Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 1842. While I support the underlying goal of punishing sex offenders, the existing sentencing laws already provide serious punishment for this conduct. Unfortunately, this legislation expands nonmandatory minimums to additional offenders. This expansion of mandatory of minimums comes at the heels of Attorney General Sessions' memo, which has been roundly criticized for rescinding the Holder memo and directing all Federal prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges and the maximum sentence, to include mandatory minimum sentences. The Sessions memo takes away, from Federal prosecutors, the ability to individually assess the unique circumstances of their cases and any factors which would mitigate against seeking the harshest sentence in every case. Once that offense triggers a mandatory minimum and once that is charged, the sentencing judge loses any discretion to assess the unique circumstances of the case and, upon conviction, must impose the mandatory minimum provided in the code. This legislation is remarkable in that it extends a number of exceptionally high mandatory minimums to most defendants. The mandatory sentence of life without parole is expanded to apply to more cases. The mandatory sentence of 35 years is expanded. In other cases, the mandatory minimum would triple from 5 years to 15 years. These are grave sentences, and the judge should have discretion in determining when they should be imposed.…”