Holder Gives Prosecutors Charging, Sentencing Flexiblity; ABA Decries Mandatory Minimums
A memo issued last week by attorney general Eric Holder to prosecutors issued new guidelines giving prosecutors more flexibility in charging decisions and sentencing recommendations, saying that “equal justice depends on individualized justice.”
The memo (PDF provided by Sentencing Law and Policy) was submitted to the U.S. Sentencing Commission for its Washington hearing today, the Blog of Legal Times reported. Prior memos from past attorneys general in the Bush administration required prosecutors to advocate sentences within the advisory guidelines and charge the most serious offenses; Holder’s memo gives prosecutors some leeway and urges them to be mindful that race, gender or sexual orientation aren’t given unjustified consideration.
“This new policy recognizes the reality of post-Booker sentencing and the need for an appropriate balance of consistency and flexibility to maximize the crime-fighting impact of federal law enforcement,” Sally Quillian Yates, a U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, in prepared testimony (PDF) on behalf of the Justice Department. (The 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling U.S. v. Booker made then-mandatory minimum sentences advisory.)
Also at today’s sentencing hearing, James E. Felman, co-chair of the ABA Criminal Justice Committee on Sentencing, railed against mandatory minimum sentences in prepared testimony (PDF), calling them the “antithesis of rational sentencing policy.”
In his testimony, he pointed out that the prison rate in the United States is between five and eight times greater than Western European countries and 12 times higher than in Japan, and that the average federal sentence has tripled in length since mandatory minimums first appeared 25 years ago.
