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December 6, 2009

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Editorial: Tough on justice

Monday, Jan. 5, 2004 | 8:33 a.m.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission offers guidelines to federal judges so that people throughout the country convicted of similar crimes receive approximately the same punishments. Six months ago we criticized Congress for approving the Feeney amendment, which interprets the guidelines as mandates. Under the amendment, any federal judge who hands down a sentence more lenient than recommended by the guidelines is placed on a list by the Justice Department. The list, which is forwarded to congressional judiciary committees, does two things: It places those judges under pressure and it targets their cases for aggressive appeals.

We said then that this is not justice and raised concern about judicial independence. In his annual year-end statement, William Rehnquist, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, expressed the same sentiments. He made the Feeney amendment the central theme of his statement, which shows how seriously he considers it to be flawed. Congress should repeal this amendment so that sentences reflect the seriousness of the crimes rather than the serious pressure felt by the judge.

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