Harsh sentencing

San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News

From upholding the death penalty to narrowing the Fourth Amendment protections against illegal searches, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist has long championed the interests of law enforcement. So Congress should listen hard to his warning that it has gone too far in forcing judges to impose long and harsh sentences.

In a year-end report on the courts, Rehnquist condemned Congress for intruding on federal judges' power to use discretion in sentencing. Last year, Congress passed a law ordering the Justice Department to notify it of judges who hand down lighter sentences than sentencing guidelines demand. ...

Rehnquist doesn't label the law for what it is: the creation of a black list that Congress can use to punish judges it considers too liberal. But his comment was extraordinary nonetheless: The law, he wrote, would "appear to be an unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate individual judges in the performance of their judicial duties." ...

Federal sentencing guidelines should be precisely that _ guidelines. Some cases with reduced sentences have been the result of plea bargains with the prosecutors' approval. There are also times when it's appropriate to reduce a sentence, based on the specific factors in a case. Only a judge, not a rigid matrix, can make that determination. ...