Gluttons for Punishment

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The Supreme Court's expansion of judicial sentencing discretion could provoke a dangerous congressional backlash

Last November, Weldon Angelos, a 24-year-old record company executive with no prior convictions, was sentenced to 55 years in federal prison for selling a pound and a half of marijuana to a government informant. The judge who imposed the sentence, Paul Cassell of the U.S. Court for the District of Utah, urged President Bush to commute it, calling it "unjust, cruel, and irrational."

The Supreme Court's recent decision restoring broad sentencing discretion to federal judges is expected to make this sort of situation, in which a judge agonizes over a draconian punishment he feels legally compelled to impose, less common. But the ruling, which made federal sentencing guidelines advisory rather than mandatory, does not help Angelos.

That's because his sentence was determined not by the guidelines but by statute. It is therefore perfectly constitutional under the Supreme Court's decision in U.S. v. Booker, which found that the guidelines violated the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury by lengthening sentences on the basis of facts determined by judges.

The ruling does not affect penalties prescribed by Congress for offenses that are admitted or proven to a jury, no matter how absurdly disproportionate the sentences are. In fact, one possible outcome of the decision is that we will see more such mandatory sentences, as tougher-than-thou members of Congress who thought judges were abusing what little discretion they had under the guidelines panic at the prospect of penalties determined by judicial whims.

The Angelos case suggests the dangers of that course. His 55-year sentence was dictated by a federal law that imposes extra punishment on people who commit felonies while carrying or using a gun: five years for the first offense and 25 years for each subsequent offense. Angelos, who completed three government-arranged marijuana sales, each involving about eight ounces, was convicted of having a pistol in an ankle holster during two of the sales; guns that police found in his home were the basis for a third conviction.

Angelos never used or even brandished his pistol, which he carried for self-protection. Yet as Judge Cassell noted, his punishment "is far in excess of the sentence imposed for such serious crimes as aircraft hijacking, second degree murder, espionage, kidnapping, aggravated assault, and rape."

If Angelos had been sentenced under the guidelines alone, the penalty range would have been roughly eight to 10 years. (Anticipating the Supreme Court's ruling in Booker, Cassell departed from the sentencing guidelines to give Angelos a one-day sentence for his other offenses.) If he had been convicted of the same offenses under Utah law, the prosecution estimated, Angelos would have ended up serving five to seven years.

Sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums were supposed to reduce unjust variations in punishment, making it more likely that similar defendants who committed similar crimes would receive similar penalties. But as this case shows, they can also cause unjust variations in punishment by making big sentencing differences hinge on which prosecutors (state or federal) bring charges and which charges they choose to bring.

Prosecutors initially told Angelos that if he pleaded guilty to marijuana distribution and one count of carrying a gun, they would recommend a sentence of 15 years. After he turned down that deal, they filed a new indictment with a total of 20 charges, including five gun offenses that by themselves exposed him to a mandatory minimum sentence of 105 years.

Mandatory minimums thus replace judicial discretion with prosecutorial discretion, which isn't necessarily better and is often worse, since prosecutors tend to aim for the most severe punishment they can get, whereas judges are supposed to take a more balanced approach. This does not mean there is no cause for concern about unconstrained judicial discretion, but Congress should also be aware of the injustice that results from giving prosecutors too much power, especially since the vast majority of federal cases are resolved by plea agreements.

The wisest approach at this point is to wait and see how the implications of Booker are worked out in the lower courts. While the sentencing guidelines are no longer mandatory, trial judges are still required to consider them, and appeals courts will be reviewing their sentencing decisions for "reasonableness."

Given the perils of excessively rigid sentencing rules, Congress should hesitate before creating new mandatory minimums. Instead it should revisit laws under which selling someone pot can trigger a more severe penalty than killing him.

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason and the author of For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health (Free Press) and Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use (Tarcher/Putnam).

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Gluttons for Punishment

By Jacob Sullum, Reason. Posted January 17, 2005.
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I'm confident that a person who goes to jail for 15 years (the proposed plea bargain above) for selling pot is going to come out of jail a worse person than when they went in; isn't jail supposed to protect the populace until a criminal is rehabilitated, rather than be a place of punishment and training for further crime?

I guess it's a good thing for the US government that felons can't vote.
 
heh, just think .. You could make more cash killing people for other people and if you get caught you goto jail for less time than selling a Pound of weed..
LOL
 
His 55-year sentence was dictated by a federal law that imposes extra punishment on people who commit felonies while carrying or using a gun: five years for the first offense and 25 years for each subsequent offense. Angelos, who completed three government-arranged marijuana sales, each involving about eight ounces, was convicted of having a pistol in an ankle holster during two of the sales; guns that police found in his home were the basis for a third conviction.

This guy obviously wasn't your average long haired, peace-symbol toting hippy. He was slanging a few thousand dollars worth of illicit substances with a gun strapped to his ankle on multiple occasions.

Sorry, but if you wanna take that risk you better be willing to pay the consequences. Guns and illegal activity DO NOT MIX. The guy's a fucking idiot, and has no one but himself to blame.
 
