New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | January 14, 2005

Sometimes reducing judicial discretion actually increases judicial discretion... and then (maybe) reduces it again. Jigga-wha? Jacob Sullum explains.

Comments

|1.14.05 @ 11:37AM|#

I particularly enjoyed the point about replacing judicial discretion with prosecutorial discretion. Gotta make sure there's SOME way to avoid accidentally trapping a good-ole-boy in all this.

|1.14.05 @ 11:39AM|#

(PS: blog link is correct but I think the link on the home page still needs a fixin)

|1.14.05 @ 12:02PM|#

On Entertainment Tonight last night, I heard someone wondering if this would mean Martha could get out early.
I sure hope so, especially now that she's a convert to fighting the War on Drugs.

|1.14.05 @ 12:07PM|#

I guess Angelo would have been legally better off to have killed the gov't undercovers to avoid being caught. That's wackier than the tobaccier, man.

|1.14.05 @ 12:07PM|#

it is always nice to see a professional journalist use the sublime expression "jigga-wha?"

Who you kiddin, playa? You ain't Reihan mothafuckin Salam! Brooklyn!

|1.14.05 @ 12:25PM|#

Word.

|1.14.05 @ 12:26PM|#

Alas my rap lingo is stuck in the late 80s or I'd say something. Is it still called "rap"?

|1.14.05 @ 12:32PM|#

Here's how News of the Weird reports this story:

"In Salt Lake City in November, federal judge Paul G. Cassell, remarking that mandatory-minimum sentencing laws gave him no choice, sent a 25-year-old, small-quantity marijuana dealer to prison for 55 years (because he had a gun on him during two of the transactions). Two hours before that, in a crime Cassell described as far more serious but not subject to the same mandatory minimums, he sentenced a man to 22 years in prison for beating an elderly woman to death with a log."

Beating an old woman to death with a log < selling three half pounds with a pistol on your ankle.

|1.14.05 @ 1:12PM|#

Props on the Prisoner pic.

digamma|1.14.05 @ 2:45PM|#

I thought these blurbs were Cavanaugh's job.

|1.14.05 @ 3:43PM|#

I'm helping out with some of the web stuff now.

Baylen|1.14.05 @ 3:49PM|#

Shameless plug: You can send your Members of Congress a free email urging them not to do anything bad or hasty around the Supreme Court decision at the Drug Policy Alliance website: http://actioncenter.drugpolicy.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=23794&ms=sentencing-rm .

|1.14.05 @ 6:33PM|#

Obvious point - dude shouldn't even be in trouble cuz pot should not be illegal.

The one problem I have had about mandatory minimums from day one was that a judge is supposed to be an impartial judge of the law and how it should be applied in a given case. As Jacob says, a prosecutor is going to swing for the fences, so you can't count on them being compassionate.

Other obvious point: jury nullification. It should be illegal for judges to instruct juries that they are only allowed to make a decision based on the facts presented in the case. A jury should be told that they are allowed to have the case thrown out if they consider the trial unjust.

But then, I simply hate The Man. :)

|1.14.05 @ 6:36PM|#

I realise compassionate is not the word I was looking for...I suppose impartial would be the word that would fit better.

|1.14.05 @ 8:20PM|#

"Beating an old woman to death with a log "

Don't be too hasty, joe.
As we Southerners are fond of saying, maybe that old woman just "needed killin'"?

|1.14.05 @ 11:50PM|#

There's only one word needed to describe the DA and all others responsible for this travesty: Evil.