ASHCROFT, CONSERVATIVE JUDGES DIFFER ON SENTENCING

WASHINGTON - A debate over appropriate punishments for federal crimes and
how prosecutors should pursue cases has made unlikely foes of conservative
judges and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

When similar cases are handled differently, a drug peddler in San Diego
might get 12 months in jail while one in Texas is sent away for six years.

Ashcroft says he wants more uniformity, but judges say his ideas for
achieving that will harm a system already burdened by more cases than it
can handle.

Last week, federal judges urged repeal of a law Ashcroft sought earlier
this year making it more difficult for them to impose lighter sentences
than specified in guidelines approved by Congress more than 15 years ago.

The Judicial Conference of the United States, headed by conservative Chief
Justice William H. Rehnquist, voted unanimously to support overturning the
law, which also requires reports to Congress on any judge who departs from
the sentencing guidelines.

In another development last week, Ashcroft limited the freedom of
prosecutors to strike plea bargains in criminal cases. He said that U.S.
attorneys must seek the toughest punishment possible in nearly all cases,
using plea bargains only in special situations. Currently, less than 5
percent of federal cases go to trial.

"If there were no guilty pleas, the courts could work 365 days a year, 24
hours a day and not try all the cases," said senior U.S. District Judge
Neal Biggers Jr. of Oxford, Miss., named to the bench in 1984 by President
Ronald Reagan.

As for departing from the guidelines, judges are not giving out light
sentences willy-nilly, Biggers said. It's prosecutors who request lighter
sentences in plea bargains to reward cooperative defendants, he added.

The guidelines set a range of possible prison terms, usually leading to
sentences much shorter than the maximum.

In addition, for some crimes Congress has established mandatory minimum
prison sentences, which have particularly angered some judges.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a moderate conservative named to
the bench by Reagan, told lawyers last month that mandatory minimum
sentences should be abolished and that guidelines should be revised downward.

"Our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too
long," Kennedy said in remarks to the American Bar Association.