FEDERAL JUDGE'S PROTEST

Congressional Meddlers Dash Judicial Discretion

It wasn't the pay, although federal judges make less than a plate
umpire in the major leagues.

No, after 13 years of making calls on matters of far more gravity than
the camber of a 3-2 forkball, U.S. District Judge John S. Martin last
week said he's hanging up his robe and won't return to the federal
bench. Small wonder. At least umpires get to call them the way they
see them.

Congress has stripped federal judges of almost all discretion to
decide appropriate sentences in criminal cases. In an essay published
by The New York Times last week, Martin said he is fed up with
Congressional meddling that forces judges to give unjust 30-, 40- and
50-year prison sentences to low-level, non-violent felons "who society
failed at every step."

The last straw for Martin, a 68-year-old jurist from the Southern
District of New York, came after President Bush signed new legislation
April 30 dictating the sentences federal judges must impose for
drug-related offenses. Congressional conservatives, determined to show
constituents they're winning the "war on drugs," didn't like the fact
that federal judges disregarded earlier sentencing guidelines in 18
percent of cases. The new law closes that small window of judicial
discretion.

"Every sentence imposed affects a human life and, in most cases, the
lives of several innocent family members who suffer as a result of a
defendant's incarceration," Martin wrote in the Times essay. "For a
judge to be deprived of the ability to consider all of the factors
that go into formulating a just sentence is completely at odds with
the sentencing philosophy that has been a hallmark of the American
system of justice."

Martin isn't alone when he lashes out at Congress for menacing the
constitutional separation of powers. Even conservative jurists, among
them Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the U.S. Supreme Court, also
object to legislatively mandated minimum sentences and Congressional
pressure on judges to follow sentencing guidelines.

Indeed, the nation's founders intended that an independent federal
judiciary would check the intemperance of the legislative and
executive branches of government. One has to look no further than the
decades-old War on Drugs for an example of intemperance desperately in
need of judicial restraint.

The national drug problem persists because Congress
and the White House refuse to treat drug use as a
health problem. Instead, ill-conceived drug laws
encourage black market expansion and make every user a
criminal subject to arrest. Inflexible mandatory
sentencing creates a huge opportunity for injustice,
as suggested in a report to Congress by the U.S.
Sentencing Commission: "Black defendants made up 30
percent of those subject to five-year mandatory
sentences in 1999, 43 percent to 10-year mandatory
sentences, 60 percent to 20-year mandatory sentences
and 80 percent to mandatory life in prison."

By not allowing federal judges to use their legal acumen and sense of
fairness to decide appropriate punishment for criminal offenses,
Congress usurps the founders' intended role of the judiciary,
overloads federal prisons and robs the American justice system of fair
proportion in fitting punishment to crime. Small wonder Martin no
longer finds his $154,700 a year salary worth the anguish.