SUPREME COURT JUSTICE CONCERNED ABOUT MANDATORY SENTENCES

MONTEREY, Calif. - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said Wednesday
that sentencing guidelines were never meant to become mandatory sentences,
and that judges should be given discretion when sending criminals to jail.

``Mandatory minimum sentences say no exceptions: Five years is five
years,'' Breyer said. ``That's not how the guidelines are supposed to
work.'' Breyer was a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission from 1985 to
1989, developing federal sentencing and parole guidelines adopted by Congress.

Conceived as a middle ground between mandatory sentences and complete
indeterminate sentencing, a Senate report on the sentencing guidelines
emphasized the need to curtail judicial sentencing discretion, but stressed
that the guidelines were not intended to be imposed ``in a mechanistic
fashion.''

But since then, Congress and state lawmakers have continued to adopt
mandatory minimum sentence statutes, requiring judges to sentence convicted
criminals to defined periods.

These days, for example, federal law requires anyone convicted of
possessing 1 gram of LSD or 100 marijuana plants to spend five years in
prison without parole. Anyone caught with a weapon who has been convicted
of a federal crime faces 15 years in prison.

Many lawmakers say the mandatory minimums remove the chance of biased
decisions by judges, and make the judicial system more fair.

But Breyer told federal prosecutors and judges from throughout the West
gathered at the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference that those guidelines
gave judges discretion to decide their own sentences if they can explain
why it isn't a typical case.

U.S. District Judge John Coughenour from western Washington told colleagues
at the conference that federal judges should speak out more against the
mandatory sentences.

``Some of the mandatory minimums are, and I choose the word carefully,
obscene,'' he said. ``Most people don't understand the problem we're
dealing with.''