I agree that it would be good if we got rid of the practice of overcharging, which isn’t just going for the highest offense. Prosecutors will often try to tack on related charges that they can peel off easily while bargaining. But having read the memo, plea bargaining situations are not what Sessions is going after.
That said, the Holder memo he’s going after here was weak tea to begin with. The new memo retains some prosecutorial discretion, but not as much. The old memo could be ignored by a hard charging prosecutor and you’d still have big charges getting leveled.
In summary, Jeff Sessions is a bag of snakes that talks, but the thing he’s going after here was no substitute for real criminal justice reform.
Edits: fixed some grammar and changed hanging to charging, damn phone
hahaha you are so right! I’ve even heard that in working democracies, if one person gets 3 million more votes than another person, then she’d be president!
I agree that the way forward is to remove unjust laws from the books
My guess here is that the instruction only applies to federal cases? Non-fed prosecutors usually operate under the 'throw the book at 'em" tactic, primarily used to extract plea deals so that the prosecutor doesn’t have to prove anything at all in court. Throwing the book uses higher charges the prosecutor knows they can’t really prove in court.
I guess I should’ve read farther down, but I’ll add this- I don’t think federal prosecutors employ overcharging to the same effect as municipal prosecutors.
I think the real effect, as others have noted, is stripping contextual discretion from federal prosecutors. Sometimes the highest charge possible doesn’t accurately portray the context of the crime, particularly dangerous here is ‘highest charge’ is qualified as 'longest possible minimum sentence, and many of the federal sentence guidelines are arbitrary as fuck.
If memory serves, it’s north of 90% plea bargains; with jury trials being dramatic but fairly rare; so the question of how the plea bargaining case goes has outsize importance.
Well, maybe, but it seems to depend on the crime. Passive pot smokers are a threat, no doubt, but psychopath financial sector criminals don’t seem to suffer much from aggressive prosecution.
I recommend the above-linked piece for everyone who is, like me, still able to be shocked by anything Sessions does, says, or writes. I got away with the impression that this person is actually more dangerous than your favourite Goldfish-in-office. The Orange One doesn’t believe in anything, it seems (or so the rap goes). But Sessions? He believes. He may have found the One Ring, and unlike Smeagol, he is able to use it.
My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time—
To let the punishment fit the crime—
The punishment fit the crime;
And make each prisoner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment,
Of innocent merriment!
Yeah, I’m wondering about rooting for Trump to stay in office, because the combo of Pence/Sessions would actually have the competence to get shit done.
Maybe the best thing would be for Dems to start a whisper campaign that Sessions laughs at Trump behind his back and can’t wait to stab him in the back, might get Trump to fire him.
You could also argue that the Goldfish is actually a front for those two, creating enough fnord for them to push through their politics relatively undisturbed. The stuff Sessions already said would have caused quite a response, I presume, if not everybody would be staring at the latest splash from the oval glass bowl.
