Defendants are regularly condemned to years, decades, or life in prison for minor infractions because of minimum sentencing statutes. If judges had more discretion in sentencing, then sentences could be more proportional to the crime, more specific to the individual defendant, and minimize the negative impact of minimum sentencing laws without inherently needing those laws repealed.
"One conclusion reached by the NACDL was that "There is ample evidence that federal criminal defendants are being coerced to plead guilty because the penalty for exercising their constitutional rights is simply too high to risk.""
Forbes
July 31, 2018
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