Nancy GertnerÂ

Drug Crimes and Mandatory Minimums: A Federal Judge’s Take

For decades, U.S. law forced federal judges to impose severe prison sentences on nonviolent drug offenders. Under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, Congress mandated a minimum sentence of five years without parole for possession of five grams of crack cocaine, for example, and federal judges could not consider mitigating circumstances in sentencing.  But this […]