Federal drug laws produce a labeling problem. When you hear the term "drug trafficker," you might consider Pablo Escobar or Walter White, but the reality is that under federal law, drug traffickers consist of people who purchase pseudo-ephedrine for their methamphetamine dealer; function as intermediary in a series of little deals; and even pick up a luggage for the wrong good friend. Thanks to conspiracy laws, everyone on the totem pole can be subject to the exact same severe compulsory minimum sentences.
To the men and ladies who prepared our federal drug laws in 1986, this may come as a surprise. According to Sen. Robert Byrd, cosponsor of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, the reason to connect five- and ten-year compulsory sentences to drug trafficking was to punish "the kingpins-- the masterminds who are really running these operations", and the mid-level dealerships.
Fast forward twenty-five years. Today, almost everybody convicted of a federal drug criminal activity is convicted of "drug trafficking", which more often than not leads to at least a 5- or ten-year obligatory jail sentence. That's a lot of time in federal jail for many individuals who are minor parts of drug trade, the vast bulk of whom are males and females of color.
This is the system that federal district Judge Mark Bennett sees every day. Judge Bennett sits on the district court in northern Iowa, and he deals with a lot of drug cases., I would have sent out 1,092 of my fellow residents to federal jail for obligatory minimum sentences varying from sixty months to life without the possibility of release.
The numbers can't convey the unreasonable disaster of all of it. This is how he describes a current drug trafficking case:
I just recently sentenced a group of more than twenty accused on meth trafficking conspiracy charges. Eighteen were 'tablet smurfers,' as federal prosecutors put it, suggesting their function amounted to routinely buying and providing cold medicine to meth cookers in exchange for very little, low-grade quantities to feed their extreme addictions. All of them dealt with necessary minimum sentences of sixty or 120 months.
There is information to suggest that Judge Bennett's experience is not uncharacteristic. In 2007, the U.S. Sentencing Commission put together significant data on drug and fracture sentencing. They found that in 2005, most of the lowest-level drug- and crack-trafficking offenders-- men and women referred to as "street-level dealers", "couriers/mules", and "renter/loader/lookout/ enabler/users"-- got five- or ten-year mandatory jail sentences. This is specifically true for crack-cocaine accused, most of whom are black; despite the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, offering a small quantity of fracture cocaine (28 grams) carries the exact same compulsory minimum sentence-- five years-- as offering 500 grams of powder cocaine.
This is the reality for which advocates of extreme federal drug laws need to account. We can not pretend that heavy sentences for women like Kemba Smith and guys like Jamel Dossie are the fluke errors of overboard laws. We need to confess that our sentencing of minor individuals in the drug trade to prison terms meant for the leaders of large drug companies-- as a typical event, not as an exception. As a result, we needlessly imprison lots of small wrongdoers for extended periods. Judge Bennett decries the human costs of these sentences:
If prolonged compulsory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug addicts in fact worked, one might be able to rationalize them. I have seen how they leave hundreds of thousands of young children parent less and thousands of aging, infirm and dying moms and dads childless.
Here, once again, we have proof that Judge Bennett is right: long compulsory sentences are unneeded for most drug offenders. In 2002 and 2003, Michigan and New York repealed obligatory sentences for drug wrongdoers and provided judges the power to enforce much shorter www.criminallawyerslasvegas.com/drug-conspiracy-defense-las-vegas sentences, probation, or drug treatment. The sky didn't fall, however criminal activity rates did. So did jail costs.
For decades, Judge Bennett has seen a system that doesn't make sense. He has seen mandatory laws written for the most serious, large-scale drug dealers applied to the men and women on the lowest rungs of the drug trade, and he has seen it occur a lot. We when pictured that serious necessary sentences would be utilized to handle the leaders of big drug operations. It's time our federal drug laws were fit to individuals that they truly target.
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