Tag Archives: sentence reform and corrections act

Prison Reform Gets a Hearing – Update for April 16, 2018

Leave a comment

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues. 

LISAStatHeader2small
HOUSE PRISON REFORM BILL GOES TO HEARING THIS WEEK

redemption180411The House Judiciary Committee will mark up H.R. 3566, the Prison Reform and Redemption Act, this week, a Republican proposal that aims to reduce recidivism. Rep. Doug Collins (R-Georgia), sponsor of the PRRA, said the bill, which has 10 Democrat and seven Republican co-sponsors, would allow prisoners to serve the final days of their sentences in a halfway house or home confinement if they complete evidence-based programs that have been shown to reduce recidivism rates.

Prison programming could include everything from job and vocational skills training to education and drug treatment.

The White House announced in February it was throwing its support behind prison reform measures such as the PRRA instead of measures like the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). The White House says it sees no path forward for sentencing reform. “And so what we see now is an environment where the prison reform does have enough support to get done,” an official said. “And we think that by maybe doing this in smaller bits and pushing the prison reform now, we think this has a better chance of getting done.” 

blackprisoner171116Not everyone agrees. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights an umbrella group of 63 organizations, wrote to the House Judiciary Committee last week to complain about the PRRA and “efforts to pass prison reform (or ‘back-end’ reform) legislation without including sentencing reform (or ‘front-end’ reform).” The Conference said that any “legislation that addresses only back end reforms is doomed to fail in achieving these goals. Without changes to sentencing laws that eliminate mandatory minimums, restore judicial discretion, reduce the national prison population, and mitigate disparate impacts on communities of color, H.R. 3356 alone will have little impact.”

The PRRA lets inmates earn credits for completing designated BOP programs that will let them go to halfway house or home confinement early, with the more credits earned, the earlier the prisoner can get released to residential reentry. But the Conference letter noted that “currently there are not enough of these programs available in the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to serve those currently in prisons. Furthermore, BOP more recently has reduced the number of residential reentry centers it contracts with to provide halfway house programming.”

mcconnell180219And the leadership of two organizations on the opposite end of the political spectrum, conservative FreedomWorks and liberal Center for American Progress, wrote in The Hill last week that “[a] recent markup of the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act yielded the same favorable vote as the last committee vote on this legislation, and even those who voted against the legislation voiced support for some level of sentencing reform. Sen. Lee maintains that SRCA would receive 70 votes on the Senate floor, if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) would simply allow the bill to come to a vote.”

Trump son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner convinced President Trump to support prison reforms like those some states have implemented more than a decade ago, which since saved billions and has resulted both in the closure of prisons and a drastic reduction the crime rate. Jared presented those ideas to Trump at a White House meeting in January. The following month, the White House asked lawmakers to draw up legislation, highlighting many of the same policies.

Kushner has since worked with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a long-time criminal justice reform advocate, who helped craft the plan the House will begin debating this week.

Meanwhile, speculation that Trump may fire Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III – the man who torpedoed the SRCA and has backed off Obama-era easing of DOJ charging policies – has cooled. The Weekly Standard reported his week that such a firing is highly unlikely. Instead, Sessions has a stronger hold on his job than ever.

With Sessions gone, it would be difficult for Grassley to avoid spending the rest of the year on anything but hearings for a new AG. With the risk growing daily that the Democrats may capture the Senate in the midterm elections in November, the chance to confirm more conservative judges would have been frittered away.

sessions180215Still, The Standard reports that anti-Sessions sentiment lives on in the Trump family. Jared Kushner is a supporter of criminal justice reform, which Sessions opposes. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who openly lobbied to replace Sessions and angered the President in the process, was Kushner’s hope for attorney general and possible backer of SRCA. Pruitt is hanging on to his EPA job by a thread, and has probably permanently spindled any hope of becoming Attorney General.

The Hill, Prison reform bill set for House markup next week (Apr. 11, 2018)

McClatchy Washington Bureau, Washington looks to Texas on federal prison reforms (Apr. 13, 2018)

The Leadership, Letter of Concern regarding H.R. 3356, the Prison Reform and Redemption Act (Apr. 12, 2018)

The Weekly Standard, Jeff Sessions and His Enemies (Apr. 13, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root

LISAStatHeader2small

Sentencing Reform Taking It On The Chin – Update for April 11, 2018

Leave a comment

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues. 

