>That convincing is made a whole lot easier with mandatory minimum sentences.
>So, you can go before the judge (or jury) on a charge with a 10-year
>mandatory minimum, or you can plead to a lesser charge that carries
>3 years. How much
>of a risk-taker are you? Thus mandatory minimums constitute a fearful weapon
>in the hands of the prosecutor.
Mandatory sentencing effectively replaces the system of sentencing discretion executed by judges in open court with sentencing discretion exercised in secret by government prosecutors. Absurdly high mandatory minimum sentences amounts to legalisation of prosecutorial blackmail.
Where implemented, this is a flagrant breach of the doctrine of separation of powers. The courts remain nominally independent, but irrelevant, their main functions (of determining guilt and determining appropriate punishment) having been usurped by prosecutors employed at-will by the executive branch of government. So, in other words, mandatory sentencing is a method by which executive government
Plea-bargaining is the most odious ingredient to add to the mix, making punishment quite arbitrary in practice, in spite of so-called minimum sentencing. (Following what is often a form of trial by ordeal.) It is no exaggeration to say that you end up with a pre Magna Carta justice system, with arbitrary imprisonment at the whim of executive government.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas