Revive Sentencing Panel

While Congress and the nation have been otherwise engaged, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has effectively gone out of business. The short, sad history of this panel to date is another illustration of the brutish partisan atmosphere in Washington and the cowardice of some in Congress and the Clinton administration.

The seven-member commission was created by Congress in 1984 to bring consistency to federal sentences, particularly for drug crimes. The panel set guidelines for judges to follow when sentencing most federal offenders.

One problem with those guidelines is that they must conform with mandatory minimum sentences that Congress has set for certain drug offenses, sentences that are inconsistent and overly severe. For example, a five-year prison term is required for anyone found guilty of possessing five grams of crack cocaine, but offenders must have 500 grams of cocaine in powder form--the same basic drug--to land five years. This makes no sense.

In most federal criminal cases, judges become accountants, looking up offenses in complex tables and calculating the mitigating or exacerbating circumstances to arrive at a sentence. Judges of all political stripes hate this system.

When the sentencing commission in recent years began to propose changes aimed at reducing the 100-to-1 disparity for rock and powdered cocaine sentences and giving judges more discretion, a majority in Congress and Atty. Gen. Janet Reno refused to go along for fear they’d be pummeled as soft on crime. Panel members got discouraged and left or their terms expired. The chairman, U.S. District Judge Richard Conoboy, was the last to go, leaving in mid-October. Conoboy hoped his departure would precipitate new nominations by the White House, after earlier worthy nominations died in the Senate. But none are pending for any of the seven vacant seats.

In the meantime, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal, in a decision last month, gave judges sweeping new power to reject the federal guidelines and impose lesser terms. That ruling, though welcome, applies only to federal courts in California and eight other Western states. Comprehensive reform toward a more equitable and less draconian sentencing scheme awaits a functioning commission. The president should quickly make new nominations for the seven empty seats.