Judicial Conference testimony to House Judiciary Committee

Chief Judge Julie Carnes, chair of the Judicial Conference Committee on Criminal Law, yesterday told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism & Homeland Security that "as well-intended as the proponents of mandatory minimum legislation may have been, these kinds of sentencing statutes have created what the late Chief Justice Rehnquist aptly identified as 'unintended consequences.'" ( U.S. Courts’ press release )

Those statutes have become "blunt & inflexible tools that lack the ability to meaningfully distinguish between serious offenders and those who are substantially less culpable," she said.

In presenting her case on behalf of the Judicial Conference, which has consistently opposed mandatory minimum sentencing, she endeavored to explain why such statutes are "systematically flawed and rarely avoid undesirable outcomes." She concluded her testimony by attempting to provide the committee with some preliminary thoughts about approaches that Congress may begin to take to ameliorate the current situation and a specific recommendation on one statute that the Conference has made.

"A predecessor chair of the Criminal Law Committee of the Judicial Conference, the late and wise Senior Judge Vincent Broderick," she said, "summarized the conclusion that many reach concerning mandatory minimum sentences in 1993. What he said then still makes a great deal of sense today:

"I firmly believe that any reasonable person who exposes
himself or herself to this [mandatory minimum] system of sentencing, whether judge or politician, would come to the conclusion that such sentencing must be abandoned in favor
of a system based on principles of fairness & proportionality.
In our view, the Sentencing Commission is the appropriate institution to carry out this important task."

Chief Judge Julie Carnes’ Testimony (31 pp. PDF)