FIT THE SENTENCE TO THE CRIME

A recent survey by an independent watchdog group confirms the
suspicion that, despite uniform federal sentencing guidelines, some
criminals receive significantly lighter sentences than others.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, logically, wants to find out why. Mr.
Ashcroft has asked prosecutors around the nation to tell him whenever
a judge issues a sentence that deviates from sentencing norms with a
"downward departure" that isn't part of an agreement with the Justice
Department for a lighter sentence in exchange for cooperation, The
Associated Press reports. The attorney general's purpose, says his
spokesman, is to "get an accurate reporting of how the sentencing
guidelines are being applied."

Departures from the guidelines will be reviewed for possible appeal by
the office of Solicitor General Theodore Olsen. A recently enacted law
makes it easier to lodge such appeals in an effort to discourage
judges from failing to apply the sentencing guidelines enacted by Congress.

Critics of the sentencing guidelines and advocates of judicial
autonomy, including the American Bar Association and Chief Justice
William H. Rehnquist, opposed the new law. In a letter to the Senate
Judiciary Committee last spring, the chief justice said it "would
seriously impair the ability of courts to impose just and reasonable
sentences."

But the whole point of the sentencing guidelines is to establish what
Congress -- the ultimate authority in such matters short of the
Constitution -- thinks those "just and reasonable sentences" should
be. The guidelines have their flaws, but they represent a practical
attempt to give meaning to the motto over the entrance to the Supreme
Court, "Equal Justice Under Law."

According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent body set
up by Congress to monitor implementation of the sentencing guidelines,
federal judges in 2001 departed from those guidelines about 35 percent
of the time. Prosecutors blessed about half of the departures because
defendants cooperated with the government. But the other half raises
serious questions about the equal application of the law. Attorney
General Ashcroft is on the right track in seeking explanation and, if
warranted, adjustment of such sentences.

The attorney general also should ask Congress to rethink sentencing
guidelines, such as differing penalties for possession of powder
cocaine and crack cocaine, that are widely acknowledged to do more
harm than good, and that undermine the effort to achieve similar
sentences for similar crimes.