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posted by on Tuesday May 16 2017, @04:08AM   Printer-friendly
from the guilty dept.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday that he has directed his federal prosecutors to pursue the most severe penalties possible, including mandatory minimum sentences, in his first step toward a return to the war on drugs of the 1980s and 1990s that resulted in long sentences for many minority defendants and packed U.S. prisons.

[...] In the later years of the Obama administration, a bipartisan consensus emerged on Capitol Hill for sentencing reform legislation, which Sessions opposed and successfully worked to derail.

In a two-page memo to federal prosecutors across the country, Sessions overturned former attorney general Eric H. Holder's sweeping criminal charging policy that instructed his prosecutors to avoid charging certain defendants with offenses that would trigger long mandatory minimum sentences. In its place, Sessions told his more than 5,000 assistant U.S. attorneys to charge defendants with the most serious crimes, carrying the toughest penalties.

More at Washington Post, Fox News, Huffington Post, The Hill

Memorandum on Department Charging and Sentencing Policy - US Department of Justice PDF


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @01:42AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @01:42AM (#510870)

    I voted for Trump because the other politicians hated him. I hated them, so in theory the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I know Trump wouldn't be my friend, but there were no friendly options for me, so what goes around comes around. If they're too busy fighting each other maybe they'll leave me alone a little more often and perhaps the internal power struggles will lead to a slightly better government in the future. I would have voted for Sanders solely because his voting record was consistent, or at least that's what I had heard (would have looked it up if he had been running).

    It's all bullshit anyway. The President is supposed to be more focused on foreign policy than internal policy. Somehow the general public thinks the President's job should be what Congress does. Sadly members of the government are buying into that miss-belief too.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @01:36AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @01:36AM (#511485)

    The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more, no less.
    - Howard Tayler (Schlock Mercenery)