[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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