Arguments Against Mandatory Sentencing

Mandatory minimum sentencing laws also take away input of judges on specific cases and disregard uniqueness of circumstances. For example, in 2013, there was a widowed 55 year-old woman named Shirley Schmitt in Iowa who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for producing about 50 grams of methamphetamine. These laws targeted major suppliers of drugs such as drug traffickers or cartels to protect society but in Schmitt’s case, she was only feeding her addiction (“‘Should Mandatory Sentencing Be Repealed? Yes." Women in Prison.”). Since this case fell under the mandatory minimum laws, the judge’s authority was not taken into account for sentencing. In the March 3, 2017 issue of the Congressional Quarterly Researcher titled “Women in Prison: Should they be treated differently than men?” the author, Sarah Glazer, gave an anecdote of

a woman named Ramona Brant who, in 2015, was almost served 21 years to life in prison for being a bystander of her boyfriend distributing crack cocaine. Due to the case falling under the mandatory minimum laws, she was charged as her boyfriend was even though there was proof of hospital records that she was not a part of the distribution (“Women in Prison: Should They Be Treated Differently from Men?”). Ramona Brant was granted release from former President Barack Obama, unlike many others whose cases were similar.

Without the judge’s authority in the cases, the judge cannot decide a punishment for the specific case and the defendant, and it is left up to the prosecutors. According to the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, “prosecutors frequently threaten to bring charges carrying long mandatory minimum sentences and longer guidelines sentences to scare a defendant to plead guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence and give up every factual and legal basis for a defense.” With this power that prosecutors hold, they want the citizens of the United States to believe that the justice system hasn’t been warped and that they use their power considerately and concisely so they preserve their power in drug cases (Monsell, 2017). Every crime and every case is unique and different, right? According to Molly Gill, “Lengthy mandatory minimum sentences are cruel, inhumane, and degrading because they obliterate individualized justice, the bedrock of any fair sentencing system” (“Let's Abolish Mandatory Minimums: The Punishment Must Fit the Crime,”

2009). Without a judge’s input, the humane stature of justice for an individual is removed since the circumstances and the history of the offender are not addressed. So why are cases, such as Schmitt’s, being labeled under the mandatory minimum laws where offenders are being sentenced correspondingly when each is unique? Until the judge’s contribution is reinstated in the court under mandatory minimum laws, each drug case is going to be sentenced alike.