandatory sentencing. It's the application of mandatory sentencing to non-violent, victimless, and comparatively petty crimes (read: drug possession) that has caused the courts to take a second look.

[neverdem]

The WOD proponents will never buy it. PROHIBITION FOREVER!

[jwpjr]

I have always been under the impression, based on watching hundreds of movies in my youth, that it's the job of the jury to decide guilt or innocence and the job of the judge to decide the appropriate punishment. Where have I gone wrong?

[jwpjr]

I have always been under the impression, based on watching hundreds of movies in my youth, that it's the job of the jury to decide guilt or innocence and the job of the judge to decide the appropriate punishment. Where have I gone wrong?

[M 91 u2 K]

I have always been under the impression, based on watching hundreds of movies in my youth, that it's the job of the jury to decide guilt or innocence and the job of the judge to decide the appropriate punishment. Where have I gone wrong?

You went wrong when you fail to realize Left-Wing Judges rather than pursue justice and put criminals behind bars or to death push through political agendas and FREE criminals. Since mandatory sentencing crime has gone DOWN, you can now expect crime to go UP as lefty judges go easy on criminals. You can thank the supreme court next time your robbed or attacked.

[calex59]

It doesn't mean anything to you that mandantory sentencing has lowered crimes rates dramatically? Please tell me which crimes ,exactly, that the courts were looking at to make this determination? The lower crimes as a whole do not have mandantory sentencing. We need to fix this problem and fix it fast. Liberal judges are the ones making idiotic rulings such as this,going by their beliefs instead of by law.