If I was selling that large amount of drugs, I would be carrying a gun to.
ChemicalBeauty I think your the idiot here, not him. When selling drugs, especially in large quantities, you meet pretty sketchy people, and its good to have a gun nearby to know you have some kind of safety(you cant rely on the cops now can you). Guns and illegal activity go hand in hand.
55 Years for this is ridiculous, the people responsible for giving him such a harsh sentence should be shot.
 
ChemicalBeauty said:
This guy obviously wasn't your average long haired, peace-symbol toting hippy. He was slanging a few thousand dollars worth of illicit substances with a gun strapped to his ankle on multiple occasions.

Sorry, but if you wanna take that risk you better be willing to pay the consequences. Guns and illegal activity DO NOT MIX. The guy's a fucking idiot, and I don't pity him one bit.

Sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll go together badly too.
8)
 
Crazeee said:
The Angelos case suggests the dangers of that course. His 55-year sentence was dictated by a federal law that imposes extra punishment on people who commit felonies while carrying or using a gun: five years for the first offense and 25 years for each subsequent offense.

I can't believe I didn't pick on this in my first post.

I can understand it being a greater crime to commit a felony while using a gun, but hot damn! While carrying a gun? Isn't the "right to bear arms" on some important document in America? Maybe that right becomes null and void upon committing a felony, and from the look of those sentencing guidelines, the "right against cruel and unusual punishment" does also.

I think a person should get kicked in the ass for using guns in their crimes, but not if they're simply carrying them inconspicuously in case their business partners decide to pull a gun themselves. People shouldn't be further punished for the paranoia created by guns being legal to bear.
 
Weird country you folks have there. I guess Dubya's looking forward to those new Supreme Court appointments he'll be makin'...

Seriously, mandatory sentencing is unjust. The trialled it in a state in Australia until the general populace and the judges started to realise what a mess it was.
 
hashish2020 said:
Sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll go together badly too.
8)

Feel free to make comments that people can comprehend as being somewhat relevant to the discussion. |I didn't say there isn't obviously a correlation between illegal activity and guns. I'm saying that people who engage in black markets and are willing to use force to secure their assets aren't on the side of the law that I'm willing to defend. And unless you carry a gun on yourself at all times and don't live in a city densly populated by street-traffic (and trade) I'd assume you don't either.

You wanna break the law and risk getting caught and ruining your own life? Fine. You wanna engage in illegal activity with weapons "just in case" and put other people in danger for your greed? I hope they send your fucking ass up the river! :D
 
"I didn't say there isn't obviously a correlation between illegal activity and guns. I'm saying that people who engage in black markets and are willing to use force to secure their assets aren't on the side of the law that I'm willing to defend."

Obviously you missed the fact that he didn't USE the gun.

ChemicalBeauty said:
This guy obviously wasn't your average long haired, peace-symbol toting hippy. He was slanging a few thousand dollars worth of illicit substances with a gun strapped to his ankle on multiple occasions.

Sorry, but if you wanna take that risk you better be willing to pay the consequences. Guns and illegal activity DO NOT MIX. The guy's a fucking idiot, and I don't pity him one bit.

You disgust me. Try being locked up for any significant amount of time. It might give you a little bit of perspective.

The mods of this forum should be proud of me as I am restraining myself a LOT here.
 
I have personally known many MARIJUANA higher ups that carry guns around on big deals. Do the math, if he was selling 8 ounces at a time at $300 an ounce. Thats almost $2,500 a deal. Find me a drug dealer that deals in quantities of any drug over $1,000 without wearing a gun... i gaurantee that dealer is not in business anymore :P

Ok off on another tangent, I have personally known many business men/women to carry around gun(s) in their briefcases. Why? Well would you want to walk down a bad part of the city with thousands of dollars worth of stocks in your briefcase and not be armed. How bout this, would you like to walk down the bad part of the city in a nice suit and a nice briefcase with NO cash on you? I sure as fuck wouldn't.

The guy got screwed by the system, suck for him but he did. It is a good law and is there for a reason. It's there for people commiting real felony's with guns (robberies for example).

I think the issue here is why is pot still illegal? Or if we can't take it that far why can you get charged a felony for marijuana. It's not right... It works in other countries, including our older brother, so why can't it work here?

Also I agree with the poster that said he will probably come out as a worse criminal than when he went in. I believe it was the movie blow: "I went in with a bachelor's in pot and came out with a masters in cocaine" or something like that.
 
Oh, and why don't you go to downtown seattle, or a shady Central District type area, and tell the welfare mom's and dad's that YOU think it's 'ok' that all the crack dealers CARRY FIREARMS WITH THEM whilst making their sales, "just in case" something goes wrong, and that the fact that these parents won't let their children OUTSIDE OF THEIR HOMES without supervision is ok, too. Cause, you know, getting an actual JOB is beneath them [people who feel it's necessary to make money illegally and use guns to facilitate it] and it's so much easier to just live off the land the rest of us provide and work hard and pay for. They have to get ahead of the REST OF US and jeopardize the well-being of OTHERS to make THEMSELVES MORE MONEY.

