The U.S. Sentencing Commission helped send more people to
prison for longer terms. A shame it was created to address a nonexistent
crisis. Here's how the Supreme Court got misled.
More than 30 years ago, Congress identified what it said was a grave
threat to the American promise of equal justice for all: Federal judges
were giving wildly different punishments to defendants who had committed
the same crimes.
The worries were many. Some lawmakers feared lenient judges were
giving criminals too little time in prison. Others suspected
African-American defendants were being unfairly sentenced to steeper
prison terms than white defendants.
In 1984, Congress created the U.S. Sentencing Commission with
remarkable bipartisan support. The commission would set firm punishment
rules, called “guidelines,” for every offense. The measure, signed by
President Ronald Reagan, largely stripped federal judges of their
sentencing powers; they were now to use a chart to decide penalties for
each conviction, with few exceptions.
Five years later, a legal challenge to the sentencing commission wound up before the U.S. Supreme Court. In a case titled Mistretta v. U.S., the court was asked to consider whether Congress had overreached by taking on what seemed to be a role for the judiciary. In an 8-1 decision,
the justices determined that the sentencing commission was
constitutional. And they took care to say that the commission was also
needed — to end the widespread and “shameful” sentencing disparities
produced by the biases of individual judges.
Mistretta was a momentous decision, but it’s now clear the high court relied on evidence that was flimsy and even flat-out wrong.
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Source: ProPublica
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