REBUTTAL
Mandatory sentences are dehumanizing

In a recent column, Delaware Attorney General M. Jane Brady appeared to suggest that the mandatory minimum sentence laws of this state do not apply to first offenders (although they do) and do not apply to non-violent offenders (although they do).

These are bad laws, denounced by justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, Delaware Chief Justice E. Norman Veasey before his recent retirement, the American Bar Association, the Delaware State Bar Association and other thoughtful jurists in Delaware and this country.

The News Journal editorial she attacked actually mirrored hundreds of editorials across the nation, all calling for a return to the traditional power of the judiciary to select appropriate sentences after hearing all the facts in each case.

For example, Judge Henry du Pont Ridgley noted the blatant injustice in a case before him in Superior Court involving a somewhat mentally retarded young woman with no previous criminal record, who was persuaded by her boyfriend to bring a package of cocaine into Delaware. The boyfriend was never apprehended, but she was arrested and convicted. The judge, against his better judgment, was forced by mandatory minimum sentence laws to send her, a non-violent first offender, to prison for 15 years.

The comprehensive review of sentencing laws in Delaware last year was fought like a tigress by the attorney general and by her staff. The advance that was achieved, resulting in saving 300 beds in our prisons, was a compromise after weeks of heated negotiations. The compromise bill included salutary provisions Brady initially opposed.

Brady is now taking credit for changes she originally opposed. What the attorney general is really telling us in her misleading article is that her office has largely avoided using these bad laws in the case of non-violent first offenders. But she cannot tell us these laws have never been applied, and she cannot assure us they will not be used in the future.

Draconian threat

And do the statistics treat mere drug possession as a violent crime? This practice is permitted by our statutes, although it presents a distorted view of the prison population. Further, her prosecutors can always use the threat of these Draconian punishments to push defendants into unwarranted pleas of guilty to lesser offenses.

These laws deprive judges of their traditional discretion to make the punishment fit the crime, and instead force them into injustices.

Mandatory minimum sentence laws in effect give the traditional role of sentencing judge to her prosecutors, so they are both prosecutors and judges, a corruption of the rule of law. The prosecutors, by choosing the charge from among a cafeteria of selections, can determine the fate of the defendant.

Brady's minions in the General Assembly last month killed proposed legislation to repeal mandatory minimum sentences by preventing it from ever coming to a vote, although it had some 20 sponsors from both parties.

When someone violates the drug laws, that individual should be subject to prosecution as an individual. And if convicted, he or she should have a sentence determined as an individual, not as part of a preselected punishment established before the case was ever heard.

Mandatory sentencing laws dehumanize people. The judge ought to have the obligation to determine if the individual should go to jail or be subject to treatment. The judge, based on the facts of the individual case, should establish requirements for education, sobriety and curfew appropriate on an individual basis. A fixed sentence regardless of the facts of the case is not worthy of our society.

Delaware's judiciary has been identified by the National Chamber of Commerce as the finest in the United States. Let us return the traditional power of sentencing to it by repealing these odious laws.

Edmund N. (Ned) Carpenter II, of Centreville, is a lawyer.

Mandatory sentences hold the violent, not first offenders (7/3/04)
The News Journal, Rebutal by M. Jane Brady

Legislature should give back judges' power to sentence (6/24/04)
The News Journal, editorial