Ashcroft Limits Prosecutor Discretion

DdC · 09-23-2003, 09:42 PM

Washington -- Attorney General John Ashcroft wants federal prosecutors to seek the severest charges and penalties more often. Experts say it won't be easy to achieve the uniformity he wants.

Ashcroft said in a memo Monday to all 94 U.S. attorneys' offices that plea bargains should only be pursued in limited, specific circumstances.

"In virtually all cases, prosecutors must bring the toughest charges available, yielding the toughest penalties under the sentencing guidelines," Ashcroft said in a speech Monday in Milwaukee.

The policy change is the latest example of Ashcroft's attempts to bring greater symmetry -- critics say inflexibility -- to the federal justice system. During the summer Ashcroft instructed U.S. attorneys to seek the death penalty whenever applicable, overruling some who would not, and to vigorously oppose sentences imposed by judges that are lighter than recommended by federal guidelines.

Michael O'Neill, a George Mason University law professor and member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, said Ashcroft deserved credit for seeking greater consistency but might not achieve it.

"As a practical matter, achieving this uniformity is difficult," O'Neill said. "You have regional differences. Five grams of crack cocaine might mean something different in New York than it does in Iowa."

Critics predicted the new plea bargain policy will severely limit prosecutors' options, forcing more defendants to face costly, time-consuming trials instead of pleading guilty and adding to prison overcrowding problems through harsher sentences.

"No two crimes, and no two defendants, are exactly alike," said Marc Mauer, assistant director of The Sentencing Project, a research group that advocates alternatives to prison.

Gerald Lefcourt, past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the change "creates a system that is not only inflexible and problematic, but becomes a sort of immovable object. You're adding more unfairness to the system."

Nearly all federal criminal cases are resolved before they go to trial. According to Justice Department statistics for fiscal 2001, more than 96 percent of criminal defendants pleaded guilty to the offense charged or to a reduced charge, or had their cases dismissed.

The order by Ashcroft marks a return to the spirit of the original instructions for prosecuting cases under federal sentencing guidelines developed in 1989 by then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh. Those instructions were rewritten to provide more individual discretion by former Attorney General Janet Reno in the 1990s.

Justice Department officials said the policy, developed by a 15-member advisory group of U.S. attorneys, provides enough flexibility to deal with differences in defendants and still ensure that all prosecutors pursue the same brand of justice.

"The whole purpose is to eliminate the disparity between similarly situated defendants," said U.S. Attorney Bill Mercer of Montana. "It's very hard to deter crime if there's a perception that a person isn't going to be held accountable for his or her actions."

The Ashcroft memo provides six specific exceptions for plea bargains from the "general duty" to pursue the most serious crimes:

* When a defendant agrees to provide "substantial assistance" in an investigation. Ashcroft said the message is, "if defendants will cooperate, the green light is on for negotiation."

* Under so-called fast-track programs aimed at unclogging court dockets in which certain types of defendants are given a preset charge and sentence lower than that called for under federal guidelines. These programs, which will be reviewed individually by the Justice Department, are popular for common immigration and drug violations in the Southwest.

* When prosecutors decided that the original charges will be tough to prove in court because of witness access problems, suppressed evidence or some other reason.

* If the possible sentence would be unaffected by a charge under a lesser offense.

* When "enhancements" that could result in a longer sentence, such as a defendant facing multiple charges connected with the main crime, remove any incentive for the defendant to plead guilty. Enhancements for firearms offenses, however, would generally have to be included.

* On a case-by-case basis for other reasons with written approval by a supervisor.

Justice Department

Ashcroft Limits Prosecutor Discretion
Source: Associated Press
Author: Curt Anderson, Associated Press Writer
Published: September 23, 2003

Stop John Ashcroft's Attack on Judicial Discretion
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John Ashcroft's Lady Liberty
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DdC · 09-23-2003, 09:45 PM

SC: Federal Prosecutors To Seek Maximum Penalties

WASHINGTON - Attorney General John Ashcroft on Monday ordered federal prosecutors to come down harder on criminal defendants, instructing them to seek maximum penalties and to limit the use of plea bargains.

