Editorial: A question of fairness

Sunday, July 8, 2007 | 7:10 a.m.

Recent presidential administrations have treated federal sentencing guidelines more as mandates, a trend continued by President Bush. But in commuting the prison sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Bush appeared to be making a strong statement that the guidelines are not infallible.

In defending his Libby decision, Bush said he believed the 30-month prison sentence handed to Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff was too severe, despite the fact that it fell well within federal sentencing guidelines.

This represents a stark change of direction for Bush. Writing in The New York Times last week, an attorney at the University of Houston Law Center pointed to Bush's record as governor of Texas. Lawyers for 57 inmates sentenced to death asked for commutations. Their arguments that their clients were mentally retarded, or that their lawyers had fallen asleep during their trials, or that they had been juveniles at the time of their crimes, fell on deaf ears.

The Times also carried a story about a recent Supreme Court case, in which the Bush administration filed a brief opposing an appeal for a reduced sentence from a decorated veteran convicted of perjury - the same crime committed by Libby.

In that article, a defense attorney was quoted as saying, "What you're going to see is people like me quoting President Bush in every pleading that comes across every federal judge's desk."

Statements about judicial practices made by a sitting president are not like opinions issued by U.S. Supreme Court justices. No judge at any level would ever have to defer to the president's views or actions in making any decision.

Nevertheless, defense attorneys will seek to capitalize on Bush's decision, using the argument that sentencing guidelines have now been established as more a force of whimsical politics than of immutable legal procedure.

In a fair world, Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence would start a top-to-bottom review of all federal sentencing guidelines. Isn't it likely that other sentences, not just those of a Bush loyalist, could also be too severe?