[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 20 (Tuesday, March 1, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 1, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCES

  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, anyone interested in learning about the 
effectiveness of mandatory minimum sentences should read an article 
appearing in last Sunday's edition of the Washington Post. The article, 
entitled ``What prosecutors Know: Mandatory Minimums Work,'' was 
written by Jay Apperson, A Federal prosecutor in the Eastern District 
of Virginia.
  As Mr. Apperson explains: ``* * * most front-line Federal 
prosecutors, including those who deal with narcotics and organized 
crime cases, strongly support tough mandatory minimum sentences for 
drug trafficking. * * * Mandatory minimum sentences are perhaps the 
single most important law enforcement tool available to prosecutors in 
targeting and successfully convicting high-level drug dealers. 
Moreover, the minimums are not absolute: low-level defendants can avoid 
them by cooperating with prosecutors.''
  Mr. Apperson goes on to point out that mandatory minimums are often 
used successfully by prosecutors as leverage to encourage low-level 
drug dealers to identify, and help convict, the violent suppliers and 
big-time drug traffickers. In fact, mandatory minimums were designed to 
give low-level drug dealers an out: You can escape the heavy penalties, 
if you help finger those higher up in the drug-dealing chain of 
command.
  Mr. President, I know it's fashionable in some elite circles to knock 
mandatory minimum sentences for imposing long prison terms on young 
people, whose immaturity and lack of opportunity may have led them down 
the path of lawlessness. But, as Mr. Apperson's article points out, the 
real threat to our young people is not the mandatory minimum, but the 
vicious drug dealer whose business is to ruin lives and destroy 
communities.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Apperson's commentary 
be reprinted in the Record immediately after my remarks.
  There being no objection, the commentary was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Feb. 27, 1994]

