WHERE IS THE SO-CALLED 'SAFETY VALVE' MEASURE?

My brother was arrested on a first-time drug offense in March of 1996.
He received a 188-month sentence, when the Assistant U.S. Attorney
told him if he made him waste his time and take him to trial, he would
make sure my brother got more prison time than the other three
defendants in the case, including the kingpin who sold to my brother.

Mandatory minimums are set up as a jobs program for the government and
to help politicians get elected. They also provide slave labor to the
Bureau of Prisons to make goods for the government and put private
companies out of business, at a cost of over $25,000 a year for each
nonviolent inmate like my brother.

(U.S. Attorney for Guam and the CNMI Leonardo) Rapadas ignores the
fact that they routinely give the best plea bargains to the most
hardened criminals to keep the money train going and to keep the most
docile persons in prison. If you go to a federal prison, the guards
don't carry a weapon. If Rapadas was telling the truth that they were
keeping violent offenders off the street, don't you think the keepers
of all these violent criminals would carry weapons?

On the safety valve issue, you might check and see how many persons
convicted it has been applied to. I haven't heard of one. It seems
like my brother, a first-time offender, a good father, would have been
eligible, but that's just something to make them look fair and honest
when the opposite is true.

Bryan Wiser

Mesquite, Texas