Judge raps mandatory sentencing

WASHINGTON — The 55-year prison sentence of marijuana dealer Weldon Angelos is a clear example that the federal mandatory sentencing program is not working, U.S. District Judge Paul Cassell told a House Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday.

Cassell, who sentenced Angelos to prison in 2004, was on a panel of witnesses that discussed problems with mandatory sentencing laws, including the case of a woman who served 11 years of a 15-year sentence for being involved with her former boyfriend's cocaine dealings.

"Mandatory minimum sentences mean one-size-fits-all injustice," Cassell said during the Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing examining mandatory sentencing laws. "Each offender who comes before a federal judge for sentencing deserves to have their individual facts and circumstances considered in determining a just sentence."

Cassell said the current set of mandatory minimum sentences are a "cookie-cutter approach to justice" that creates sentences "that can only be described as bizarre." He went on to explain that he had to sentence Angelos to such a long time in prison for carrying, but not using or displaying, a weapon in several marijuana deals.

Federal statutes require a court to issue a five-year sentence for a first-time drug dealer carrying a gun and 25 years for each additional instance. Angelos' three counts of gun possession produced the 55-year sentence, which Cassell called "unjust, cruel and even irrational."

He said Angelos' sentence went beyond what he would have received for hijacking an airplane, second-degree murder, kidnapping, rape and other crimes. He made the argument that when sentences for "actual violence inflicted on a victim is dwarfed by a sentence for carrying guns to several drug deals," it sends a message to victims that their "pain and suffering counts for less than some abstract 'war on drugs."'

Cassell also said it will cost taxpayers more than $1 million to keep Angelos in jail — money that could be used more effectively for extra law enforcement officers or prosecutors.

Serena Nunn, now a law clerk in Detroit, told the committee of the 11 years she spent in prison based on a connection to her former boyfriend's cocaine dealing. Then-President Bill Clinton reduced her 15-year sentence in July 2000 based on arguments that she, her lawyer, her sentencing judge and the governor of Minnesota made that the mandatory sentence that put her in jail was not just.