LISAStatHeader2small
SENTENCING REFORM IS DEAD… LONG LIVE PRISON REFORM

kushner180411A couple of hagiographic news articles on Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s efforts pushing federal criminal justice reform last week make it clear, if it was not clear before, that hopes of sentencing reform – rewriting mandatory minimums and giving guys with grossly-stacked sentences a chance to get resentenced to something that make sense – are waning.

Notwithstanding Sen. Charles Grassley’s (R-Iowa) optimism, prospects for the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2017, are bleak, with Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III leading Administration opposition to the notion of front-end sentencing reform.

So, if traditional sentencing reform is dead in the water, The Hill asked last week, what’s left? Prison reform legislation that focuses on reentry programs offering prisoners the opportunity to shorten their sentences on the back end is what’s being favored now. Rather than trimming sentences from the start, these programs allow prisoners to earn credits toward early release by participating in programs intended to help reintegrate them into society and reduce their propensity to reoffend. Although they face some of the same political resistance as front-end sentencing reductions, it is significantly easier to overcome.

redemption180411The Hill argued that prison reform bills “avoid many of the usual pitfalls that sentencing reform legislation encounters because they shift the narrative from one of retribution to redemption, from past wrong to future promise. Instead of getting bogged down on issues like whom to punish and for how long, politicians are able to talk about what comes next. Leaving the nominal sentence unchanged insulates these reforms from charges that they don’t adequately reflect the egregiousness of a given crime or that they will negatively impact deterrence.”

The Las Vegas Review-Journal suggested last week that anything criminal justice advocates may get from Congress this year will be due to Kushner, whose father did a bit a decade ago for some white-collar and tax beefs. Sentencing reform failed last year despite Obama’s willingness to sign it, and after law-and-order Trump was elected, it looked like any reform would not happen.

But Kushner convinced Trump to support prison reform (not sentencing reform), changes that would “create a prison system that will rehabilitate citizens who have made mistakes, paid the price and are deserving of a second chance — which will ultimately reduce crime and save taxpayer dollars.”

sessions180322In practical terms, Kushner has helped in two ways. First, his commitment tells Hill Republicans that Trump is not likely to reverse his support for prison reform. Second, Kushner found a way to co-opt Sessions, by convincing advocates to delay their push for sentencing reform in exchange for Sessions not standing in the way of their rehabilitation goals. As a result, DOJ now “is working closely with the White House to develop legislative reforms that further the president’s goals for prison and re-entry improvements,” said spokesman Drew Hudson.

The lead horse in the prison reform race is the Prison Reform and Redemption Act, sponsored by Rep. Doug Collins, R-Georgia, that would require prisons to assess inmates’ recidivism risk, encourage drug treatment and offer incentives for inmates to participate in recidivism reduction programs.

Collins said his bill would create “a federal prison-wide system for evaluating the risk of every individual prisoner for re-offending and then offering evidence-based resources — like mental health care, vocational skills, substance abuse treatment and faith-based programs — that make them less likely to re-offend when they are released.”

Las Vegas Review-Journal, For Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, prison reform is personal (April 7, 2018)

ABC, Inside Jared Kushner’s personal crusade to reform America’s prisons (April 8, 2018)

The Hill, Incentivized early release the right path to sentencing reform under Trump-Sessions (April 6, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root

LISAStatHeader2small

Lots of Heat Generated Last Week on Sentence Reform – But is There Light? – Update for January 16, 2018

Leave a comment

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

LISAStatHeader2small
TRUMP HOLDS WHITE HOUSE MEETING ON SENTENCING REFORM

justicereform161128President Trump and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, met with criminal justice reform advocates last Thursday on prison reform and re-entry, as well as the successes states such as Georgia, Kansas and Kentucky have had in enacting programs aimed at reducing recidivism rates and rehabilitating inmates. The White House described the meeting as being intended to explore strategies to “equip nonviolent prisoners with the skills and opportunities needed for an honest second chance to correct their course in life and return to society as productive, law-abiding citizens.”

