House Republicans file brief in support of 30-year mandatory minimum sentence in Farley

Regular readers may recall a notable district court opinion from last September (discussed in this post), which found unconstitutional a mandatory minimum term of 30 years imprisonment for a defendant who travelled across state lines in an effort to engage in sexual activity with a fictious ten-year old.  The case, US v. Farley, is now on appeal before the Eleventh Circuit, and this new post from the CQ Legal Beat reports on a notable new filing in this case:

A group of House Republicans filed a brief Wednesday challenging a federal District Court’s ruling that a 30-year mandatory minimum prison sentence was a cruel and unusual punishment for a man convicted of crossing state lines to have sex with a minor.

That automatic mandatory minimum prison sentence was included in the Adam Walsh Act passed by Congress to combat child sex abuse. But in September 2008, Judge Beverly B. Martin of the Northern District of Georgia ruled that penalty was unconstitutional as applied to Kelly Farley, a 39-year-old Texas man convicted of making plans to molest a 10-year-old girl.

In the brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, the GOP lawmakers say they “are particularly concerned with the lack of respect and improper deference afforded to Congress by the district court in the case” and suggest the lower court’s ruling “threatens to abridge Congress’ authority to impose punishment that it deems appropriate to the corresponding offense.”

Thanks to the folks at CQ, the full brief can be accessed at this link.  Fascinating stuff.