Movement on mandatories?

There are this morning interesting discussions of mandatory minimum sentencing in federal and state systems.

On the federal front, there is this potent op-ed in today’s Washington Post entitled “Mandatory Madness” authored by Professor Barry Scheck, who is currently serving as the president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.  (Thanks to CrimProf Blog for the tip here.) The piece calls upon Congress to use the legislative moment that Booker and Fanfan may create “to rectify an unfair and senseless disgrace that it should have confronted years ago: mandatory minimum sentences.”  Stressing the facts of the Angelos case (background here, commentary here and here), the recommendations of the ABA’s Kennedy Commission (available here), and the costs of incarcerating low-level, small-time and nonviolent offenders, Professor Scheck concludes:

There is a developing consensus among judges, prosecutors and the defense bar that something must be done to restore sanity to federal sentencing. Let’s hope it infiltrates the Capitol. Congress and the Sentencing Commission should create a blue-ribbon panel to study constitutional and human issues raised in the sentencing cases now before the Supreme Court. The panel should look at the good and the bad of what developed from the last effort at sentencing reform, 20 years ago. We can make the system better.

On the state front, TalkLeft notes here that there is talk once again in New York about reforming the state’s Rockefeller drug laws.  As TalkLeft notes, a key advocate pushing for reform is Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who, according to this New York Post article, is advocating a specific proposal that would “toughen sentences for violent and repeat drug felons while channeling low-level dealers away from the current mandatory prison sentences and into treatment.”  This recent Newday article provides more details on the legislative debate over drug sentencing reform, which has been raging in Albany for quite some time (as detailed here in FAMM’s coverage).

More background on New York’s Rockefeller drug laws can be found here from the Drug Policy Alliance, and a compelling (and lengthy) report critical of these laws, produced by the group Physicians for Human Rights and entitled “Unjust and Counterproductive: New York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws,” can be accessed here (with highlights here).