Trump said his administration is committed to helping former inmates become productive, law abiding members of society. “Two-thirds of the 650,000 people released from prison each year are arrested again within three years. We can help break this vicious cycle through job training, very important, job training, mentoring and drug addiction treatment… We’ll be very tough on crime, but we will provide a ladder of opportunity for the future.”

A White House official told The Hill that prison reform was discussed at the presidential retreat at Camp David a week ago weekend and that the Administration has been hosting roundtable discussions on prison reform and re-entry since last summer.

Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III
Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III – like inviting the fox to a meeting on chicken coop security.

Guests at Thursday’s meeting included Matt Schlapp, board chairman of the American Conservative Union; Brooke Rollins, president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation; Republican Governors Matt Bevin (Kentucky) and Sam Brownback (Kansas); Koch Industries general counsel Mark Holden; and Shon Hopwood, a former federal inmate who is now an associate professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a member of the FAMM Board of Directors. Thursday’s discussion also included Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and Trump’s chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly.

The meeting emboldened some advocates who saw it as a sign the White House is officially on board with criminal justice reform. “It has long been an excuse used on the Hill that we need to see where the White House is on this issue and this is the positive signal the folks on the Hill have been waiting on,” said Holly Harris, executive director of Justice Action Network. “I don’t think there’s going to be any more justifications to hold up this legislation,” she said.

Holden came away from the meeting with a sense of optimism. The President Trump was an active participant during the 45-minute session. “I saw some passion there,” he said. “He seemed like he got the issue, understood it and connected with it.” Holden said he hopes prison reform can be the start to broader federal criminal justice reform.

Rollins said, “I really think the White House is looking at lots of different avenues forward,” from congressional action to executive orders. Sessions, who has criticized granting leniency to drug offenders and supports mandatory minimums, suggested at the meeting he might be open to compromise on ideas such as job training. “The president talking about prison reform is a good thing,” said Kevin Ring, president of FAMM.

The meeting was not without its critics. Mark Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, said, “more re-entry programming, the kind Kushner is suggesting, would be welcome, but a sole focus on that initiative reveals two grievous flaws. First, the programming provisions being discussed on Capitol Hill contain no funding allocation. Apparently, there is hope that faith-based organizations will emerge to provide these services pro bono… Second, dropping the sentencing provisions of the Grassley-Durbin legislation from the Trump administration’s reform conversations guarantees that there will be no significant inroads made into reversing mass incarceration. Thousands of federal drug defendants will be sentenced to decades of incarceration and resources will be squandered that could more effectively be directed to prevention and treatment initiatives.”

trump180116Others have objected that the meeting does not include any liberal groups. However, an anonymous conservative participant told Reuters that “excluding organizations that are seen as liberal, like the ACLU or the NAACP, and leaving out sentencing reform was necessary to gain thetea leaves, I think what they’ve done is sat down with Mr. Sessions and got him to agree to part of the reforms,” said the conservative leader, who requested anonymity in order to freely discuss the issue.

Meanwhile, the American Bar Association sent a letter to Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Diane Feinstein (D-California), in support of the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2017. ABA President Hilarie Bass said that while the ABA was “disappointed by the inclusion of some new mandatory minimum sentencing provisions in the current draft, we believe that S. 1917 will, overall, create a more just criminal justice system than the one currently in place. Enactment will help focus prosecutorial and correctional resources on offenders who commit serious crimes that pose the greatest risk to public safety and will permit more sentencing flexibility for low-level, nonviolent offenders whose role and culpability will now receive more careful and balanced consideration by sentencing judges. It will also expand recidivism-reducing programs and juvenile justice reform to make sure that those in prison have a chance to reintegrate into society.”’

Finally, Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-California) were both named to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Sen. Booker has sponsored criminal justice reform legislation in the past, and is a co-sponsor of SRCA17. Sen. Harris has occasionally supported criminal justice reform, such as when she joined with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) to back bail reform.

harris180116Some question Sen. Harris’s sincerity, however. As San Francisco’s district attorney and then as California’s attorney general, Harris rarely strayed far from a punitive law-and-order mentality. Last week, Reason warned that “Criminal justice reformers shouldn’t get their hopes up that she’ll be a reliable ally. During her time as San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris oversaw the city’s mismanaged crime lab. A San Francisco superior court judge ruled that the D.A.’s office ignored demands that it take responsibility for the lab’s failings, and that it violated defendants’ rights by hiding information about a corrupt technician who had been stealing cocaine.”

