|
Marc
Morial, MaximsNews Columnist
The
Court's Common Sense on
Sentencing
by
Marc
H. Morial
President
and CEO, National
Urban League
Marc
H. Morial,
President of the National
Urban League, is
the former two-term Mayor
of New Orleans, former
President of the U.S.
Conference of Mayors,
and author of TO BE
EQUAL. He is a
Columnist for MaximsNews.com.
Hear his weekly Radio
Commentary Online.
See
Marc Morial's bio.
MarcMorial@MaximsNews.com
Please
see All of
Marc Morial's MaximsNews
columns below.*
UNITED NATIONS -
19 January 2005
/ www.MaximsNews.com
/ The
U.S. Supreme Court's
ruling earlier this month
that restored a broader
discretion in criminal
sentencing to federal
judges has for the moment
thrown part of the federal
criminal justice into an
uproar.
By
a slim 5-to-4 majority the
Court, as expected,
declared that the
sentencing guidelines
system passed by Congress
two decades ago violated
defendants' rights by
allowing judges to use a
defendants' criminal
history or other facts to
levy a longer sentence
than the maximum statutory
one the crime alone
warranted.
This,
the Court ruled, abrogated
defendants' Sixth
Amendment protections --
the right to a trial by
jury and, by extension,
the right to be sentenced
only for the crime of
which the jury found the
defendant guilty.
Enabling
a judge to add to a
sentence because of facts
the jury was not permitted
to consider is
unconstitutional, the
Court said.
However,
the Court did not strike
down the guidelines
altogether.
Instead,
in the second part of its
decision, it stated, again
by a 5-to-4 majority, that
judges must still use the
current guidelines in an
advisory capacity when
determining sentences.
The
wrangling over this issue
- over which branch of the
federal government:
the Congress or the
judiciary - has the
authority to set
punishment for crimes is
not finished by any means.
Federal
appeals courts are likely
to be deluged with appeals
from federal inmates to
reduce their sentences;
and some conservative
members of Congress have
already announced their
intention of re-fashioning
mandatory sentencing
guidelines in order to
meet constitutional
standards.
It's
become clear in recent
years that, generally
speaking, federal judges
favor having more
discretion in meting out
sentences.
On
the other hand, many
conservatives have
asserted the mandatory
guidelines that have
sharply limited judicial
sentencing discretion are
a key plank in the fight
to reduce crime.
But
what's at stake in this
issue involves far more
than a power-play between
two branches of the
federal government:
That's
why the Supreme Court
decision is a blow for
common sense and fairness
in sentencing.
The
guidelines did make
sentencing more uniform.
But
their very restrictiveness
forced judges into
sentences that were unduly
harsh, and, in fact,
unjust.
That
has especially been so
against defendants
convicted of nonviolent,
low-level crimes: the guidelines have required judges to levy mandatory minimum
sentences of from 5 to as
much as 25 years or more
without the possibility of
parole and without
considering mitigating
circumstances.
Not
surprisingly, given the
dynamics of arrest and
prosecution in the
criminal justice system,
the harsh penalties have
been meted out to the poor
and people of color
disproportionately -- but
not exclusively.
In
recent years those
restrictions have provoked
several federal judges to
publicly sharply criticize
the sentences they've been
forced to hand down.
The
Congressional mandatory
sentencing guidelines,
whose passage was buoyed
by a storm of "lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key"
rhetoric, has always had
at its core the
extraordinary implicit or
explicit assertion that
most judges can't be
trusted to properly
sentence defendants
convicted of crime.
It’s
a "tougher-than-thou"
posture that is strange,
to say the least, unless
one looks at it in the
context of the
longstanding compulsion of
some politicians to appear
to be "toughest"
on crime.
Frankly,
in my own political career
as, first, a Louisiana
state legislator, and then
as a two-term Mayor of New
Orleans, who successfully
wrestled with that city's
serious crime problem, the
number of public officials
I came across who were not
deeply concerned about
crime and committed to
reducing crime could be
shoved into a very small
closet.
Of
course, we must be
committed to properly
punishing those who commit
crime.
Where
American society has
fallen down is devoting an
equal amount of resources
to the social and
educational programs for
children and youth that we
know help prevent crime,
and the in-prison
educational and
job-training programs that
give ex-inmates a better
chance of finding a
legitimate means of
supporting themselves and
their families and
avoiding criminal activity
once they’ve served
their sentences.
The
results of America’s
blind obsession of recent
decades with incarceration
as the panacea for crime
can be seen in increase of
inmates in state and
federal prison from
330,000 in the early 1970s
to 2.1 million today; in
the growing predominance
of blacks and Latinos
among the prison
population; in the social
havoc that has created in
impoverished black and
Latino neighborhoods; and
in the fiscal skewing of
state budgets to build
more and more prisons the
get-tough-approach to
crime requires.
Fortunately,
the calls for fundamental
reforms across the
criminal justice system
are growing louder, as the
social wreckage produced
by America’s addiction
to incarceration becomes
more alarmingly clear.
That's
the broader context in
which to view this Supreme
Court decision:
as the sound of
voices of reason.
MarcMorial@MaximsNews.com
Please
CONFIRM your free
Subscription to MaximsNews:
*Marc
Morial's Columns in MaximsNews
The
Mississippi Arrest:
Bending Toward
Justice... 11
January 2005
Reforming
America's Obsession with
Incarceration... 7
December 2004
A
Pre-Election Snapshot of
Black America... 26
October 2004
Issues
for the Candidates -- and
for Us... 19
October 2004
The
"Routine"
Tragedy in the Sudan... 2
September 2004
A
Wonderful Life... 26
August 2004
America,
We Have A Problem...
19
August 2004
Looking
Forward; Leaving No One
Behind... 28
July 200428 July 2004
Empowering
Communities, Changing
Lives...
8
July 2004
July:
The
Other Black History
Month... 30
June 2004
Justice
for History's Sake—and
Our Own... 24
June 2004
Let
America Be America The
Beautiful...
16
June 2004
Quiet
Activism on The
Movement’s Front
Lines... 8
June 2004
Vernon
Jarrett, Dreamer and Doer
... 2
June 2004
Buddy
Fletcher's Gift...
26
May 2004
The
Murder of Emmett Till: Still
Seeking Justice...
20
May 2004
The
Meaning of the Brown
Decision... 12
May 2004
The
Complexity of Black
Achievement...
4
May 2004
USA
Today's Con Artist...
27
April 2004
The
"Moving Target"
of Black Educational
Progress
... 13
April 2004
Elaine
Jones: Energized
by Adversity...
6
April 2004
The
Urban League in
Washington: Bringing
Reinforcements... 30
March 2004
The
Pain of Those Left
Behind... 17
March 2004
Deeply
Desiring Denial... 9
March 2004
One
Step Forward; Two Steps
Back...
3
March 2004
Innocent
of the Crime, But Almost
Executed Anyway...
24
February 2004
Civil
Rights: America's
Unfinished Business...
17
February 2004
What
Will They Do Now?
2
February 2004
|
