AN OMINOUS ATTACK ON JUDGES

House Republicans, aided by the Bush Justice Department, are trying to
severely curtail federal judges' discretion in sentencing. Provisions
buried in a popular bill to expand the Amber Alert system for notifying the
public about abducted children would drastically narrow judges' flexibility
to impose sentences below the range of federal guidelines to avoid an
unjust result, not just in child kidnapping cases but across the board. The
flexibility of judges to impose harsher sentences would be untouched.

While judges would still have some authority to order more lenient
sentences in certain circumstances, Representative Tom Feeney, the Florida
Republican who sponsored this misguided proposal, included provisions that
would require the Justice Department to report to Congress practically
every time a judge did so. This is a brazen attempt to intimidate judges,
and it cannot be justified by Congress's unchallenged responsibility to
exercise oversight over the criminal justice system.

If Congress wants to further curtail the already sharply restricted
discretion federal judges have in sentencing, it should do so only after a
thoughtful process that allows public hearings and the input of criminal
justice experts, including judges.

A House-Senate conference on this bill has been scheduled for tomorrow. The
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Orrin Hatch, who knows better than to
unduly limit judicial sentencing authority, should see that the
ill-conceived sentencing provisions are omitted.