When Sentencing Laws Don’t Do Justice : Marshall’s penalty should fit the crime and the defendant

In all likelihood, Bobbie Marshall will spend the next four years as he has spent the past three: locked up in federal prison. After years of delay, a reluctant judge last week sentenced Marshall, but not before calling on President Clinton to pardon the man who admitted selling crack cocaine across the street from a Pacoima elementary school.

Why? U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. believes Marshall has reformed himself and would do more good for society free than in prison. But federal sentencing guidelines eliminate almost all judicial discretion from such matters, requiring judges to hand down strict standardized punishments for certain crimes and mandatory minimums for others. Hatter has tried to buck the guidelines--which are popular with voters--and delayed Marshall’s sentencing time and again in an ultimately futile fight to buy more time. Last week, time ran out.

Hatter’s efforts on behalf of Marshall might seem odd. But while free on bail in the early 1990s, Marshall claims to have had a revelation that turned his life around. The high school dropout began teaching teenagers weightlifting and then counseling them on the consequences of their actions. He knew firsthand the trouble that accompanies a life of crime. While free, he earned the respect of community leaders in the northeast San Fernando Valley as well as school officials, members of the clergy and even a U.S. congressman.

All argued correctly that Marshall deserves a second chance, that he is far more valuable to society helping teens in trouble than he was locked in a cell. Despite concessions that shaved a few years off his sentence, Marshall could not escape the sentencing laws--which replace judicial discretion with mandatory incarceration. Yet while federal judges certainly deserve more leeway in sentencing, Marshall does not deserve a presidential pardon.

More appropriately, Marshall’s sentence should be commuted--an option that allows greater flexibility but does not let him off the hook entirely. For instance, Marshall could serve a supervised probation in which he continues to counsel youngsters on the dangers of drugs and crime. One slip, and he would land back in prison for the full term. Reasonable, but impossible under current law. And it’s highly unlikely that Clinton will intervene on Marshall’s behalf.

Justice is individual. Yet in federal court, mechanical sentencing guidelines generally deny the sort of individuality that makes each case, each defendant and each victim unique. Judges become clerks. It is a sad--and scary--state of affairs when individual justice can be administered only by the highest levels of government.