             What Prosecutors Know: Mandatory Minimums Work

                            By Jay Apperson

       Former Deputy Attorney General Philip Heymann has drawn 
     favorable editorial comment in recent weeks for his criticism 
     of mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related and other 
     serious federal crimes. Yet most front-line federal 
     prosecutors including those who deal with narcotics and 
     organized crime cases strongly support tough mandatory 
     minimum sentences for drug trafficking. Had Heymann asked us, 
     we would have told him why: Minimum sentences are perhaps the 
     single most important law enforcement tool available to 
     prosecutors in targeting and successfully convicting high-
     level drug dealers. Moreover, the minimums are not absolute: 
     Low-level defendants can avoid them by cooperating with 
     prosecutors.
       Real cases, tried by real prosecutors with real results, 
     provide the best evidence. Let me tell you about one of them, 
     a case I tried in the Eastern District of Virginia in 1988, 
     United States v. Angela Lewis & ``Sincere'' Ernest.
       When I first saw Angela Lewis, she was standing before a 
     federal magistrate, charged with drug trafficking. She was 
     petrified by the experience, terrified about what she was 
     going to tell her family. She was 19 and a successful student 
     with a future. She had never been in trouble with the law. 
     She did not use drugs. She was a perfect example of the 
     people that critics say are punished unfairly by mandatory 
     minimums. And she was also a perfect example of the people 
     the mandatory minimum sentencing scheme is designed to help.
       Charged with Angela Lewis was one ``Sincere'' Ernest, 
     sometime rap singer, part-time boyfriend, full-time crack 
     dealer. He didn't use drugs. He used people. Lewis later 
     testified that Ernest bragged to her about his thriving 
     business and told her that he had a lot of people selling 
     drugs for him in Washington, because the people there were 
     ``so stupid'' that they'd waste their money on dope.
       Ernest and Angela flew to New York together before Memorial 
     Day 1988. On the way back, he stuffed a paper bag in her 
     jacket and told her to wear it on the plane to Washington, 
     making her his ``mule.'' According to Angela, she told him, 
     ``If that's drugs, I don't want to carry them.'' Ernest told 
     her that if she didn't wear the jacket, she wouldn't get back 
     to Washington. He sat apart from her on the plane, and waited 
     for her to catch up with him at National Airport. They were 
     both arrested at the terminal. But it was Angela who was 
     carrying the drugs.
       On the way to jail, Angela later said, Ernest asked her to 
     ``take the rap'' for him, and since she had no criminal 
     record, she'd only do ``short time''--call it, Drug Sentence 
     Lite.
       We tried to get her to cooperate, and turn evidence on 
     Ernest. But she wouldn't. Without her help, we had to drop 
     the charges against him. But with so much evidence against 
     her, we easily convicted Angela. Mandatory minimums required 
     that she get at least 10 years (the 300 grams of crack she 
     was carrying was six times the 50-gram amount that triggers 
     the mandatory minimum). The sentencing judge disregarded the 
     statute and sentenced Lewis to six months. He express the 
     sympathetic view motivating many current critics: ``[She's] 
     19 years old, a good student and has no record of crime or 
     drug involvement.''
       I successfully appealed the judge's sentence, and after 
     almost two years of briefs and arguments to the appellate 
     court, the judge was ordered to resentence Lewis to 10 years. 
     Guess what? Within 24 hours of that sentence, I heard from 
     Lewis and her attorney. Lewis, it seems, wasn't ready to do 
     10 years for Ernest. She was ready to cooperate. With her 
     help, we arrested Ernest, who was convicted and is serving 21 
     years in federal prison.
       The tragedy is that during the almost two years it took to 
     reverse the sentence, Ernest had been running a crack house 
     in the Tidewater area and laundering drug profits into rap 
     music albums starring--yep--``Sincere'' Ernest. During that 
     time I have no doubt that other Angela Lewises were 
     recruited, used and discarded by Ernest, other victims preyed 
     upon and more poison distributed. This would not have 
     happened if the system had been allowed to work as intended.
       Opponents of mandatory minimums paint a picture of federal 
     prosecutors rounding up unfortunate drug addicts and low-
     level mules, tossing them into jail for 10 years and moving 
     on to the next case. The reality is quite different. Unlike 
     state drug cases, federal prosecutions attempt to focus on 
     long-term conspiracies involving increasingly sophisticated 
     and violent international operations. Our experience is that 
     without tough mandatory minimum sentences, defendants facing 
     a few years time are generally willing to serve it, rather 
     than finger violent suppliers and big-time traffickers. 
     Mandatory minimums are part of a comprehensive scheme that 
     includes the government's ability to reduce a defendant's 
     sentence below the mandatory when the defendant provides 
     ``substantial assistance'' in the prosecution of others. 
     Assistant U.S. attorneys have, by and large, insisted that 
     substantial assistance means moving ``up the ladder'' to 
     convict higher-up suppliers--those who run the operations. 
     These thugs deliberately insulate themselves from directly 
     dealing drugs. They use little people like Angela Lewis to do 
     the dirty work and take the rap.
       Before mandatory minimums, the underlings (couriers and 
     mules) served little jail time for the scutwork. They were 
     often paid for their prison time by their bosses; their short 
     sentences were simply the cost of doing business. Needless to 
     say, they didn't turn in those bosses.
       However, faced with the certainty of a 10-year mandatory 
     with no parole, it's amazing how a defendant's fear or 
     ``loyalty'' is suddenly put into perspective. They suddenly 
     realize they will be giving up a huge chunk of their lives 
     for someone else, who walks away scot free.
       Those arrested in federal drug cases are told immediately 
     that they face tough mandatory minimums and that their only 
     way out is to cooperate with the government, identify their 
     sources, work in conjunction with undercover agents and 
     testify in court.
       One person given that chance was Derrick Curry, a young man 
     who was the subject of a feature piece in The Washington Post 
     on Feb. 20. The writer lamented Curry's ``incomprehensibly 
     severe'' 20-year sentence for this ``small time dealer.'' The 
     article didn't report the full-range of Curry's known drug 
     dealings as revealed by FBI incident reports, surveillance 
     logs and supporting affidavits and testimony at Curry's 
     trial: Curry had, for example, distributed crack to the 
     undercover agent two previous times; the half kilo of crack 
     recovered from his station wagon was in addition to another 
     full kilo he had just delivered to a co-conspirator; a 12-
     gauge shotgun was found in his apartment when he was arrested 
     with his co-conspirator.
       Curry, the article did note, steadfastly refused to 
     cooperate by ``ratting on his friends.'' Friends? Are these 
     the same kind of ``friends'' who gave Len Bias the coke that 
     killed him? The same ``friends'' who supply poison to kids in 
     our neighborhoods? It is not the mandatory minimums that are 
     ruining ``an entire generation of young black men,'' as the 
     article suggested, it is drug dealers like Curry and their 
     higher-up suppliers. Curry may be content that his suppliers 
     are continuing to work while he protects them and serves 
     their time for them. But I'm not. And neither are most 
     Americans.
       Here's what is missing from the public debate: Mandatory 
     minimum mechanisms were designed to help people exactly like 
     Derrick Curry and Angela Lewis dig themselves out of the 
     holes they had crawled into. They were designed to help Curry 
     and to hurt his suppliers and bosses, who use people like 
     Kleenex and throw them away when they're done. If Curry wants 
     to help these ringleaders stay out of jail, he can stay in 
     jail. He could have chosen to work with the system. He chose 
     not to. Fortunately, most defendants, like Lewis, make a 
     different choice. These result in convictions in case after 
     case of higher-level traffickers who would otherwise escape 
     prosecution.
       There is, to be sure, a small fraction of defendants who 
     are unable to provide the assistance that would reduce their 
     sentences. In my experience, this number is minuscule. But 
     beyond that, Attorney General Janet Reno has recently 
     provided line prosecutors with additional flexibility in 
     charging decisions to prevent an injustice in those cases 
     where a defendant truly cannot provide information. Her 
     action provides for flexibility without gutting the 
     effectiveness of the mandatory minimums. Congress and the 
     administration should resist current efforts to undercut 
     mandatory minimums legislatively. At the very least, the 
     public needs to know that mandatory minimums work.
       By the way, I moved to have Angela Lewis's sentence reduced 
     because of her ``substantial assistance'' to the United 
     States. Far from languishing in prison, she was free after 
     only 18 months. She now lives with her daughter and is 
     enrolled in a community college. She is staying away from 
     drugs, and those who run them.

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