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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.
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Memorandum on Department Charging and Sentencing Policy - US Department of Justice PDF
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @06:30PM
Making the big leap that the war on drugs is ultimately governed by the Constitution,
does this say that liquid drugs that intoxicate are not to be regulated by the Feds and are solely the domain of the states?
Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @06:39PM (1 child)
10 years for 1,000 kilograms of marijuana! Luckily I only have 999 kilos on me now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @07:28PM
Dude, that's a ton of weed!