COMMUTE THIS SENTENCE

A Clemency Case Not Even President Bush Can Ignore -- or Can He?

THE SUPREME Court this week declined to review the case of Weldon
Angelos, leaving in place his obscene sentence of 55 years in prison
for small-time marijuana and gun charges. The high court's move is no
surprise; the justices have tended to uphold draconian sentences
against constitutional challenge. But it confronts President Bush
with a question he will have to address: Is there any sentence so
unfair that he would exert himself to correct it?

So far, Mr. Bush hasn't found one. He has commuted only two
sentences, both of inmates who were about to be released anyway. Mr.
Angelos, by contrast, is a young man and a first-time offender who is
now likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. His crime? He
sold $350 in marijuana to a government informant three times -- and
carried, but did not display, a gun on two of those occasions. Police
found other guns and pot at his house. The U.S. district judge who
sentenced him in Utah, Paul G. Cassell, declared the mandatory
sentence in this case "unjust, cruel, and even irrational." He noted
that it is "far in excess of the sentence imposed for such serious
crimes as aircraft hijacking, second degree murder, espionage,
kidnapping, aggravated assault, and rape." And in an extraordinary
act, he explicitly called on Mr. Bush to use his clemency powers to
offer what he as a judge could not: justice. Judge Cassell
recommended that Mr. Bush commute the sentence to 18 years, which he
described as "the average sentence recommended by the jury that heard
this case."

Mr. Bush put Judge Cassell on the bench. As a law professor before
that, he was a staunch advocate of tough justice; his chief claim to
fame, in fact, was having pressed the Supreme Court to overturn its
landmark Miranda decision requiring police to read criminal suspects
their constitutional rights. His exceptional discomfort with this
case -- and his passionate plea for presidential mercy -- ought to
carry weight even with a president so disinclined to use the powers
the Constitution gives him to remedy injustices.