Popular Culture Review Vol. 7, No. 2, August 1996 | Page 61

Two more senior federal judges
recently joined a growing list of
their colleagues nationwide in
refusing to preside over drug
cases as a protest to the extreme
and counter-productive sentences
they are required to impose in
these cases. We are sympathetic
with their distress. Tough,
inflexible federal sentencing rules,
once considered "the answer" to
rising drug use and crime, threaten
to make a mockery of our federal
criminal justice system....
A young offender convicted of first
time possession of $50 worth of
drugs might be sentenced to a 20year prison term or even a life term
without the possibility of parole....
— LA Times editorial, 25 April 1993