The tough new stance, outlined in a memo distributed to all 93 U.S. attorneys, dramatically reduces prosecutors' discretion in federal criminal cases ranging from drug trafficking to money laundering to terrorism. Under former Attorney General Janet Reno, prosecutors were given greater leeway in determining whether the potential charge fit the crime.

Ashcroft said the shift was designed to create consistency in the nation's criminal justice system.

"Like federal judges, federal prosecutors nationwide have an obligation to be fair, uniform and tough," the attorney general said in a speech Monday in Milwaukee.

Critics accused Ashcroft of adopting an unwieldy one-size-fits-all approach and taking yet another step to consolidate power at the Justice Department headquarters in Washington.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that Ashcroft was intervening in the death penalty decisions of federal prosecutors, ordering them to seek executions in cases where they had decided not to. The Justice Department also has told prosecutors to report on so-called downward departures, in which judges hand down lighter sentences than the rigid federal sentencing guidelines require.

Mary Price, general counsel for the Washington, D.C.-based criminal justice reform group Families Against Mandatory Minimums, called Ashcroft's latest memo "very disturbing."

"Those people on the ground with a flesh-and-blood defendant in front of them are in the best position to know what ought to be done," Price said. "This almost removes human beings from the equation altogether.

Gerald Lefcourt, former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the move almost certainly would result in more costly trials and more prisoners in a system that is already overburdened.

"What they are doing is creating an inflexible, unjust system that eliminates all possibility of compassion," Lefcourt said.

Bill Mercer, the U.S. attorney in Montana who sat on the15-member Attorney General's Advisory Committee, which drew up the changes, said they had the support of federal prosecutors.

"You want uniformity," Mercer said. "You don't want someone's viewpoint or philosophy determining the outcome. What we are after is eliminating disparity from place to place and defendant to defendant when the crime is the same."

The new guidelines contain enough flexibility for unique cases, he said.

The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 created uniform sentences in which federal judges must take into account the crime and mitigating circumstances in an almost mathematical formula that determines a criminal's prison sentence. A 1989 memo by then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, who served under President Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, outlined guidelines that sought similar consistency from prosecutors. Reno reworked those guidelines during her tenure to give local prosecutors more discretion.

Mercer said the Ashcroft memo returned to the "spirit of the Thornburgh directive."

The Ashcroft memo states that "federal prosecutors must charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offenses that are supported by the facts."

"Charges should not be filed simply to exert leverage to get a plea," the memo said.

Plea bargains may be used only in rare circumstances, such as when a defendant agrees to provide "substantial assistance" to law enforcement officers.

While Ashcroft in his memo invoked the Sentencing Reform Act as a "watershed event in the pursuit if fairness and consistency in the federal criminal justice system" others have been less complimentary.

Supreme Court justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer have criticized the rigid sentencing guidelines. Breyer was a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission that helped write them.

Let 'Em Know! Let 'Em Know! Let 'Em Know!

FEDERAL PROSECUTORS TO SEEK MAXIMUM PENALTIES
Author: Shannon McCaffrey
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003
Source: Sun News (Myrtle Beach, SC)
From: "D. Paul Stanford" stanford@crrh.org
Contact: opinions@thesunnews. com
Website * Details * Bookmark

Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

democraticundergroun d.com

Related Articles

Zero Reassurance - Jacob Sulum
John Ashcroft's Assault on the Constitution
Patriot Act II Resurrected?
Target: 'Narco-Terror' - ABCNews.com
Google: Stop John Ashcroft

DdC · 09-23-2003, 10:04 PM

The Hemp War Comes To The Rez

The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers, which are cited to justify it.
President John F. Kennedy Address to newspaper publishers April 27, 1961

Making War On Free Speech!
Bill Would Outlaw Internet Hemp Information

Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature,
nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
-- Helen Keller

The Distinctly Non-Christian Origins of the United States of America

They that can give up essential liberty
to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.

