Ashcroft limits prosecutor discretion

Don't I recall Justice also limited or attempted to limit judicial discretion on sentencing a few months ago?

Well, I do wonder what they're going to do with all of the long-term prisoners this is going to generate, seeing as taxes are being reduced rather than raised. Unless the death penalty is applied within a few months of conviction (unlikely, even in the current political climate), and is applied to more offenses (death penalty for petit larceny and drug possession with no intent to distribute, anyone?), prisons are going to be filled beyond the bursting.

This means guards will be in danger (more danger than usual) from disgruntled prisoners. Where's the $$ going to come from to house and feed these prisoners? Or to build bigger prisons?

Actually, the directive will likely backfire. Plea bargaining exists for a very specific reason - there are plenty of crimes out there for which the prosecution doesn't have very good proof, and not enough resources to obtain adequate proof. So rather than spend more $$ and man-hours to get enough together to convict the accused of 1st degree murder, the accused cops to manslaughter and takes a lesser sentence. The prosecutor gets a conviction (and can move onto working on a more solid case), the police can move onto working on newer crimes (rather than collecting more evidence or taking time out to go to trial and testify) and $$ that would have been used for DNA testing, storing evidence or the like can be used for other things.

Plea bargains are something of a win-win. They're not perfect - no one loves seeing a murderer get a reduced sentence (except the murderer, of course) - but a reduced sentence is better than no sentence.

We in New York State know from experience what mandatory sentences can do. The Rockefeller drug laws and their mandatory sentencing have our jails bursting at the seams.

Exactly what I was thinking of. If this all goes through, then it'll be interesting, let's just say, when a rather large lawsuit is filed by the family of some con who turns out to be innocent is killed and/or sodomized (the con, not the family) because s/he had to share a cot with another prisoner - because that's what this will come to if more space isn't obtained. They'll be sleeping in shifts or stacking them in the halls and in the hospital, and no one will want to work as a guard, no matter what kind of combat pay is offered.

New Plea Bargain Limits Could Swamp Courts, Experts Say

By ADAM LIPTAK and ERIC LICHTBLAU

[]f Attorney General John Ashcroft's new directive limiting the use of plea bargains in federal prosecutions were enforced to the letter, legal experts said, the criminal justice system would soon face a crisis.
"If even just a small fraction of the 96 percent of all defendants who currently plead guilty end up going to trial, the courts will be overrun in no time," said Marc Mauer, the assistant director of the Sentencing Project, a research group in Washington that supports prisoners' rights.
The directive, which was issued on Monday to all federal prosecutors, requires them to charge defendants with "the most serious, readily provable offense" in every case and, with some exceptions, not to engage in plea negotiations thereafter.
Many former federal prosecutors said this approach was too rigid.
"A check-the-box analysis really does mask differences," said Mary Jo White, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan for almost a decade. "Crimes are different, places are different, people are different."
"This really goes beyond what is efficient and fair," she said.
But William W. Mercer, the United States attorney in Montana, said fairness was precisely what the directive would achieve. "It's meant to minimize unwarranted sentencing disparities among similarly situated defendants," Mr. Mercer said.
Some legal experts detected another motive as well.
"This clearly gives Attorney General Ashcroft a certain political soapbox he can stand on to say he's tough on crime and won't put up with local prosecutors pleading their cases out cheap," said Roland Riopelle, the chairman of the Criminal Advocacy Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/24/national/24PROS.html?th

I remember something about that too.