Federal drug laws develop a labeling problem. When you hear the term "drug trafficker," you might think of Pablo Escobar or Walter White, but the truth is that under federal law, drug traffickers include people who purchase pseudo-ephedrine for their methamphetamine dealership; act as intermediary in a series of little deals; and even pick up a travel suitcase for the wrong friend. Thanks to conspiracy laws, everybody on the totem pole can be subject to the same serious obligatory minimum sentences.
To the men and females who prepared our federal drug laws in 1986, this might come as a surprise. According to Sen. Robert Byrd, cosponsor of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, the factor to attach 5- and ten-year obligatory sentences to drug trafficking was to penalize "the kingpins-- the masterminds who are truly running these operations", and the mid-level dealers.
Fast forward twenty-five years. Today, nearly everyone founded guilty of a federal drug criminal offense is convicted of "drug trafficking", which usually results in at least a 5- or ten-year obligatory jail sentence. That's a lot of time in federal prison for lots of people who are minor parts of drug trade, the vast bulk of whom are men and women of color.
This is the system that federal district Judge Mark Bennett sees every day. Judge Bennett sits on the district court in northern Iowa, and he deals with a lot of drug cases., I would have sent out 1,092 of my fellow residents to federal prison for necessary minimum sentences ranging from sixty months to life without the possibility of release.
The numbers can't communicate the absurd catastrophe of it all. This is how he explains a recent drug trafficking case:
I www.criminallawyerslasvegas.com/drug-conspiracy-defense-las-vegas recently sentenced a group of more than twenty offenders on meth trafficking conspiracy charges. Eighteen were 'pill smurfers,' as federal district attorneys put it, implying their function amounted to regularly purchasing and delivering cold medication to meth cookers in exchange for very little, low-grade quantities to feed their serious dependencies. All of them faced compulsory minimum sentences of sixty or 120 months.
They discovered that in 2005, the bulk of the lowest-level cocaine- and crack-trafficking accused-- guys and ladies explained as "street-level dealerships", "couriers/mules", and "renter/loader/lookout/ enabler/users"-- received 5- or ten-year mandatory prison sentences. This is particularly real for crack-cocaine defendants, most of whom are black; in spite of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, offering a small quantity of crack drug (28 grams) brings the same obligatory minimum sentence-- 5 years-- as offering 500 grams of powder cocaine.
This is the reality for which proponents of serious federal drug laws should account. We need to admit that our sentencing of minor individuals in the drug trade to jail terms indicated for the leaders of big drug organizations-- as a common incident, not as an exception.
If lengthy obligatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug addicts really worked, one might be able to rationalize them. I have seen how they leave hundreds of thousands of young kids parent less and thousands of aging, infirm and passing away parents childless.
Here, again, we have proof that Judge Bennett is ideal: long compulsory sentences are unneeded for most drug offenders. In 2002 and 2003, Michigan and New York repealed obligatory sentences for drug culprits and provided judges the power to enforce much shorter sentences, probation, or drug treatment.
For years, Judge Bennett has actually seen a system that does not make good sense. He has actually seen mandatory laws written for the most serious, large-scale drug dealers applied to the men and women on the lowest rungs of the drug trade, and he has seen it occur a lot. We when thought of that extreme compulsory sentences would be utilized to handle the leaders of big drug operations. It's time our federal drug laws were fit to individuals that they actually target.
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