News Release

April 8, 2003

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Federal Sentencing Guidelines in Amber Alert Bill Is Terrible Idea
Expanded federal control over sentencing would make "horrible system even worse"

Today, House and Senate conferees will meet to hammer out differences between each chamber's versions of the "Amber Alert" bill, which began in the Senate as an attempt to start a nationwide alert system for missing children. In the House, there is an effort to expand federal sentencing rules to all cases that come before federal judges by attaching it to the Amber Alert bill. Erik Luna, associate professor of law at the University of Utah and author of a Cato Institute policy analysis, "Misguided Guidelines: A Critique of Federal Sentencing," in a statement released today, had the following comments:

"For 15 years, the federal sentencing guidelines have been an affront to justice - they are convoluted, hyper-technical, mechanical, and transform district court judges into accountants rather than legal decision-makers," says Luna. "The effort to expand these guidelines would make a horrible system even worse, eliminating the last bit of discretion vested in trial judges and expressly overruling the Supreme Court's one sensible decision in this area (Koon v. United States). What's more, this mutation enters the political debate in classic logrolling style, embedded within Congress' Amber Alert legislation intended to protect kidnapped children. If our representatives were serious about ensuring justice in punishment, they wouldn't be adding to the dreadful edifice of sentencing guidelines. They would be knocking it down."

"Misguided Guidelines: A Critique of Federal Sentencing"