In
the United States, people can land in prison for life over minor
offenses. They can be locked up forever for siphoning gasoline from a
truck, shoplifting small items from a department store or attempting
to cash a stolen check. Sentences across the United States in the
last 30 years have doubled. Roy
Lee Clay,
for example, received in 2013 a sentence of mandatory punishment of
life without parole for refusing to accept a plea bargain of 10 years
for trafficking 1kg of heroin. Even the sentencing judge
found this “extremely severe and harsh”. The bigger picture: a recent
Human Rights Watch report found
that the threat of harsh sentences leads 97% of drug defendants to
plead guilty rather than exercise their right to a public trial.
Most
citizens are shocked when they hear such reports. Federal judge John
Gleeson of
New York said that the way prosecutors use plea bargaining “coerces
guilty pleas and produces sentences so excessively severe they take
your breath away”. Federal judge Mark
Bennett of
Iowa has described the “shocking, jaw-dropping disparity” of
prior-conviction enhancements to force a plea bargain in a case.
Read on...
No comments:
Post a Comment