Drug labelling error forces retraction

I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing,
and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787"

Political War On Drugs Makes Medical Casualties

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions,
that I wish it always to be kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong,
but better so than not to be exercised at all.
I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere.
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, 1787

The Anti-Meth Bill - Washington Post

Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it.
Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes
at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim --
when he defends himself -- as a criminal.
-- Frederic Bastiat, "The Law"

HATCH BILL THAT STIFFENS DRUG PENALTIES

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.
-- Mohandas Gandhi

Secret Searches Bill

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget
that certain other sets of people are human. - Aldous Huxley

Orrin Hatch wants to destroy your computer!

PREJUDICE:MARIJUANA AND JIM CROW LAWS

Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats
are fashioned by those who dare not trust others,
because they dare not trust themselves, to walk in liberty. -- Aldous Huxley

Urgent Warning about Industrial Hemp...

They say you can't legislate morality. Well, you certainly can.
John Ashcroft Chicago Tribune May 25, 1998

Internet Free Speech Goes on Trial

In 2000, there were 1,579,566 drug arrests in the US. Of those, 46.5 percent
-- 734,497 arrests -- were for marijuana.
There were 646,042 arrests for simple possession of marijuana in 2000.
drugwarfacts

U.S. law enforcement spends $7.5 to $10 billion annually enforcing marijuana laws.
According to the FBI, 720,000 Americans were arrested on marijuana charges in 2001.
Keith Stroup, (NORML)

"Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there." - William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937. Continued...sumeria. net/politics/Invisible Prohibition
Shadow of the Swastika

guru the third · 09-23-2003, 10:14 PM

Quote:

* When prosecutors decided that the original charges will be tough to prove in court because of witness access problems, suppressed evidence or some other reason.

...so sorry... Plea bargain when you CAN'T prove the defendent is guilty. ...

riiiiiiight...

09-23-2003, 09:42 PM	#1 (permalink)
DdC Decade Yahookan Join Date: Feb 1999 Location: Santa Cruz,CA,USA Posts: 2,088 Blog Entries: 5 Thanks: 47 Thanked 570 Times in 378 Posts	Ashcroft Limits Prosecutor Discretion Washington -- Attorney General John Ashcroft wants federal prosecutors to seek the severest charges and penalties more often. Experts say it won't be easy to achieve the uniformity he wants. Ashcroft said in a memo Monday to all 94 U.S. attorneys' offices that plea bargains should only be pursued in limited, specific circumstances. "In virtually all cases, prosecutors must bring the toughest charges available, yielding the toughest penalties under the sentencing guidelines," Ashcroft said in a speech Monday in Milwaukee. The policy change is the latest example of Ashcroft's attempts to bring greater symmetry -- critics say inflexibility -- to the federal justice system. During the summer Ashcroft instructed U.S. attorneys to seek the death penalty whenever applicable, overruling some who would not, and to vigorously oppose sentences imposed by judges that are lighter than recommended by federal guidelines. Michael O'Neill, a George Mason University law professor and member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, said Ashcroft deserved credit for seeking greater consistency but might not achieve it. "As a practical matter, achieving this uniformity is difficult," O'Neill said. "You have regional differences. Five grams of crack cocaine might mean something different in New York than it does in Iowa." Critics predicted the new plea bargain policy will severely limit prosecutors' options, forcing more defendants to face costly, time-consuming trials instead of pleading guilty and adding to prison overcrowding problems through harsher sentences. "No two crimes, and no two defendants, are exactly alike," said Marc Mauer, assistant director of The Sentencing Project, a research group that advocates alternatives to prison. Gerald Lefcourt, past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the change "creates a system that is not only inflexible and problematic, but becomes a sort of immovable object. You're adding more unfairness to the system." Nearly all federal criminal cases are resolved before they go to trial. According to Justice Department statistics for fiscal 2001, more than 96 percent of criminal defendants pleaded guilty to the offense charged or to a reduced charge, or had their cases dismissed. The order by Ashcroft marks a return to the spirit of the original instructions for prosecuting cases under federal sentencing guidelines developed in 1989 by then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh. Those instructions were rewritten to provide more individual discretion by former Attorney General Janet Reno in the 1990s. Justice Department officials said the policy, developed by a 15-member advisory group of U.S. attorneys, provides enough flexibility to deal with differences in defendants and still ensure that all prosecutors pursue the same brand of justice. "The whole purpose is to eliminate the disparity between similarly situated defendants," said U.S. Attorney Bill Mercer of Montana. "It's very hard to deter crime if there's a perception that a person isn't going to be held accountable for his or her actions." The Ashcroft memo provides six specific exceptions for plea bargains from the "general duty" to pursue the most serious crimes: * When a defendant agrees to provide "substantial assistance" in an investigation. Ashcroft said the message is, "if defendants will cooperate, the green light is on for negotiation." * Under so-called fast-track programs aimed at unclogging court dockets in which certain types of defendants are given a preset charge and sentence lower than that called for under federal guidelines. These programs, which will be reviewed individually by the Justice Department, are popular for common immigration and drug violations in the Southwest. * When prosecutors decided that the original charges will be tough to prove in court because of witness access problems, suppressed evidence or some other reason. * If the possible sentence would be unaffected by a charge under a lesser offense. * When "enhancements" that could result in a longer sentence, such as a defendant facing multiple charges connected with the main crime, remove any incentive for the defendant to plead guilty. Enhancements for firearms offenses, however, would generally have to be included. * On a case-by-case basis for other reasons with written approval by a supervisor. Justice Department Ashcroft Limits Prosecutor Discretion Source: Associated Press Author: Curt Anderson, Associated Press Writer Published: September 23, 2003 Stop John Ashcroft's Attack on Judicial Discretion CIVIC_VALUES: Stop John Ashcroft John Ashcroft's Lady Liberty john ashcroft: an empty suit with the deepest pockets About Ashcroft The Disinformation Company Ltd. Bushits Askrapt Rumcheney D.E.A.th Cocktail February 2, 2001 Stop Ashcroft & Thompson Epistolary Network: John Ashcroft Sign the Petition to Stop Ashcroft sodamnhip.com/pix

