55-year sentence for first-timer appealed

DENVER — By the time Weldon Angelos is released from prison on a first-time federal drug conviction, he will be 80 years old.

On Tuesday, a defense attorney and a University of Utah law professor told the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that Angelos' 55-year sentence under a minimum-mandatory law mandated by Congress was a clear case of cruel and unusual punishment.

Angelos, an aspiring rap producer and young father, was convicted by a federal jury last year of selling small amounts of marijuana to an undercover officer. On two of those occasions, Angelos had a firearm in his possession.

In November of last year, U.S. District Judge Paul Cassell said he was forced by federal guidelines to sentence Angelos to 55 years. For similar behavior, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has said such a crime deserves less than six years' prison time.

Angelos appealed to overturn the sentence or to send the case back to the trial court in Salt Lake City for a new trial without evidence they said was seized under a defective warrant.

The case has sparked a nationwide debate over the potential abuse of minimum-mandatory laws. Voicing his concern over what he saw was a clear Eighth Amendment violation of cruel and unusual punishment, Cassell wrote an opinion calling for a review of the law.

Cassell's call was heard, and last June four former U.S. attorneys general, former FBI director William Sessions and other former prosecutors and judges, including 150 ex-Justice Department officials, filed a "friend of the court' brief with the 10th Circuit calling Angelos' " sentence a constitutional violation of the Eighth and 14th amendments.

During oral arguments Tuesday on Angelos' appeal, assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Lund argued that precedent established by various courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have upheld lifetime sentences as constitutional in cases where repeat offenders have committed lesser crimes, such as burglary or credit card fraud. Many of those sentences have taken place under state three-strike statutes.

Bottom line, Lund said, even if a judge does not like the sentenced mandated by Congress, he or she is bound by the law to follow it.

But appellate senior judge Stephen Anderson of Salt Lake City wondered if perhaps Congress used a "broad brush" in creating a law that would send a first-time drug offender to prison for 55 years.