COURT DECISION ON SENTENCING WELCOME ONE

Federal sentencing guidelines have created confusion and injustice in
some cases and the U.S. Supreme Court finally stepped in to try to
correct the imbalance the other day. While it didn't entirely toss
them out, it significantly altered their priority.

The guidelines are the result of a period in the 1980's when the
nation was plagued by a rapid growth in crime. "Bleeding heart"
federal judges were accused of contributing to the problem by not
being "tough on crime." Whether the reality matched the perception is
debatable, but there was a demand for something to be done about the
situation.

So Congress created the U.S. Sentencing Commission to set up
sentencing guidelines for various crimes. The guidelines turned out to
be more rigid than necessary, setting up a mandatory floor for
sentencing and making it difficult to revise a sentence downward based
on mitigating circumstances. By 1997 a survey of federal judges found
that two-thirds of them found the guidelines unnecessary and many
believed they were downright harmful to the administration of justice.

The U.S. Supreme Court has now ruled that the sentencing guidelines
could violate the guarantee of trial by jury because sentences could
be enhanced -- increased -- by a judge based on factors the jury
hadn't considered or ruled upon.

The high court ruled 5-4 that federal judges are no longer bound by
the "guidelines," which had in reality become mandatory in their
application. Instead of eliminating the guideline system, however, a
separate 5-4 majority ruled that the guidelines would henceforth be
"effectively advisory," giving judges more discretion to depart from
them based on individual circumstances.

The decision does not impact certain "mandatory minimum" sentences
Congress enacted as part of a get-tough-on-drugs campaign in the late
1980's. Those laws have cost taxpayers huge sums of money to build
prisons and to incarcerate drug offenders while doing little or
nothing to reduce illicit drug use. They also ought to be changed, but
that will be up to Congress.

A one-size-fits-all approach rarely works, especially when it comes to
subjective decisions about the right amount of justice to mete out to
offenders. Some will deserve the harshest sentences possible, but
there may be hope for others if they are given a chance. That is why
we have judges and juries.

The justice system is not perfect, of course. There will be
misjudgments that result in injustice when there are no mandatory
sentences. But the same is true in a rigid system like the one that
developed under the federal sentencing guidelines. In the end, we must
accept the subjectivity of the justice system and hope it works in the
great majority of cases.