DOING JUSTICE

It is hard to pinpoint the exact moment in American history when we
decided that justice was too important to be left to the judges. But
it was a big mistake.

It was a mistake that is becoming more obvious to more people. One of
them is a man with an office on Salt Lake City's Main Street, someone
who not only has every reason to be worried about the issue, but also
has the power to do something about it.

Before U.S. District Judge Paul Cassell hands down the mandatory
minimum sentence that would send a formerly armed former pot dealer to
prison for, essentially, the rest of his life, he has made it clear
that he is not comfortable with the idea of being a highly paid,
highly educated rubber stamp. Especially when the predetermined action
he is being asked to take is so obviously both brainless and cruel.

Federal prosecutors want Weldon Angelos, a former record producer
convicted of carrying - not firing, not brandishing, just carrying - a
gun while selling a bunch of marijuana, put away for the next 63 years.

That's enough to ensure that Angelos, even though he is only 25 now,
could well die in prison. Die in prison, after spending decades not
only being supported by the taxpayers but also seeing fellow inmates
convicted of murder, rape, arson and hijacking at about the same time
being released well before him.

Before he sets aside all common sense, legal wisdom and humanity by
agreeing to be part of such an exercise in injustice, Cassell wants
prosecutors to return to his courtroom on Nov. 16 with some really
good reasons why he should not instead set aside the federal law
establishing what clearly is, to coin a phrase, cruel and unusual punishment.

That'll be some trick.

Mandatory minimum sentences are a major cause of the shame of the
American system of justice, the fact that we incarcerate, for
stunningly long periods of time, a far greater proportion of our
population than any other civilized nation. No less a personage than
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has made it clear that this
is neither justice nor wise use of the taxpayers' money. He thinks
those laws should be repealed, as does the American Bar
Association.

The prospects of that happening any time soon, however, are slim,
given the addiction of Congress and other legislative bodies to the
anti-drug drug and the pre-eminent fear of all politicians to be seen
as "soft on crime." Thus it is becoming increasingly clear that, if we
are to see justice done, it will have to be done by judges, by Paul
Cassell and his colleagues.

Which is, after all, supposed to be their job.