HARSH SENTENCING

From upholding the death penalty to narrowing the Fourth Amendment
protections against illegal searches, Supreme Court Chief Justice William
Rehnquist has long championed the interests of law enforcement. So Congress
should listen hard to his warning that it has gone too far in forcing
judges to impose long and harsh sentences.

In a year-end report on the courts, Rehnquist condemned Congress for
intruding on federal judges' power to use discretion in sentencing. Last
year, Congress passed a law ordering the Justice Department to notify it of
judges who hand down lighter sentences than sentencing guidelines demand. ...

Rehnquist doesn't label the law for what it is: the creation of a black
list that Congress can use to punish judges it considers too liberal. But
his comment was extraordinary nonetheless: The law, he wrote, would "appear
to be an unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate individual
judges in the performance of their judicial duties." ...

Federal sentencing guidelines should be precisely that _ guidelines. Some
cases with reduced sentences have been the result of plea bargains with the
prosecutors' approval. There are also times when it's appropriate to reduce
a sentence, based on the specific factors in a case. Only a judge, not a
rigid matrix, can make that determination. ...