A Quote by Michelle Alexander

Prosecutors frequently overcharge, load up charges on individual defendants, knowing that three strikes laws and harsh mandatory minimum sentences will force people to plea bargain and essentially convict themselves because they're terrified of doing a life sentence for a relatively minor crime.

Michelle Alexander

Quote Topics

Bargain Because Charges Convict Crime Doing Essentially Force Frequently Harsh Individual Knowing Laws Life Load Mandatory Minimum Minor People Plea Prosecutors Relatively Sentence Sentences Strikes Terrified Themselves Three Three Strikes Up Will

Quote Author

Michelle Alexander
American - Writer
Born: October 7, 1967

Mandatory minimum sentences give no discretion to judges about the amount of time that the person should receive once a guilty verdict is rendered. Harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses were passed by Congress in the 1980s as part of the war on drugs and the "get tough" movement, sentences that have helped to fuel our nation's prison boom and have also greatly aggravated racial disparities, particularly in the application of mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine.

Michelle Alexander

The federal sentencing guidelines should be revised downward. By contrast to the guidelines, I can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory minimum sentences. In too many cases, mandatory minimum sentences are unwise and unjust.

Anthony Kennedy

I will build the wall and I will impose tough mandatory minimum - remember this - tough mandatory minimum prison sentences for deported illegal immigrants who try to reenter the country. They keep coming back and back and back.

Donald Trump

Data do not indicate that mandatory minimum sentences keep our communities safer. Instead, mandatory minimums are disproportionately harming people and communities of color.

Ralph Northam

Throughout the 1970s, '80s and '90s, federal mandatory minimum laws were implemented that forced judges to deliver sentences far lengthier than they would have if allowed to use their own discretion. The result has been decades of damage, particularly to young people.

Rand Paul

In my experience, most federal prosecutors, at every level, are seeking to make a name for themselves, and the best way to do that is by prosecuting some high-level person. While companies that are indicted almost always settle, individual defendants whose careers are at stake will often go to trial.

Jed S. Rakoff

Prosecutors tend to love conspiracy charges because the rules of evidence are easier, meaning you can get more in to help prove a crime.

David Shuster

Under international law, defendants convicted in absentia have the right to a retrial, unless the prosecutors for the authorities who do finally capture them can show that the defendants knew they were under indictment.

Ronen Bergman

It's kind of like sentencing. A lot of people say that we have a heavy sentence for this crime and a light sentence for another crime, and what we ought to do is reduce the heavy sentence so it's more in line with the other. Wrong. In most cases we ought to increase the light sentence and make it compatible with the heavy sentence, and be serious about punishment because we are becoming too tolerant as a society, folks, especially of crime, in too many parts of the country.

Rush Limbaugh

We cannot just say law and order. We have to say - we have to come forward with a plan that is going to divert people from the criminal justice system, deal with mandatory minimum sentences, which have put too many people away for too long for doing too little.

Hillary Clinton

Some of the folks we see are in for defending themselves against their abusers, or drug charges that, because of the California state prison system, they have mandatory sentencing and life in prison for three counts of simple drug possession, or whatever. I find it not only helpful but, I think, necessary in maintaining my grounding and my perspective. Because music is such an unrealistic job to have. It's a really lucky job to have, but it's also very unrealistic.

Thao Nguyen

Prosecutorial misconduct is one of the most detrimental problems in our criminal justice system, because prosecutors are essentially the most powerful actors in our justice system because they set the charges, they basically set up the rules of the game.

Maya Moore

If it comes to a question of law, the charges they brought against me - the Espionage Act - is called the quintessential political crime. A political crime, in legal terms, is defined as any crime against a state, as opposed to against an individual. Assassination, for example, is not a political crime because you've killed a person, an individual, and they've been harmed; their family's been harmed. But the state itself, you can't be extradited for harming it.

Edward Snowden

In response to the advocacy of groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, most states adopted tougher laws to punish drunk driving. Numerous states now have some type of mandatory sentencing for this offense - typically two days in jail for a first offense and two to ten days for a second offense. Possession of a tiny amount of crack cocaine, on the other hand, was given a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison.

Michelle Alexander

The federal government overrules state laws where state laws permit medicinal marijuana for people dying of cancer. The federal government goes in and arrests these people, put them in prison with mandatory, sometimes life sentences. This war on drugs is totally out of control. If you want to regulate cigarettes and alcohol and drugs, it should be at the state level.