The Hill, Trump, Kushner meet with advocates on prison reform (Jan. 11, 2018)

Newsweek, Trump and Kushner’s prison reform plan not expected to reduce sentences or fix prison conditions (Jan. 11, 2018)

Reason.com, Kamala Harris: No Friend to Criminal Justice Reform (Jan. 12, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root LISAStatHeader2small

Shakeup at State Department May Rid Senate of Sentencing Reform Foe – Update for December 4, 2017

Leave a comment

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

LISAStatHeader2small
IT’S AN ILL WIND…

illwind171204A 500-year old proverb holds that it’s an ill wind that blows no one any good. In other words, even a lousy turn of events may benefit someone.

The story broke last Thursday that President Trump is considering dumping Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and replacing him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo. There is a lot of media hand-wringing over the plan to remove Tillerson, who has been a much better Secretary of State than the pundits predicted, but for our purposes the silver lining is that moving Pompeo to the State Department would create a vacancy at the CIA. Government officials familiar with White House thinking said the CIA slot could be filled by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), one of the President’s staunchest Congressional foreign policy defenders and a criminal justice hardliner.

cotton171204Those who remember the sentencing reform debate last year may appreciate Reason.com’s explanation that Sen. Cotton “has a nasty record of taking any number of authoritarian, anti-liberty positions. Getting him out of the Senate could arguably be an improvement in terms of lawmaking. He has been a supporter of harsh mandatory minimum federal sentencing for drug crimes and has stood in the way of reforms of the criminal justice system… Cotton has been no friend of freedom as a senator.”

It may even be too much of a good thing. Sen. Cotton has been so in tune with the President’s authoritarian urges that some Administration officials told the New York Times last week that there is concern that he’s more valuable to Trump in the Senate. If Sen. Cotton leaves the Senate to head the CIA, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, would name a replacement to serve until next fall. Hutchinson has not been terribly thrilled with the way Trump has been handling himself as president, and may not nominate someone as reliably right-wing as Sen. Cotton.

badge171204Sentence reform has not made much progress this year while Congress has been focused on health care and tax reform. But as Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) noted a month ago, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act could receive 70 votes in the Senate if it ever comes to a vote.  Ohio State University law professor Doug Berman wrote in his Sentencing Law and Policy blog last Friday that “I think Senator Cotton is one big reason the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act seems unlikely to get a vote in the Senate in the near future.  But if Senator Cotton becomes CIA Director Cotton, maybe these political dynamics change for the better for those eager to see sentencing reform enacted in Congress.”

Real Clear Politics, Trump weighs plan to replace Tillerson with CIA’s Pompeo (Nov. 30, 2017)

New York Times, White House plans Tillerson ouster from State Dept., to be replaced by Pompeo (Nov. 30, 2017)

Reason, CIA Director Tom Cotton: A Disaster for foreign policy or a boon for better lawmaking? (Nov. 30, 2017)

Sentencing Law and Policy, Does federal statutory sentencing reform become a bit more likely if Senator Tom Cotton were to become CIA Director? (Nov. 30, 2017)

– Thomas L. Root 

LISAStatHeader2small

Sentence Reform – Wither Goest Thou? – Update for October 30, 2017

Leave a comment

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

LISAStatHeader2small
LISA DOES A ROAD TRIP 2

roadtrip171027We reported last Friday on our trip to Washington for the “Advancing Justice, An Agenda for Human Dignity & Public Safety,” a conference sponsored by the Charles Koch Institute.

Today’s installment is Part 2 of our coverage:

SPEAKERS HINT AT SRCA PROSPECTS

The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2017 (S.1917) is currently before a subcommittee of Senator Charles Grassley’s Judiciary Committee, but we’ve been there before. The 2015 version of the SRCA was approved by the Judiciary Committee, only to die on the Senate floor because leadership refused to bring it to a vote during a presidential election season.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the man with his hand on the Judiciary Committee throttle.
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the man with his hand on the Judiciary Committee throttle.