09-23-2003, 10:04 PM	#3 (permalink)
DdC Decade Yahookan Join Date: Feb 1999 Location: Santa Cruz,CA,USA Posts: 2,088 Blog Entries: 5 Thanks: 47 Thanked 570 Times in 378 Posts	The Hemp War Comes To The Rez The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers, which are cited to justify it. President John F. Kennedy Address to newspaper publishers April 27, 1961 Making War On Free Speech! Bill Would Outlaw Internet Hemp Information Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. -- Helen Keller The Distinctly Non-Christian Origins of the United States of America They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759. Drug labelling error forces retraction I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. -- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787" Political War On Drugs Makes Medical Casualties The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere. -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, 1787 The Anti-Meth Bill - Washington Post Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim -- when he defends himself -- as a criminal. -- Frederic Bastiat, "The Law" HATCH BILL THAT STIFFENS DRUG PENALTIES Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good. -- Mohandas Gandhi Secret Searches Bill The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. - Aldous Huxley Orrin Hatch wants to destroy your computer! PREJUDICE:MARIJUANA AND JIM CROW LAWS Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others, because they dare not trust themselves, to walk in liberty. -- Aldous Huxley Urgent Warning about Industrial Hemp... They say you can't legislate morality. Well, you certainly can. John Ashcroft Chicago Tribune May 25, 1998 Internet Free Speech Goes on Trial In 2000, there were 1,579,566 drug arrests in the US. Of those, 46.5 percent -- 734,497 arrests -- were for marijuana. There were 646,042 arrests for simple possession of marijuana in 2000. drugwarfacts U.S. law enforcement spends $7.5 to $10 billion annually enforcing marijuana laws. According to the FBI, 720,000 Americans were arrested on marijuana charges in 2001. Keith Stroup, (NORML) "Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there." - William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937. Continued...sumeria. net/politics/Invisible Prohibition Shadow of the Swastika __________________ Al Capone and Watergate were red herrings to divert the countries attention from the Fascist acts of eliminating competition. Booze/Ethanol then Ganja//Hemp.

