After the Roundup: Sentencing rules give prosecutors leverage
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On the December day that Arthur D. Brown was sentenced for conspiring to bring more than five kilograms of cocaine into the Pittsburgh area, he didn't plead for leniency from U.S. District Judge Donetta W. Ambrose. Asked if had something to say on his own behalf, he said only, "No."
It didn't much matter what he said, since his attorney and prosecutors had already negotiated for the 46-year-old drug dealer a 10-year prison term, which matches the mandatory minimum sentence for that amount of cocaine. If prosecutors had decided to file a motion invoking Mr. Brown's criminal past, which included a 2008 state court conviction for drug dealing, he would have faced an enhanced minimum sentence of 20-years.
"Considering what Mr. Brown could've been facing, because of his past criminal history, it seems to me to be a good deal for the defendant," said Judge Ambrose, before scolding Mr. Brown for failing to ever secure legal employment, and being "old enough to know better."
- Day 1: Effects of drug bust
- Incarceration hard on families
- Day 2: Curbing future street crime
- Mass arrests can be beneficial
- Day 3: A daughter's route to drugs
- Sentencing rules give leverage
The job of pronouncing sentence has historically fallen on judges. But in the world of federal drug prosecutions, like the ones stemming from the 2010 indictments of 42 people accused of having roles in a Mon Valley-based drug ring, judges often do little more than approve prison terms. The sentences are decided through a mix of calculation and negotiation involving rules that tend to put most of the power in the hands of prosecutors.
"Sentencing enhancements and mandatory minimums give prosecutors an enormous amount of leverage to get guilty pleas," said David N. Yellen, dean and professor of law at Loyola University Chicago, who was a U.S. House Judiciary Committee staffer when current drug sentencing law took effect in the late 1980s. That's efficient, he said, but can also unbalance the scales of justice, potentially pressuring innocent people to plead guilty and coercing cooperating defendants to exaggerate other conspirators' roles.
First Published January 3, 2012 12:00 am