What is lost in the story of the 2015-16 attempts to pass SRCA is that the bill that came out of the Committee was not the same bill that went in. Instead, a lot of the retroactivity written into the bill as drafted was taken out to please law-and-order conservatives like then-Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (now Attorney General) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas).

Sen. Grassley, one of the SRCA sponsors, said at the Advancing Justice conference that the drafters of SRCA17 “kept the package balanced,” taking into account the views of the prior bill’s critics. He said that to those “wanting reasonable compromise, we will be willing partners.”

Sen. Grassley cited a number of pending criminal justice reform bills, including the Smarter Sentencing Act (S.1933), the Mens Rea Reform Act (S.1902) and the CORRECTIONS Act (S.1994), implying that one comprehensive piece of sentencing reform legislation may emerge from the Judiciary Committee that includes pieces of many or all of these bills.

Sen. Grassley’s favorable reference to the Smarter Sentencing Act is a lot different from what he thought two years ago, when he denounced “the arguments for the Smarter Sentencing Act [as] merely a weak attempt to defend the indefensible.” In fact, his complaint that mandatory minimum laws are “too severe” and give prosecutors too much discretion is a major change from 2015, when he complained in a Senate speech about the dangers of the “leniency industrial complex” and “a growing public misconception that mandatory sentences for drug offenders needed to be reduced.”

stars171030So are the stars aligned differently in this Congress? Marc Levin ot the Texas Public Policy Institute told a session on the future of sentencing reform that “part of the strategy is to have as comprehensive a [sentencing reform] package as possible, without making perfect the enemy of the good.” Both left- and right-wing politicians are working on sentencing reform, and Koch Industries general counsel Mark Holden thinks that Attorney General Sessions will not be an impediment to the bill’s passage, despite what Levin called Sessions’ “real difference of opinion” on sentencing reform.

One potential stumbling block may be the Mens Rea Reform Act (S.1902). That Act would add a default rule for juries, requiring them to find criminal intent for federal offenses that don’t explicitly have an intent standard. If enacted, the Act would specify a default state of mind of “willfully,” and would require that unless the statute specified otherwise, AUSAs would have to prove the state of mind for every element of the offense. For example, a felon-in-possession charge under 18 USC 922(g) (which does not specify a state of mind) would require proof that the defendant possessed a gun that had traveled in interstate commerce intending to break the law. Currently, the government only must show the defendant knew he or she possessed a gun, not that the gun had traveled interstate and not that he or she knew the law prohibited possession.

mensrea160124Conservatives and criminal-defense organizations argue the measure is a necessary part of the congressional effort to reform sentencing and incarceration. Some Senate Democrats, however, fear the measure is far too sweeping and could be a back-door attack on federal regulations that police corporate behavior.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D – Rhode Island), a member of the Judiciary Committee, told the Atlantic magazine last week that he wouldn’t support a sentencing reform bill containing the change in mens rea proposed by the MRRA. “It would turn me into a warrior against it,” he said. Chuck Schumer (New York), the Democratic leader in the Senate, also was quoted as saying he would oppose such a bill.

Ohio State University law professor and sentencing expert Douglas Berman wrote pessimistically last Friday about the effect the MRRA could have on sentencing reform:

I have said before and will say again that this kind of opposition to a reform designed to safeguard a fundamental part of a fair and effective federal criminal justice system shows just how we got to a world with mass incarceration and mass supervision and mass collateral consequences.  Nobody seems willing or able to understand that making life easier for prosecutors anywhere serves to increase the size and reach and punitiveness of our criminal justice systems everywhere.  In turn, if you want a less extreme and severe criminal justice system anywhere, the best way to advance the cause is by seeking and advocating to limit government prosecutorial powers everywhere.

Sentencing Law & Policy, Is it time for new optimism or persistent pessimism on the latest prospects for statutory federal sentencing reform? (Oct. 28, 2017)

The Atlantic, Could a Controversial Bill Sink Criminal-Justice Reform in Congress? (Oct. 26, 2017)

– Thomas L. Root

LISAStatHeader2small

Talking Sentence Reform At “Advancing Justice” – Update for Friday, October 27, 2017

Leave a comment

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

LISAStatHeader2small
LISA DOES A ROAD TRIP

roadtrip171027We were in Washington, D.C., yesterday for the “Advancing Justice, An Agenda for Human Dignity & Public Safety,” a conference sponsored by the Charles Koch Institute.

