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individual defendant, and minimize the negative impact of minimum sentencing laws without inherently needing those laws repealed.
“I’ve never seen a prosecutor and a defender unite to pursue a concern about judicial behavior … and I’ve never seen a judge do the things that this judge has been accused of doing, though I can make no judgment about whether these accusations are true or false.“
Seattle Times
April 25, 2019
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