Don't get me wrong, I think most illegal drugs should be legal. But that's not the point. They ARE illegal. And engaging in activity that you KNOW may be dangerous, simply so you can make MORE money, while endangering people who ARE playing by the rules, isn't your right. Now, fuck off. :D
 
Please elaborate, as to why you think it's "ok" for drug dealers to carry guns and put the lives of innocent people in danger by being in highly volatile situations with firearms.

A little poetic justice would occur if you were to have someone close to you accidentally get shot in a drug deal gone bad. Maybe your sister or your child. I bet you'd be singing a different tune then, jackass.

I've known (like, back in High School) many people who did illict things WITHOUT the need for violence or firearms. If your couple thousand dollars worth of weed is worthing KILLING or DYING over, you're in a sorry state of mind, pal. And you deserve what you get :D
 
ChemicalBeauty said:
Please elaborate, as to why you think it's "ok" for drug dealers to carry guns and put the lives of innocent people in danger by being in highly volatile situations with firearms.

<snip> If your couple thousand dollars worth of weed is worthing KILLING over, you're in a sorry state of mind, pal. And you deserve what you get :D <snip>

It's a little bit like the Cold War. These guys bring their firearms because they know the other guys will very likely have firearms. The vast majority of them don't want to shoot their guns, and their guns likely remain hidden to avoid flaring up a situation. They carry guns to avoid getting shot themselves, because if someone will rip you off, then they might just shoot you too so you can't come after them later.

The person to blame for innocent bystanders being shot is the one who pulls their gun. Should a man be sent to jail for carrying a gun (fully legal) while walking through the bad part of town? Because he's in a situation where he might need to use a gun, should he be punished for being prepared?

I dislike guns a lot. I think it's ridiculous to put so much instantaneous power in a person's hands with no real benefit. Guns are quite legal in America however, and I don't think it's fair to send a guy to jail for more time than murder, just because he had a concealed weapon that he never used. In a country where anyone might have a gun, I think it's ok for drug dealers to have an unused and concealed gun. If they initiate gun use, then fuck them up the arse, but not before.

It'd be really nice if everyone could be happy and prance around a maypole while dealing drugs, but that's not the case, and the guy in the story above was sent to jail for a ridiculous amount of time largely for being cautious and responding to the prevalence of firearms. Chemical Beauty, can we at least agree that his sentence is far too great?
 
Yes, getting 55 years having no previous criminal history for possessing a gun with 1 1/2 pounds of weed is just a tad bit fucking extreme. This being a federal sentence where he will serve 85 percent of the time. The average time *served in this country for homicide is 9 years.


I am glad to see the sentencing guidelines struck down finally by the supreme court. I served time with tons of people who plead guilty to a charge and then had the judge add enhancements to their sentence where they had to face between 2 and 15 years longer than the charge originally showed.
 
FUTURAmike said:
"Obviously you missed the fact that he didn't USE the gun.

Dude. [edit]

How do you define "use", Einstein? If he actually fires it? If he brandishes it? If he just holds it in his hand, is that "use"? What if he purposefuly had it in his ankle so that the buyers would see it and get intimidated by it? Is that "use" according to you, [edit]? Get real for a minute. Subjective terms like "use the gun" have no place in law, imo. Possesion is an objective term, you either ARE or you AREN'T possesing something. "Using", fuck, could mean anything. I promise you a cop has NEVER fired his gun at me, but it's definately had an effect on my psyche seeing it sitting in his holster and has effected the way I act around them. I know who will ultimately (most likely) win, in a confrontation between myself and a police officer.
 
PityTheFool said:
Chemical Beauty, can we at least agree that his sentence is far too great?

Seeing as how no one actually did get hurt, yes, I think it's a harsh sentence. 5-10yrs would probably suffice. But it's just too sensitive of an issue to allow ANY leeway. It's simple, if you commit FELONIOUS acts with WEAPONS you will. be. fucked. If guns illegally carried, concealed, owned or obtained are serious offenses, comitting a FELONY while POSSESSING one has somewhat of a synergistic effect, and rightly so. Now, if the guy was at his own home, you might have an argument.

Do I think everything he did should be legal? Yes (assuming he was legally in possession of the gun). But KNOWING that what he was doing was illegal, shady shit, and knowing that he might ACTUALLY have to shoot or be shot (or miss and kill the neighbor girl) so that he can make MORE money and NOT have to pay taxes? You people defending this guy need to pop back into reality. Don't any of you feel the need to protect the unassuming/innocent at all? Or it's just all about: "Yeah! Fuck the man, yo! Slang dat shit, G! More rights and lighter sentences for people knowingly engaging in high-risk, illegal behaviour while in possession of firearms!"? 8)
 
I could debate with you with paragraph upon paragraph of logic and reason, but it's clear to me that it would change nothing. How do I know? Because of the number of times you've called me motherfucker. I refuse to debate any issue with someone like you, someone who can't speak with a little civility. And you're simply irrational to boot. I don't feel the need to explain why I think this because I don't feel like being barraged with much more stupidity and name calling.

I was locked up for a year. You simply do not understand what you are commenting on.

plur
 
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