With New Sentencing Legislation Pending in Congress, Church Leaders Urge an End to Mandatory Minimums
9/24/04
Even as the clamor against
mandatory minimum sentences grows louder, a House subcommittee is
considering a
bill that would impose harsh new mandatory minimums for a wide variety
of
nonviolent drug offenses. But in a sign
of the growing opposition to draconian sentencing, legislators and
leaders of
mainstream religious denominations gathered for a Capitol Hill press
conference
Tuesday to denounce mandatory minimums in general and the new bill in
particular, and to support another bill that would repeal federal
mandatory
minimum sentencing laws. Mandatory minimum
sentences largely date from the hysterical anti-drug politics of the
1980s,
when legislators sought to outdo each other in being "tough on crime"
by drafting more and more draconian legislation. Such
sentences, which require offenders to
serve a certain minimum amount of time, remove discretion in sentencing
from
judges shifting such power instead to prosecutors.
With judges forbidden by law from deviating
from such sentences, prosecutors effectively decide punishments by
choosing
which charges to bring. The House Subcommittee on
Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security Thursday began hearings on H.R.
4547,
sponsored by Opposition to the bill was
loud and clear at the Tuesday press event organized by the Interfaith
Drug
Policy Initiative (http://www.idpi.org),
a group formed specifically to
mobilize people of faith to promote drug policy reform.
"I get invited to a lot of speaking
engagements, but I'm only going to accept them if I can speak about
mandatory
minimums," said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), author of a new bill, H.R.
5103, which would repeal mandatory minimums.
"I want to make this a priority," she said.
"Mandatory minimum sentences destroy
lives. Politicians have built their
careers on being tough on crime and tough on drugs, but mandatory
minimum sentencing
targets low level drug users -- victims -- not the drug dealers who
should be
sentenced to the time they deserve." One victim of such laws is
Hamedah Hasan, who is now serving a 26-year mandatory minimum sentence
for a
peripheral role in a drug distribution conspiracy.
"Mandatory minimum sentences have been
horrible for my family," said Hasan's daughter Kasaundra Lomax. "I've been taking care of my family
since I was 12. It's not my job, but I
don't have a choice. I would like to be
in college, but I have to worry about taking care of my family," she
said. "All they care about is
punishing a person, and they give no thought to how this affects whole
families. It's just not fair." That's right, said
Waters. "Many women have
boyfriends, they have a conversation and they end up in a conspiracy,"
she
said, urging the religious community to quit obsessing on issues like
gay
marriage, abortion, and whether women can serve as clergy.
"Refocus your attention," Waters
pleaded with church leaders, "get on the people's agenda.
Mandatory minimum sentencing destroys
lives. Instead we need to let judges be
judges." Waters' bill, known as the
Justice in Sentencing Act, would do that.
The bill systematically strips language creating mandatory
minimum sentences
from the Controlled Substances Act and the Controlled Substances Import
and
Export Act. It also mandates no federal
prosecution of offenses under those acts for amounts of drugs less than
those
specified as minimums under the Controlled Substance Act, unless
specifically
authorized by the attorney general. For
cocaine or cocaine base, the bill mandates that no federal prosecutions
commence for amounts less than 500 grams without the attorney general's
approval. Church leaders and
legislators at the press conference called for passage of the Waters
bill and
an end to mandatory minimums. "The
most incredibly moral thing we can do is look at legislation that is
supposed
to be helping people, but is harming people," said Eliezer
Valentin-Castanon, director of civil and human rights for the United
Methodist
General Board of Church and Society. "As
people of faith, how can we proclaim that our religious values allow us
to put
people in prison for such a long time?" he asked. "This is the land of
the free and home of the brave," said the Rev. Michael T. Bell, pastor
of
the The Rev. Julius Hope,
director of religious affairs for the National Association for the
Advancement
of Colored People and a veteran of the 1954 Rep. John Conyers (D-MI),
ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and dean of the
Congressional
Black Caucus, said the support of the religious community is critical. "The civil rights movement had the
church behind it. When the church gets
behind this we will prevail," he said. And the churches are
beginning to come around. In addition to
addressing the Tuesday press conference, the "The nation's leading
religious organizations clearly recognize that mandatory sentencing
laws are
unjust and ineffective," said Charles Thomas, executive director of the
national Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative.
"No denominations are known to support mandatory minimum
sentencing. Can you think of any other
issue on which the moral choice is so clear?
Congress must defeat Rep. Sensenbrenner's bill and pass Rep.
Waters'
bill. It's time to put on the brakes and
turn toward justice and compassion." To read the Sensenbrenner
(H.R. 4547) and Waters (H.R. 5013) bills online, go to http://thomas.loc.gov
and enter the bill number in the search box. To read about religious
denominations' positions on mandatory minimums and other drug policy
issues,
visit the Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative web site at http://www.idpi.us
online.
|
