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 individuals who purchase pseudo-ephedrine for their methamphetamine dealer; function as middleman in a series of little deals; or even get a suitcase for the incorrect friend. Thanks to conspiracy laws, everybody on the totem pole can be based on the same extreme necessary minimum sentences.
To the men and women 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 five- and ten-year compulsory sentences to drug trafficking was to punish "the kingpins-- the masterminds who are really running these operations", and the mid-level dealerships.
Fast forward twenty-five years. Today, nearly everybody founded guilty of a federal drug criminal offense is founded guilty of "drug trafficking", which generally leads to a minimum of a five- or ten-year compulsory prison sentence. That's a great deal of time in federal jail for many 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 rests on the district court in northern Iowa, and he handles a great deal of drug cases. "Never might I have envisioned," he writes in a recent piece in The Country, "that ... after nineteen years [as a federal district court judge], I would have sent 1,092 of my fellow citizens to federal prison for necessary minimum sentences varying from sixty months to life without the possibility of release. Most of these women, males and young people are nonviolent addict." What about the kingpins? "I can count them on one hand," he states.
The numbers can't convey the unreasonable disaster of it all. This is how he explains a recent drug trafficking case:
I just recently sentenced a group of more than twenty defendants on meth trafficking conspiracy charges. All of them plead guilty. Eighteen were 'pill smurfers,' as federal district attorneys put it, indicating their function totaled up to regularly buying and delivering cold medication to meth cookers in exchange for very little, low-grade quantities to feed their extreme addictions. The majority of were out of work or underemployed. Several were single moms. They did not offer or straight distribute meth; there were no hoards of cash, guns or counter surveillance devices. All of them faced necessary minimum sentences of sixty or 120 months.
There is information to recommend that Judge Bennett's experience is not uncharacteristic. In 2007, the U.S. Sentencing Commission put together substantial information on cocaine and fracture sentencing. They discovered that in 2005, most of the lowest-level cocaine- and crack-trafficking defendants-- males and females referred to as "street-level dealers", "couriers/mules", and "renter/loader/lookout/ enabler/users"-- got 5- or ten-year obligatory jail sentences. This is especially true for crack-cocaine defendants, the majority of whom are black; in spite of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, offering a small quantity of crack cocaine (28 grams) brings the same obligatory minimum sentence-- 5 years-- as selling 500 grams of powder drug.
This is the truth for which supporters of severe federal drug laws should account. We can not pretend that heavy sentences for women like Kemba Smith and guys like Jamel Dossie are the fluke errors of overboard laws. We need to admit that our sentencing of minor participants in the drug trade to prison terms indicated for the leaders of large drug companies-- as a typical occurrence, not as an exception. As a result, we needlessly put behind bars great deals of minor wrongdoers for extended periods. Judge Bennett decries the human costs of these sentences:
If prolonged compulsory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug addicts actually worked, one might be able to rationalize them. There is no evidence that they do. I have seen how they leave numerous countless young kids parent-less and countless aging, infirm and dying moms and dads childless. They damage households and strongly sustain the cycle of hardship and dependency.
Here, once again, we have evidence that Judge Bennett is right: long mandatory sentences are unnecessary for many drug wrongdoers. In 2002 www.criminallawyerslasvegas.com/drug-conspiracy-defense-las-vegas/ and 2003, Michigan and New York reversed necessary sentences for drug transgressors and offered judges the power to enforce shorter sentences, probation, or drug treatment.
He has seen necessary laws composed for the most severe, massive drug dealerships applied to the men and women on the lowest rungs of the drug trade, and he has seen it happen a lot. We once imagined that severe mandatory sentences would be used to deal with the leaders of large drug operations.
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