Another doozy dissent from Judge Merritt as Sixth Circuit affirms a long guideline sentence

A long day at the end of a long week kept me from noting earlier that the Sixth Circuit has issued another notable split sentencing opinion in United States v. Jeross, No. 06-2257 (6th Cir. Apr. 4, 2008) (available here), with Judge Merritt providing another spirited dissent about the modern state of modern sentencing.  Though I suspect Judge Merritt sometimes feels like he is tilting at windmills, I will close the work week by setting out the first two paragraphs of his dissent in Jeross so he knows that at least someone is paying attention:

This is another drug case in which our system of criminal law has imprisoned for many years two more lives and torn up two more families by grossly excessive sentences imposed in the “War on Drugs.”  There are many reasons that our federal system of punishment has turned in this direction, not the least of which is the advent during the last 20 years of our irrational set of sentencing guidelines that judges apply by rote on a daily basis.  We are constantly adding new prisoners like these defendants with long periods of incarceration to the more than two million men and women now incarcerated in the hundreds of prisons and jails around the country.

These sentencing guidelines hold that mitigating factors like family ties, mental illness, education, and the likelihood of rehabilitation are simply “not relevant” in the sentencing process.  Judges’ minds are closed down and sentences ratcheted up by applying convoluted conversion formulas like the one just recited in the majority opinion.  The recent Blakely–Booker–Cunningham line of Supreme Court cases has given judges an opportunity to rid the system of some of the worst aspects of guidelinism, but we judges soldier on by applying the old mandatory system as though nothing of significance had happened.  The cost to the taxpayers and in human lives has become enormous and shows no signs of change.