The court's sentence in the Texas "affluenza" case
was irrationally disproportionate. But so was a mandatory sentence
imposed on a Pennsylvania teenager convicted of crack cocaine
possession – his first arrest and his first conviction. This
young man would have been the first in his family to attend
college. Instead, the law required a sentence of 10 years in
federal prison with no possibility of parole.
I was the judge forced to impose this perverse sentence, and the
same result occurs everyday because too many sentencing laws
preclude judges from considering defendants' life
circumstances. Too often, discretion is nullified by absurd,
medieval mandatory regimes.
Unfortunately, measures to limit judicial discretion have done
little to address the racial and economic disparities that plague
our justice system. And according to the Justice Policy Institute, laws that remove
discretion, such as "Three Strikes" and mandatory
minimums, have caused our prison population
