Kath wrote:
I hate the fucking red pill, sometimes. What sort of fresh hell is this?
DeO - read page 22 and part of 23. Not sure I want to continue. I know how the dolphins are treated; I don't need the minute-to-minute details.
How do we fix it, is my usual question.
It's not that onerous,
F. MANDATORY MINIMUM PENALTIES FROM THE MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY
1. Introduction
As detailed herein, beginning in 1951, Congress changed how it used mandatory
minimum penalties in three significant ways. First, Congress enacted more mandatory minimum
penalties. Second, Congress expanded its use of mandatory minimum penalties to offenses not
traditionally covered by such penalties. Before 1951, mandatory minimum penalties typically
punished offenses concerning treason, murder, piracy, rape, slave trafficking, internal revenue
collection, and counterfeiting. Today, the majority of convictions under statutes carrying
mandatory minimum penalties relate to controlled substances, firearms, identity theft, and child
sex offenses. Third, the mandatory minimum penalties most commonly used today are generally
lengthier than mandatory minimum penalties in earlier eras.
In the second half of the 20th century, Congress reversed its prior policy of disfavoring
mandatory minimum penalties to combat what it perceived as widespread problems resulting
from drug trafficking and related crime. In 1951, Congress enacted a mandatory minimum
penalty of two years of imprisonment for violating the Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act,
which broadly prohibited the importation, sale, purchase, and receipt of controlled substances.131
Second and third violations of the Act carried mandatory minimum penalties of five and 10 years
of imprisonment, respectively.132 And when Congress created additional controlled substances
offenses in 1956, it set a mandatory minimum penalty of 10 years of imprisonment for selling
heroin to a juvenile and five years of imprisonment for a first offense of possessing narcotics on
a vessel.133
By the late 1960s, however, as mandatory minimum penalties for drug offenses became
increasingly unpopular, the Nixon administration proposed a sweeping reform of the controlled
substance sentencing laws.134 As a result, Congress enacted the Comprehensive Drug Abuse
Prevention and Control Act of 1970,135 which repealed nearly all mandatory minimum penalties
for drug offenses. Congress believed that changes in the existing penalties, “particularly through
elimination of mandatory minimum sentences,” would establish “a more realistic, more flexible,
and thus more effective system of punishment and deterrence of violations of the federal
narcotics laws.”136
Congress’s repeal of mandatory minimum penalties for drug offenses did not necessarily
reflect a general policy disfavoring mandatory minimum penalties for all types of offenses. For
example, Congress also amended 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) to require a mandatory minimum penalty of
at least one year of imprisonment for using or carrying a firearm during the commission of a
felony, as well as a mandatory consecutive two-year term of imprisonment for second and
subsequent offenses.137 In 1970, the same year it repealed mandatory minimum penalties for
drug offenses, Congress created a mandatory minimum penalty of at least one year of
imprisonment for using or carrying explosives while committing certain other crimes.138
Congressional action in the 1980s resulted in the enactment of many additional
mandatory minimum penalties and an increase in the length of existing penalties—particularly
for drug offenses and violent crimes.139 Congress’s use of mandatory minimum penalties in this
period followed a shift in sentencing attitudes away from a rehabilitative model toward
controlling crime using “more certain, less disparate, and more appropriately punitive”
sentences.140 This shift contributed to the enactment of the mandatory minimums that are most
commonly applied today, particularly the penalties for firearm and drug trafficking crimes.
