ABSURDITIES OF SENTENCING GUIDELINES

Regarding the Aug. 14 editorial "Nonsensical sentencing" and the Aug. 10
news story "Sentencing plan seen costing $900m plus and swelling prisons":

Thank you for exposing the obvious flaws of the district attorneys' and
governor's sentencing guidelines bills. However, it isn't true that the
work of the [Massachusetts] Sentencing Commission has never been enacted,
in part, "because defense attorneys deem the guidelines Draconian."

Although we have some reservations, the Massachusetts Association of
Criminal Defense Lawyers has publicly supported the Sentencing Commission's
approach.

To its credit, the Sentencing Commission's bill retains some discretion for
judges, subject to appeal by either side; it provides the possibilility of
relief from truly "Draconian" mandatory minimum sentences in drug cases
(again, subject to appeal); and its projected impact would -- provided the
Commission's studies are accurate -- be neutral on the prison system.

The bill's major flaw -- permitting unlimited, unappealable "piling on" of
consecutive sentences for multiple charges -- can easily be fixed.

Your other observation about why the guidelines have languished is
accurate: DAs refuse to relinquish their unbridled discretion -- to charge,
to not charge, or to plea bargain -- in drug cases that ostensibly carry a
mandatory sentence.

And their "tough on crime" insistence on harsher guidelines would result in
a wholesale increase in prison populations.

The Commission's analysis of the district attorneys' and governor's
proposals, unmasking fiscal and criminological absurdities, should lead to
their rejection.

A similar analysis must be done of any purported "compromises" before they
are voted on.

Martin Rosenthal,
Geoffrey Packard,
Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers,
Boston