Eric Holder Says Mandatory Minimums Are Unnecessary As Well As Unjust

In a

speech to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
today, Attorney General Eric Holder reiterated his
criticism of mandatory minimum sentences, calling them
“outdated and overly stringent.” He also questioned the

argument that mandatory minimums are necessary to encourage
“cooperation”:

Like anyone who served as a prosecutor in the days before
sentencing guidelines existed and mandatory minimums took effect, I
know from experience that defendant cooperation depends on the
certainty of swift and fair punishment, not on the disproportionate
length of a mandatory minimum sentence.  As veteran
prosecutors and defense attorneys surely recall—and as our U.S.
Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin, John Vaudreuil, has
often reminded his colleagues—sentencing guidelines essentially
systematized the kinds of negotiations that routinely took place in
cases where defendants cooperated with the government in exchange
for reduced sentences. With or without the threat of a mandatory
minimum, it remains in the interest of these defendants to
cooperate. It remains in the mutual interest of defense attorneys
and prosecutors to engage in these discussions. And any suggestion
that defendant cooperation is somehow dependent on mandatory
minimums is plainly inconsistent with the facts and with
history.

While Holder is obviously right that plea deals do not require
mandatory minimums, there is evidence that increasingly draconian
penalties have made defendants more
inclined to forgo trials, to the point that 97 percent of
federal defendants plead guilty. But if avoiding the inconvenience
and expense of trials were the overriding goal, there would be no
limit to the punishment that could be inflicted on reclacitrant
defendants who insist on exercising their Sixth Amendment rights.
If all crimes carried a mandatory death penalty, for instance, the
“cooperation” rate probably would be even higher. But at some point
the interests of justice have to outweigh the interests of
prosecutors. We surely have passed that point when the penalty for
going to trial can be
spending the rest of your life in prison.