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Jewish World Review July 18, 2005 / 11 Tammuz, 5765 The new inquisitor By Debra J. Saunders
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
There is a big problem in American law these days: Congressional lawmakers want to be judges, and judges want to be lawmakers. So Congress passes laws that strictly dictate how judges should do their jobs, and judges decide they can rearrange laws as if they wrote them.
Caught in the middle is Lissett Rivera.
Some five years ago, a U.S. district judge sentenced Rivera, a first-time offender, to eight years and one month for her role as a courier in a drug ring headed by a former Chicago gang-crime police officer.
Eight long years, apparently, weren't long enough for House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, a Republican from Wisconsin. After a three-judge panel upheld the 97 -month sentence, Sensenbrenner sent a letter to Joel Flaum, chief judge of the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Seventh District, located in Chicago, asking that the court resentence Rivera to 10 years in prison.
Without sending copies to Rivera's defense attorney, Sensenbrenner sent a similar letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that asked the Department of Justice to take the "appropriate measures" to appeal the lighter sentence. After years of pushing through draconian mandatory-minimum sentences that often force judges to sentence low-level, nonviolent, first-time offenders to years, decades even, behind bars, Sensenbrenner has made himself a grand inquisitor, free to challenge any legal decisions that don't work for him.
In Sensenbrenner's favor, I should note, is the fact that the three-judge panel essentially agreed that the 97-month sentence was less than the 10 years called for under sentencing guidelines for conspiracy to sell more than five kilograms of cocaine. Nonetheless, because prosecutors didn't appeal, the judges wrote, the panel decided there was nothing it could do.
Sensenbrenner spokesman Jeff Lungren explained that Sensenbrenner was simply exercising his oversight role: "He's just asking that the court follow the law with sentencing. That's a perfectly reasonable request."
Lungren added that Sensenbrenner would protest any sentence that exceeded a maximum sentence. Yeah, but fat chance of that ever happening after Sensenbrenner and company have passed so many draconian laws that the harshest judges in America have trouble keeping in step.
Here's the worst part about Sensenbrenner's interference: It obviously didn't occur to him that, if the prosecutors didn't appeal the shorter sentence — not that eight years is light time for a first-time offender — then, there might be a reason.
Or if it did occur to him, he decided to fire off an intimidating letter, and hear the facts later.
Steven Shobat, a former assistant U.S. attorney who is handling Rivera's appeal, argued that his client deserved a break because she was involved in trafficking fewer than five kilos, had worked for years as a secretary and had no prior criminal record. She has been in prison for five years.
While Sensenbrenner's office may argue that while the sentences are cut and dried — five kilos equals 10 years — the justice system is highly flexible.
Prosecutors trade and juggle charges every day. And it is not as if the charges always fit the exact crime. As Jack King of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers noted, thanks to 1987 federal drug- conspiracy laws, "you can be convicted and sentenced for drugs you didn't deal. "
Meanwhile, you have to wonder why a member of Congress felt free to hector the judiciary and executive branches. It's not enough for him to write laws. Now he wants to oversee how cases are tried and make sure that sentences for first-time offenders are long enough.
With Congress' power of the purse over the federal courts, Sensenbrenner's action is more than oversight. It is bullying.
Worse, Team Sensenbrenner doesn't show any sign that it knows when to apply the brakes. A January Supreme Court decision allowed U.S. district judges to set sentences outside the guidelines. Sensenbrenner began working on a law to turn the guidelines into rigid mandatory-minimum sentences.
It's not right for judges to rule outside the law, but it's also not right for Congress to pass laws so rigid that many judges, in good conscience, don't want to enforce them. It's easy for Washington to enact long sentences. Unlike judges, House members never have to look into the faces of the accused. They never have to worry if a person who is easily redeemable will lose her young adulthood to prison. They don't have to see the humanity they lock up. And so they lose their own humanity.
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Comment JWR contributor Debra J. Saunders's column by clicking here. © 2005, Creators Syndicate |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
