IOWAN'S CASE BEFORE HIGH COURT HIGHLIGHTS SENTENCING SHORTCOMINGS

The U.S. Supreme Court begins its 2008 term this week. Tomorrow, the
justices will hear arguments in an Iowa case that could affect
criminal sentences in every federal courtroom in America.

The outcome of Gall v. the United States will have a particularly
profound impact on Brian Gall, a native of Eldridge and graduate of
the University of Iowa who made what he freely admits was a poor
choice in 2000 when, as a 21-year-old student, he got involved with a
drug conspiracy as a low-level dealer of so-called "ecstasy" tablets.

After about seven months, he parted company with the drug dealers,
quit selling the drug and turned his life around. He finished college
and started a construction business in Arizona. Alas, his past came
back to haunt him two years later when federal agents showed up at his
door. In 2004, Gall pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Des
Moines to conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance.

At that point, Gall's story took the first of several unusual turns
that would put his case before the Supreme Court and squarely in the
cross hairs of a national debate among federal judges, prosecutors and
defense lawyers over criminal-sentencing laws.

When a case before the court last year on this issue was dismissed
because the defendant was killed, the court looked through the pile of
pending appeals for another presenting the same question. It picked
Gall's.

Prison V. Probation

Gall's case fit the bill because it is a prime example of how the
federal-sentencing process has become broken.

Based on the federal criminal-sentencing guidelines, the recommended
sentence for Gall was a prison term of somewhere between 30 and 37
months. U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt instead sentenced Gall to
probation based on the fact that Gall's brief venture into drug sales
was an aberration in an otherwise lawful life and that prison would
serve no purpose.

"Indeed," Pratt wrote, "a sentence of imprisonment may work to promote
not respect, but derision, of the law if the law is viewed as merely a
means to dispense harsh punishment without taking into account the
real conduct and circumstances involved in sentencing."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit based in St. Louis, Mo.,
reversed Pratt and sent the case back for resentencing with the clear
message: Stick within the guidelines and send Gall to prison.

Among the thousands of criminal prosecutions that flow through the
federal courts every year, this case may seem ordinary, but it
presents a critical constitutional problem that has been vexing the
federal courts ever since Congress created the U.S. Sentencing
Guidelines Commission in 1984. The commission's guidelines serve to
substitute human instincts of courtroom judges with a mathematical
formula that spits out criminal sentences based on a range of
enhancing and mitigating factors.

Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that mandatory sentencing
guidelines violated defendants' Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial,
but said they could be considered an optional guide among a variety of
sentencing factors. Many circuit appeals courts, however, have since
established a rigorous test for sentences that fall below the
guidelines, which critics say effectively made the guidelines
mandatory - and unconstitutional.

The Human Factor

This all may seem dryly technical, except that it affects real people
like Brian Gall, who made a mistake but is now leading a successful
life that would surely be wrecked, perhaps irreversibly so, by a
prison record. It's the difference between looking at a case through
the eyes of a judge who has heard the testimony of dozens of people
who say Gall is model citizen and worker rather than through the
faceless mathematical sentencing formula that does not, and cannot,
account for the inestimable human variations in every case.

The sentencing guidelines were intended to bring uniformity to federal
criminal sentences across the nation. That is a laudable goal, but
there is little evidence they have achieved anything other than being
uniformly harsh.

Some federal judges have been in near open revolt over the
straitjacketing effect of the guidelines, saying "mechanical sentence
computation" reduces judges to "automatons" and "rubber-stamp
bureaucrats." Some believe the federal courts have been transformed to
little more than treadmills sending people to prison, with judges
unable to do what they were hired to do: Make judgments based on
unique facts in each case.

The Supreme Court has made a hash of federal-sentencing law over the
past 20 years. In the case it will hear tomorrow, it has the
opportunity to give judges, lawyers and defendants clear guidance. It
is long overdue.