The Dire Effects of Mandatory Minimum Sentences on American Justice

Brad Schlesinger at Outside the Beltway with a
cogent take on how
mandatory minimum sentences give too much power in justice to
prosecutors and help kill trial by jury.

The heart of the matter:

By passing laws with fixed-minimum sentences for almost
all crimes, legislatures, beginning largely in the 1980′s,
removed discretion over offender sentencing from judges and handed
prosecutors the power to determine which sentence a defendant will
receive. Judges have no power to override the mandatory prison
terms these laws carry, regardless of the individual circumstances
of each case. This is especially troubling because of
the overly
punitive penalties these laws carry. Even worse, when a
case does goes to trial, the jury doesn’t even know how much time a
defendant faces.

The prosecutor
alone chooses whether to charge the accused, which charges
to file, whether to drop charges, and whether or not a plea on
lesser charges will be offered, outside of any judicial oversight.
These unilateral discretionary
decisions “often predetermine the outcome of a case since
the sentencing judge has little, if any, discretion in determining
the length, nature, and severity of the sentence.” This results
in radically
different sentencing outcomes between the sentence a
defendant receives who loses at trial compared to one who pleads
guilty.

These enormously different outcomes effectively coerce criminal
defendants into pleading guilty. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws
give prosecutors the leverage and superior bargaining position
needed to coax accused citizens, many of whom are completely
innocent, into surrendering a fundamental right for a perceived
benefit– a significantly lesser sentence for forgoing a jury
trial and pleading guilty.

If that dynamic makes you mad, you might want to look into
Families Against Mandatory
Minimums.