Ketanji Brown Jackson Called Out For Twisting Trump-Era Sentencing Reform

Ketanji

Prominent Republican  Sen. Tom Cotton (AR) probed critically into Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s record Tuesday, drawing doubts as to why the judge chose to reduce the sentence of a convicted drug dealer.

During Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Cotton raised the case of Keith Young, a Washington, D.C., drug dealer that was found guilty in 2018 on federal drug trafficking and firearms charges. Police found above 2 kgs of heroin tainted with fentanyl, a loaded gun, 170 rounds of ammunition, along with several high capacity magazines when they browsed his house in 2017. Judge Jackson ruled in this matter, sentencing Young to what was after at the time, the legal minimum of twenty years behind bars since he had a previous felony drug conviction, according to the Department of Justice.

According to Cotton, at Young’s sentencing, Jackson specified she  “shared his frustration that you couldn’t give him a lighter sentence.”

In December 2018 Congress passed the First Step Act, a sweeping criminal justice reform bill that President Donald Trump signed into law almost immediately. The new law reduced the length of mandatory minimum sentences, provided courts with more discernment to ignore those mandates in certain scenarios.

In 2020, Young applied for ‘compassionate release’ from federal prison as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, while Jackson declined his request for release, she utilized the opportunity to examine her previous sentence, decreasing Young’s prison time by 7 and a half years.

Cotton severely criticized her decision. He asked if Jackson spoke with the “victims” of Young’s criminal activities prior to decreasing his sentence and likewise, she claimed that there “were no victims.”

“He committed a drug crime, there were no identifiable victims in his case,” she said.

Cotton was having none of it though and rebuked the judge, saying that “drug crime is not a victimless crime,” mentioning overdose deaths, however, Jackson replied that there was nobody to contact due to the reality that there were no identifiable victims in Young’s particular case.

Judge Jackson continued to explain why she vied far Young’s initial 20-year sentence in addition to why she reviewed that choice after Congress changed the regulations.

“What I did find extraordinary and compelling,” Jackson said, quoting federal law that permits judges to reconsider a convict’s sentence, “is the fact that between the 20-year sentence that I gave him originally and the compassionate release motion that he filed, Congress changed the law. Congress decided that the old penalty, the old crime, was no longer eligible for the increased, so that a person who was convicted at the time of his compassionate release motion for doing exactly what Mr. Young had done would not get a 20-year sentence. That would not be lawful for a person at that moment,” Jackson said.

“And one of the things that Congress says to the judges is care about unwarranted sentencing disparity,” she continued. “Care about the fact that the person you’re sentencing is being treated differently than someone else who committed exactly the same crime. And I understand it wasn’t retroactive in the sense that everybody, absent a compelling — absent a compassionate release motion, wouldn’t have been eligible for resentencing, but here I have a defendant before me, and all of the factors that Congress has asked me to take into account, and a compelling argument that there were extraordinary and compelling circumstances that is a change in the law that would create unwarranted sentencing disparity if I didn’t take account of it.”

“And so what I determined under those circumstances is that I would sentence — resentence Mr. Young to the penalty that Congress had decided was the appropriate penalty for the conduct that he committed as of the time of his motion,” she concluded.

Following that exchange , Cotton– that distinctly opposed the First Step Act– called Congress’ action a “mistake” and likewise declared that Jackson had really acted mistakenly by retroactively reducing Young’s sentence.

“Judge, Congress did change the law after a sentencing in the First Step Act. That was a terrible mistake. Congress specifically did not make that change retroactively,” Cotton said.

“And you saw that, and you thought it was extraordinary and compelling. Even though Congress specifically did not make it retroactive, you chose to rewrite the law because you were sympathetic to a fentanyl drug kingpin whom you had expressed frustration at having sentenced him to his 20-year sentence in the first place. You twisted the law and you rewrote it, so you could cut the sentence of a drug kingpin. That’s what you did, Judge.”

” Respectfully senator, I disagree,” Jackson responded.

 

H/T The Blaze

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