Make the Penalty Fit the Crime

Who is responsible for the fact that Gilberto Baez-Luna, convicted in an immigrant smuggling case in which three people died, will serve a shorter prison term than many nonviolent felons sentenced on federal drug charges? The blame spreads across Congress and the U.S. Sentencing Commission, both long distracted by street crime, and a reversal-shy trial judge.

The conviction arose from a nighttime chase in April 1995 along a winding two-lane road in eastern San Diego County. Baez-Luna drove a van packed with 35 illegal immigrants. Tailed by the Border Patrol, he was speeding along the dark road at up to 75 mph when his van crossed the center line and smashed into a pickup truck. Two of his passengers and the pickup truck driver were killed and 16 people were injured.

U.S. District Judge Marilyn Huff sentenced Baez-Luna to a prison term of two years and nine months for immigrant smuggling. His sentence will run concurrently with a state court sentence of eight years for three counts of manslaughter. Baez-Luna had pleaded guilty to both charges.

Yet the 1994 federal crime bill, in effect at the time of Huff’s ruling on Monday, had raised the prison term to 25 years to life in smuggling cases in which injury or death occurs. Huff said she did not impose the far heavier sentence because she feared reversal by a higher court for departing from federal sentencing guidelines. It had happened to her before. Those guidelines, drafted by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, specify a range of penalties for each federal crime, depending on the circumstances. The commission had not yet amended its guidelines to include all the stiffer anti-smuggling penalties set by Congress in 1994. Huff said she was bound by the lower guidelines until they were amended. The Sentencing Commission should immediately eliminate this discrepancy so other judges will not feel so constrained.