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09-23-2003, 09:45 PM	#2 (permalink)
DdC Decade Yahookan Join Date: Feb 1999 Location: Santa Cruz,CA,USA Posts: 2,088 Blog Entries: 5 Thanks: 47 Thanked 570 Times in 378 Posts	SC: Federal Prosecutors To Seek Maximum Penalties WASHINGTON - Attorney General John Ashcroft on Monday ordered federal prosecutors to come down harder on criminal defendants, instructing them to seek maximum penalties and to limit the use of plea bargains. The tough new stance, outlined in a memo distributed to all 93 U.S. attorneys, dramatically reduces prosecutors' discretion in federal criminal cases ranging from drug trafficking to money laundering to terrorism. Under former Attorney General Janet Reno, prosecutors were given greater leeway in determining whether the potential charge fit the crime. Ashcroft said the shift was designed to create consistency in the nation's criminal justice system. "Like federal judges, federal prosecutors nationwide have an obligation to be fair, uniform and tough," the attorney general said in a speech Monday in Milwaukee. Critics accused Ashcroft of adopting an unwieldy one-size-fits-all approach and taking yet another step to consolidate power at the Justice Department headquarters in Washington. Earlier this year, it was revealed that Ashcroft was intervening in the death penalty decisions of federal prosecutors, ordering them to seek executions in cases where they had decided not to. The Justice Department also has told prosecutors to report on so-called downward departures, in which judges hand down lighter sentences than the rigid federal sentencing guidelines require. Mary Price, general counsel for the Washington, D.C.-based criminal justice reform group Families Against Mandatory Minimums, called Ashcroft's latest memo "very disturbing." "Those people on the ground with a flesh-and-blood defendant in front of them are in the best position to know what ought to be done," Price said. "This almost removes human beings from the equation altogether. Gerald Lefcourt, former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the move almost certainly would result in more costly trials and more prisoners in a system that is already overburdened. "What they are doing is creating an inflexible, unjust system that eliminates all possibility of compassion," Lefcourt said. Bill Mercer, the U.S. attorney in Montana who sat on the15-member Attorney General's Advisory Committee, which drew up the changes, said they had the support of federal prosecutors. "You want uniformity," Mercer said. "You don't want someone's viewpoint or philosophy determining the outcome. What we are after is eliminating disparity from place to place and defendant to defendant when the crime is the same." The new guidelines contain enough flexibility for unique cases, he said. The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 created uniform sentences in which federal judges must take into account the crime and mitigating circumstances in an almost mathematical formula that determines a criminal's prison sentence. A 1989 memo by then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, who served under President Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, outlined guidelines that sought similar consistency from prosecutors. Reno reworked those guidelines during her tenure to give local prosecutors more discretion. Mercer said the Ashcroft memo returned to the "spirit of the Thornburgh directive." The Ashcroft memo states that "federal prosecutors must charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offenses that are supported by the facts." "Charges should not be filed simply to exert leverage to get a plea," the memo said. Plea bargains may be used only in rare circumstances, such as when a defendant agrees to provide "substantial assistance" to law enforcement officers. While Ashcroft in his memo invoked the Sentencing Reform Act as a "watershed event in the pursuit if fairness and consistency in the federal criminal justice system" others have been less complimentary. Supreme Court justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer have criticized the rigid sentencing guidelines. Breyer was a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission that helped write them. Let 'Em Know! Let 'Em Know! Let 'Em Know! FEDERAL PROSECUTORS TO SEEK MAXIMUM PENALTIES Author: Shannon McCaffrey Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 Source: Sun News (Myrtle Beach, SC) From: "D. Paul Stanford" stanford@crrh.org Contact: opinions@thesunnews. com Website * Details * Bookmark Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. democraticundergroun d.com Related Articles Zero Reassurance - Jacob Sulum John Ashcroft's Assault on the Constitution Patriot Act II Resurrected? Target: 'Narco-Terror' - ABCNews.com Google: Stop John Ashcroft

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