December 06, 2003
This is just so backwards
How did it get this way? And how can we change it?
Stephen Fletcher II tried to grow some psychedelic mushrooms in his Lawrence apartment.Tremain V. Scott shot and killed a man at close range during an armed confrontation, then, according to an eyewitness, took the victim's gun and shot him with it as he lay on the ground.
An autopsy showed the victim had been shot 18 times.
Both Fletcher and Scott are in their early 20s and have little or no criminal-conviction record, their attorneys say. So who's facing the stiffer sentence?
Fletcher, by double.
Under state drug-sentencing guidelines, he's facing at least 11 1/2 years in prison....
From Mushrooms v. murder: Sentences in Kansas don't all fit the crime, HT to Overlawyered.com. Posted by richard at December 6, 2003 03:44 PM
Dude, don't even get me started on sentencing. I saw so much ridiculous shit in my time clerking that I can't even begin to comment without losing the weekend and most of next week.
Suffice to say that sentencing is a one-way ratchet. No political candidate is ever going to get elected with the goal of decreasing criminal sentences in his platform. So when Congress passed the Sentencing Reform Act and instituted the Guidelines, hoping to reduce the tenured judiciary's discretion in sentencing, it all but wiped out the only backstop against spiraling criminal sentences.
And now Ashcroft wants individual judges to report to Congress on the frequency of their departures — whether or not it's actually an encroachment on judicial independence, it's consistent with the too-popular notion that a short sentence is a "bad sentence."
Don't you love how my responses generally have nothing at all to do with the original post?
Posted by: Brad Abruzzi at December 6, 2003 05:54 PM
