Washington, D.C. – Congresswoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., told Congressional Black Caucus convention attendees that they might finally be winning a decades-long war to eradicate mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines.
“I believe this session we have a real chance of getting this bill passed,” said the beloved Waters to a spirited crowd that included NFL icon Jim Brown and multiple mandatory minimum sentence victims.
Waters moderated a distinguished panel of fair-sentencing advocates that included: Julie Stewart, president of FAMM president (Families Against Mandatory Minimums); famed Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree; mandatory minimum victim Kendra Smith; American Bar Association delegate Barry Boss; and Judge Terry Hatter.
Waters and other panelists called the current times “the perfect storm” to institute dramatic changes in the American judicial system. This “perfect storm” includes the election of the first African American president (Barack Obama); the appointment of the first African American U.S. attorney general (Eric Holder), who has publicly called for sentencing law changes to be implemented this year; and strong sentiments by both Republicans and Democrats that change must be implemented.
Congress enacted much more stringent sentences for multiple felony convictions and drug offenses, Waters said, after college basketball superstar Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose the day after being chosen as the top draft pick by the NBA’s Boston Celtics in 1986.
Having the NCAA’s most celebrated and dominant player of the 1980s succumb to a drug overdose, appalled lawmakers and shook the nation to its core. It prompted politicians to install draconian, reactionary sentencing guidelines that have had catastrophic consequences on black lives and families ever since.
Boss and Hatter said the measures essentially took the power of sentencing out of the hands of judges and put it into the hands of prosecutors, who often leveraged the hideously long sentences against defendants and suspects for political gains.
According to Olgetree, there is something even more ominous than the exorbitantly high sentences African Americans are saddled with.
“Essentially, these people are not even citizens of the United States. After they get out, they are free to walk the streets. But they have no freedoms — they don’t have the right to vote. They can’t get a job — not even a job cutting grass or other of the most basic jobs. This is why we must change the system,” he said. –terry shropshire
