Federal drug laws produce a labeling problem. When you hear the term "drug trafficker," you may think of Pablo Escobar or Walter White, but the truth is that under federal law, drug traffickers include individuals who purchase pseudo-ephedrine for their methamphetamine dealer; serve as intermediary in a series of little transactions; and even get a suitcase for the wrong pal. Thanks to conspiracy laws, everybody on the totem pole can be subject to the exact same extreme mandatory minimum sentences.
To the men and ladies who prepared our federal drug laws in 1986, this may come as a surprise. According to Sen. Robert Byrd, cosponsor of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, the reason to attach 5- and ten-year compulsory sentences to drug trafficking was to punish "the kingpins-- the masterminds who are truly running these operations", and the mid-level dealerships.
Fast forward twenty-five years. Today, nearly everyone convicted of a federal drug criminal offense is founded guilty of "drug trafficking", which most of the time results in a minimum of a 5- or ten-year necessary jail sentence. That's a lot of time in federal jail for many people who are minor parts of drug trade, the large bulk of whom are males and females of color.
This is the system that federal district Judge Mark Bennett sees every day. Judge Bennett sits on the district court in northern Iowa, and he handles a lot of drug cases., I would have sent 1,092 of my fellow residents to federal jail for mandatory minimum sentences ranging from sixty months to life without the possibility of release.
The numbers can't convey the ridiculous catastrophe of all of it. This is how he describes a recent drug trafficking case:
I recently sentenced a group of more than twenty accused on meth trafficking conspiracy charges. All of them plead guilty. Eighteen were 'tablet smurfers,' as federal district attorneys put it, meaning their role amounted to frequently purchasing and providing cold medicine to meth cookers in exchange for very small, low-grade amounts to feed their extreme dependencies. Most were unemployed or underemployed. A number of were single moms. They did not offer or straight disperse meth; there were no hoards of cash, guns or counter surveillance devices. Yet all of them dealt with compulsory minimum sentences of sixty or 120 months.
There is data to suggest that Judge Bennett's experience is not uncharacteristic. In 2007, the U.S. Sentencing Commission put together significant data on drug and crack sentencing. They discovered that in 2005, the majority of the lowest-level drug- and crack-trafficking defendants-- males and females described as "street-level dealerships", "couriers/mules", and "renter/loader/lookout/ enabler/users"-- received five- or ten-year obligatory prison sentences. This is particularly true for crack-cocaine accused, most of whom are black; in spite of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, offering a small quantity of crack drug (28 grams) carries the very same compulsory minimum sentence-- five years-- as offering 500 grams of powder cocaine.
This is the truth for which proponents of serious federal drug laws need to account. We can not pretend that heavy sentences for women like Kemba Smith and guys like Jamel Dossie are the fluke errors of overboard laws. We must admit that our sentencing of small players in the drug trade to prison terms implied for the leaders of big drug companies-- as a common occurrence, not as an exception. As a result, we needlessly imprison lots of minor transgressors for long periods. Judge Bennett decries the human expenses of these sentences:
If prolonged compulsory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug addicts really worked, one might be able to rationalize them. There is no evidence that they do. I have seen how they leave hundreds of thousands of children parent-less and countless aging, infirm and passing away parents childless. They destroy households and strongly fuel the cycle of poverty and dependency.
Here, again, we have proof that Judge Bennett is ideal: check long necessary sentences are unneeded for most drug offenders. In 2002 and 2003, Michigan and New York repealed mandatory sentences for drug transgressors and gave judges the power to impose much shorter sentences, probation, or drug treatment.
He has actually seen obligatory laws written for the most serious, large-scale drug dealers used to the males and ladies on the lowest rungs of the drug trade, and he has seen it take place a lot. We when pictured that serious mandatory sentences would be utilized to deal with the leaders of big drug operations.
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