Mandatory Sentencing

Re “Judges Voice Anger Over Mandatory U.S. Sentences” (Aug. 21):

Mandatory minimum sentences are strictly a political tool to make politicians sound tough on crime. By tying up valuable law-enforcement resources in the name of the “War on Drugs,” the laws are in fact soft on violent crime. They have proved to be ineffective, counterproductive and racially discriminatory by the very commission that Congress appointed to develop appropriate sentences: the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Contrary to your article, mandatory minimum sentences were not enacted in 1984, but in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. In 1984 Congress set out to create a sentencing commission to develop guidelines that would apply to all federal felonies. The guidelines were to be flexible enough to allow judges to depart from the guidelines under certain conditions, as in the case of Koon and Powell.

In 1986 the crack problem exploded, and Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose. Members of Congress used these events to prove that they could be tough on drugs. Without waiting for the sentencing commission’s recommendations, Congress voted in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, with its mandatory minimum drug sentences becoming statutory law. The minimum sentences were higher than the sentences the commission had been formulating and went beyond their recommendation in limiting a judge’s discretion. It is because the mandatory minimum sentences are statutory laws that judges or the sentencing commission have little control over them.

A whole generation of nonviolent drug offenders are wasting away in prison when instead they could be rehabilitated.

TED RICHARD WIZLO

San Diego

* Tonya Denise Drake gets 10 years in federal prison for mailing some crack cocaine for which she received $47.40. So goes your front-page story of Aug. 21. In a story on Page A20 the same day, Mark L. Nathanson, former coastal commissioner who pleaded guilty to extortion, asked for mercy because he has suffered to an “unconscionable degree.” He requested the federal judge to reduce his plea-bargained sentence from five years and three months to four years and three months.

Why does the federal judge in the Nathanson matter have discretion in sentencing while the judge in Afro-American Tonya Drake’s case had no such discretion available?

ROBERT J. BANNING

Pasadena

* The case of Tonya Drake demonstrates how easily a nation that is founded on civil liberties can lapse into fascism. Although everyone agrees that the punishment does not fit the crime in this case, her freedom is being sacrificed for the perceived good of the country, in the belief that such harsh sentences “send a message” to potential drug offenders.

RUSSELL H. STONE

Los Angeles

* It is interesting to note that Drake’s family, lawyer and the judge who sentenced her feel she is a victim of a cruel and indifferent federal sentencing system.

It is interesting to note that in the same edition of The Times, a wire story tells of a convicted Pakistani drug smuggler who was beheaded in Saudi Arabia.

Now, I realize that there are some out there who feel that Drake’s sentence was excessive, but compared to the fate of the gentleman in Saudi Arabia, a phrase like “slap on the wrist” comes to mind.

STEVEN GREENWOOD

Simi Valley