Two unlikely legislators joined forces to end federal mandatory minimum sentences. Conservative Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.,) and his Democratic counterpart Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.,)last year introduced the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013.
The legislation “allows judges to impose sentences below the statutory minimums in the interest of justice, which makes those minimums no longer mandatory.”
According to FAMM, this legislation is needed because the “extraordinary” cost to taxpayers for mandatory minimum sentences is crippling the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
The DOJ reports that 25 percent of its budget goes to housing, feeding, and providing health care to prisoners. Nearly half of these inmates are in for drug offenses and are doing decades in an increasingly overcrowded system.
“We are going to catch fewer violent criminals and terrorists,” said a spokesman, “because our budget is being spent on keeping nonviolent drug users behind bars.”
Existing legislation permits judges to impose sentences below a statutory minimum, but current statutes limit judges’ discretion to drug offenses with strict criteria.
For example, Weldon Angelos was ineligible because the informant he sold marijuana to saw a gun in Angelos’ car. In addition, arresting officers found guns in his home. Though Angelo never used or brandished a gun during his drug sales, he received a mandatory minimum sentence for multiple counts of gun possession totaling 55 years with no parole. Judge Paul Cassell, a George W. Bush appointee, called the sentence, “demeaning to victims of actual criminal violence.”