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individual defendant, and minimize the negative impact of minimum sentencing laws without inherently needing those laws repealed.
“The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will reconsider whether felony defendants in state court can be convicted by divided juries, a move that has the potential to rewrite decades of precedent and affect an untold number of cases in the two states that have allowed it: Louisiana and Oregon.“
The New Orleans Advocate
March 18, 2019
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