April 15, 2010 4:47PM 

# ‘Taking the Rest of His Life Away’ 

By [Tim Lynch](https://www.cato.org/people/tim-lynch) 

---

<a class="js-popover-trigger cursor-pointer popover-trigger" data-bs-placement="bottom" data-bs-trigger="click" id="popover-trigger"> 

SHARE 

</a> 

Upon sentencing a 24 year old to 27 years in federal prison on a drug charge, the Federal Judge Alan Bloch lamented, “I was basically taking the rest of his life away.”

Go [here](http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10087/1046268-84.stm) to read about that case, which is coming before the Supreme Court for review. For related Cato scholarship on sentencing, go [here](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1317) and [here](https://www.cato.org/pubs/scr/2005/usvbooker.pdf) (pdf). For Cato work on the drug war, go [here](https://www.cato.org/drug-war).

##### Related Tags 

[Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) 

[![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) 
This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).