Posted on 08/28/2003 3:34:38 PM PDT by kattracks
Here's an item to confound those who say suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore must cave to a federal court's order against his monument to the Ten Commandments: Thousands of bleeding-heart leftist judges routinely break the law and get away with it.
More than 10,000 of nearly 55,000 federal sentences in fiscal 2001, about 18 percent, were "downward departures" from mandatory sentencing laws, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, a federal agency created in 1984 to implement the rules.
President Bush, a frequent critic of activist judges who do whatever they feel like, in April signed a law designed to rein them in. Those judges now must state their reasons in writing to make it easier for appeals courts to overturn lenient sentences.
Leftist activists and even Chief Justice William Rehnquist flew into a snit last month when Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered U.S. attorneys to tell the Department of Justice when a federal judge breaks the law. Democrats in the Congress hope to pass bills rolling back the restrictions, USA Today reported today.
So, if it's OK for federal judges to do whatever they want, why isn't that OK for Justice Moore?
77% Back Display of Ten Commandments
By the way, a new USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll says 77 percent of Americans oppose the removal of the Ten Commandments monument in Alabama.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Do not be so quick to paint judicial sentencing discretion as merely a sinister game for "bleeding hearts".
Imagine these two hypothetical scenarios:
- A) a convenience store owner shoots a rude customer.
- B) a speeding motorist splatters a pedestrian.
Now consider these two sets of circumstances:
- A) the store manager had enough of the local punk kids and decided to teach one a lesson
- B) the motorist was drunk and driving at 120 mph on a rainy night
or
- A) the customer was apparently on drugs, became belligerent, and indicated that he had a concealed weapon in his pocket
- B) the motorist was transporting his wife, who had suffered a heart attack, to the hospital, and struck a man wearing dark clothes and illegally walking on the shoulder of the highway
Assume it's the same person, being convicted by a jury of the same crime, because they technically fit the legal elements of the crime. Don't you think that the judge should have the power to be lenient in the latter circumstances, and offer a light sentence?
That's what "downward departures" means.
Weird. That means there's like 20+% out there in favor of legal abortions AND the 10 Commandments in the courthouse. Give or take. Right? Isn't abortion split pretty much 50-50? This poll surprises me. Maybe it shouldn't. I don't pay close attention to the numbers.
It's all about how people define things, some don't make the connection.
The mandatory sentencing laws have infringed the proper role of judges, which is "to judge" the case, the law, and the mitigating and aggrevating circumstances, in their sentencing decisions.
Activist judges usurp the role of legislatures when they set about creating law from their imaginative interpretations of the Constitution. Another judicial crime occurs regularly when judges instruct the jury against their right to nullify bad laws in their determinations.
The legislatures violate their duties and oaths by creating tons of laws that would not pass an honest Constitutional review.
Executive branch agencies regularly violate their oaths by enforcing un-Constitutional laws, and by enacting regulations that are in direct conflict with the the Bill of Rights and the Constitutional separation of powers.
The whole system is broke, and it probably will not fix itself.
Employees everywhere in positions of all types are responsible for written accounts of their actions. Why do these people feel they should be treated differently?
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