“Advancing Justice” featured a thundering herd of prosecutors, public defenders, economists, doctors and law professors who focused on federal sentencing reform, over-criminalization, the opioid crisis, and effective rehabilitation.

Charles Koch, one of the often-denounced conservative Koch brothers (Koch Industries), is one of the staunchest sentencing reform supporters in the country. Through the Charles Koch Foundation, he has put his money where his mouth is, and bankrolled reforms that have or will have broad support from the right and the left.

LISAStatHeader2small
SRCA SPONSORS MAKE THEIR CASE

The Sentence Reform and Corrections Act of 2107 would pass the Senate with 70 votes if it were voted on today, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) told the Advancing Justice conference yesterday.

advj171027The SRCA introduced in 2015 passed Sen. Grassley’s committee 15-5, and both he and Sen. Lee said it would have overwhelmingly passed the Senate had it been brought to a vote. Sen. Grassley said “election year pressures” were responsible for the bill stalling. Mark Holden, Koch Industries general counsel – who spearheaded Koch pressure in favor of the 2015 version of SRCA – was blunter about it: “Presidential politics killed the last Sentence Reform and Corrections Act,” he told one of the sessions focusing on the future of federal sentence reform.

Holden and Sen. Grassley separately noted that there is support within the Trump Administration for a reform bill. Holden noted that while it was well known that White House advisor Jared Kushner – President Trump’s son-in-law – supported sentencing reform because his father had done time for a white-collar offense – others in the Administration support it as well. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Housing Secretary Ben Carson are strong supporters of the measure. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), the Speaker of the House, is “very passionate” about sentence reform, Holden said.

Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III
Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III

Most of the attention has been focused on Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, who reportedly opposes sentencing reform. Holden suggested Sessions “not a real negative.” Sessions’ job, as he acknowledged at his confirmation hearing, is to enforce the laws, not make them. “He has his opinion,” Holden said. Sen. Lee told the conference that Sessions, with whom Lee served in the Senate until early this year, “is willing to work with us on sentencing reform” despite the fact Sessions voted against SRCA15 because he argued it went too far in reducing mandatory minimum sentences for some crimes.

Sen. Grassley said he had supported tougher sentencing in the 1980s and 90s, including mandatory minimum legislation, because it was the right solution to the rising crime rate at the time. But now, he admits “it makes sense to revisit” the laws. He said mandatory minimums are “too severe” and give prosecutors too much discretion in charging. Noting that 25% of DOJ budget is now spent on prisons, Sen. Grassley said the SRCA would “free up federal resources and give prisoners a chance to reform.”

Sen. Lee agreed. “We have finite resources to fight crime. The more spent on prisons, the less is left for enforcement, making communities safer… What we’re doing now on sentencing is not working,” said Sen. Lee, a former federal prosecutor.

He challenged those who oppose reform proposals to share their ideas. “We have to get to the politicians on this.” He said legislators are looking at how to properly identify low-level nonviolent drug offenders. Contrary to AG Sessions’ view, Sen. Lee said the act of drug trafficking “itself is not violent.”

moses171027“The federal sentencing laws were not handed down from Mt. Sinai,” Sen. Lee said. The SRCA is “just a matter of common sense and sound public policy.” The problem, Lee and Holden suggested, was that SRCA supporters will run into the charge that they are “soft on crime.”

“We are going to have address the argument that ‘you are soft on crime’,” Sen. Lee said. “There are not the same market drivers in the federal sphere” as in state criminal justice reform. States cannot “kick the can down the road” like Congress can. At the state level, Sen. Lee said, the argument is to be “smart on crime, soft on taxpayers.” At the federal level, it “still works to be tough on crime. But every state that has done [sentence reform] had reduced crime rates and saved money.”

Axios, an online news site, reported that Lee said to a reporter afterwards that he wants a vote on SRCA before the end of the year, but with health care and tax reform in focus, the criminal justice reform bill has yet to be a priority.

