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individual defendant, and minimize the negative impact of minimum sentencing laws without inherently needing those laws repealed.
"A closely-divided Supreme Court recently ruled, in Currier v. Virginia, that when a criminal defendant agrees with the government to adjudicate multiple charges through multiple trials, he cannot, when the first trial ends, reverse course and say that the U.S. Constitution allows only one trial."
Western Journal
July 3, 2018
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