Re: Another Motivation for the CDA (Federal Sentencing Guid

[Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>]

At 07:33 PM 3/8/96 -0800, jamesd wrote:
>Also he did not steal the pizza.  He destroyed it in the course of 
>intimidating some kids who were eating pizza.
>
>In theory one would expect the law to have this unjust effect, 
>but in practice most of the poster boys that people give as 
>examples of the injustice of this law are folk that one would 
>like to see taken behind a barn and shot out of hand.

The pizza guy was a thug, but twice as many third-strikers got
their third strike for marijuana as for all violent crimes combined.
I assume most of these had large quantities, possibly intended for sale,
and a number of them had real crimes as their previous felonies
rather than Prohibition-related offenses.  But you can get legally
serious quantities of marijuana by just growing a couple of plants.

>Perhaps the prosecutors are exercising prosecutorial discretion?

Not much - Government Radio said tonight that they're not allowed to
plea-bargain third strike felonies down to misdemeanors.  The LA public
defender's office is absolutely swamped, partly because third-strike
cases are supposed to get diligent support, and partly because they
have to go to trial rather than plea-bargaining a guilty, which is less work.
The county jails are also having serious crowding problems, because
prospective third-strikers are being kept in them pending trial
to avoid risk of flight, so non-third-strike jailees are getting out
early (especially drug violators.)

And the guys who just got busted for having fertilizer, diesel oil,
and drugs on their farm had a whole three ounces of marijuana and
personal-use quantities of crank.  Maybe they were planning to blow up
buildings rather than stumps; but the Feds are trying to paint them
as max evil just to build up their case.
#--
#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281
# "At year's end, however, new government limits on Internet access threatened
# to halt the growth of Internet use.  [...] Government control of news media 
# generally continues to depend on self-censorship to regulate political and
# social content, but the authorities also consistently penalize those who
# exceed the permissable."  - US government statement on China...