The Crime Report, Federal Sentencing Reform Alive, Senators Insist (Oct. 27, 2017)

– Thomas L. Root

LISAStatHeader2small

Smarter Sentencing Act: Just Like Before, But With More Sponsors – Update for October 17, 2017

Leave a comment

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

LISAStatHeader2small
SMARTER SENTENCING ACT REDUX

deja171017We were a bit befuddled when Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) announced by press release on October 5, 2017, that he and Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) had “reintroduced the Smarter Sentencing Act of 2017.” It was not clear whether this was a complete retread of the Smarter Sentencing Act of 2015, S. 502, that died without a vote last December, or whether it was new and improved (or just different).

The confusion was compounded because we were unable to locate a draft of the Smarter Sentencing Act of 2017 anywhere over the next 10 days. We called Sen. Lee’s office last week for a copy of the measure, and received our copy yesterday.

Yes, indeedy, the 2017 version of the bill is identical to old S.502, except for a boatload more sponsors (21 from both sides of the aisle). Highlights of the measure include

• expanding the “safety valve” contained in 18 USC 3553(f) – which permits court to relieve low-level drug offenders with relatively clean records to avoid mandatory minimum sentences under some circumstances – to include people with slightly more criminal history.

Currently, a single misdemeanor in one’s background can disqualify the defendant from “safety valve” consideration. Under the proposed change, a couple of felonies will be too much, but more young defendants facing their first serious criminal charge would be sentenced under a scheme that let the judge weigh individual factors rather than applying an inflexible and harsh minimum sentence.

• making the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which reduced disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1, retroactive.

cracksentence171017In the wake of basketball star Len Bias’ death in 1988, Congress passed the draconian Anti Drug Abuse Act, which equated one gram of crack cocaine to 100 grams of cocaine powder. As a result, drug sentences – which are driven by the amount of drug involved in the crime – soared. The defendants in crack cases were overwhelmingly black.

After years of urging by the Sentencing Commission and studies showing that Congress’ rationale for the ADA – that crack was more addictive and crack offenses more violent – was bunkum, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act in 2010. Unfortunately, to convince recalcitrant senators to support it, the retroactivity portions of the law were stripped out. Thus, a crack defendant sentenced August 3, 2009, was hammered with the 100:1 ratio, while a defendant sentenced August 3, 2010, was treated more in line with what a cocaine powder defendant would face.

The SSA would make the FSA retroactive, permitting defendants sentenced harshly prior to the adoption of the law eligible for resentencing, at their judges’ discretion, to a more reasonable term.

• cutting mandatory minimums in the drug trafficking laws.

Currently, the Byzantine sentencing regime in 21 USC 841(b) provides differing levels of mandatory minimum sentences for various quantities of different drugs, various number of prior drug felonies, and whether death or serious injury resulted from the drug dealing.

hammer160509Under the SSA, a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence would become 5 years, 20 years would become 10 years, five years would become two years. Right now, a defendant with two prior drug felonies (no matter how old) caught with five kilos of cocaine gets a mandatory life term: no ifs, ands or buts. Sure, the public’s thirst for vengeance is slaked by such toughness. But somehow, when the public sees the same defendant, bent and gray, shuffling across the prison yard a quarter century later, the tough sentence seems pretty wasteful.

The SSA would turn the mandatory life sentence into a mandatory minimum of 25 years.

• cutting mandatory minimums in 21 USC 960 for drug mules carrying drugs into the country courier in half.

mule171017Your poor, dumb peasant from El Cocador humping marijuana across the border or clueless young woman flying in to JFK from East Slobovia with heroin in the liner of her suitcase… These are the couriers, the lowest of the low-level defendant being paid maybe two shekels for hauling someone else’s big score. Under 21 USC 960, the drug importation criminal statute, they get hammered with the same mandatory sentences as Mr. Big, the kingpin staying safely offshore.

The SSA would cut the mandatory minimums applicable to couriers by half.

The bill does not explicitly make any change it proposes retroactive other than the extension of the FSA, but a fair reading of Section 5 of the SSA suggests that the Sentencing Commission should do so according to its retroactivity procedures.

Some of the Smarter Sentencing Act provisions echo those of the Sentence Reform and Corrections Act of 2017, introduced two days earlier. We anticipate that the provisions of the two bills will be blended into a single package by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

S.1933, Smarter Sentencing Act of 2017 (introduced Oct. 5, 2017)

– Thomas L. Root

LISAStatHeader2small