[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Page 9209]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCES

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, there are two matters I want to talk about. 
Before I speak about the immigration, I want to speak about the Supreme 
Court ruling today in Alleyne v. the United States, that facts 
underlying mandatory minimum sentences must be proved to a jury beyond 
a reasonable doubt.
  I continue to believe our criminal justice system's reliance on 
mandatory minimum sentences is a mistake.
  In March, Senator Paul and I introduced the Justice Safety Valve Act 
of 2013, to give Federal judges greater flexibility in sentencing in 
cases where a mandatory minimum is not only unnecessary but often 
counterproductive.
  Mandatory minimum sentences imprison some people, particularly 
nonviolent offenders, for far longer than is just or beneficial.
  Looking at it just from a fiscal point of view, as a result of 
mandatory minimums the Federal prison population has exploded in recent 
years. This has placed enormous strain on the Justice Department's 
budget. That means less money for Federal law enforcement, less aid to 
State and local law enforcement, less funding for crime prevention 
programs that make us safer, plus less money for prisoner reentry 
programs.
  Sentencing reform has worked at the State level. The Justice Safety 
Valve Act is an important step toward the sentencing reform our Federal 
system desperately needs. I applaud the Supreme Court decision today in 
Alleyne.
  I have long felt that when legislative bodies pass mandatory 
minimums, it is a feel-good response to crime, but it does no good.
  Judges need discretion. Every case that comes before a judge is 
different. Now, do judges always get it right out of the tens of 
thousands of cases that come before them? No. Of course not. Sometimes 
they might not, but they are far more often right than wrong. They are 
always more right than a legislative one-size-fits-all approach. 
Mandatory minimum laws are one size fits all. Anybody who has spent 
time in the criminal justice system either as a defense counsel or as a 
prosecutor or as a judge knows that one size does not fit all. We 
should get rid of all of our mandatory minimums, have real standards 
that judges will follow, and then let the individual men and women who 
sit on the bench make the decision.

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