At every stage of the criminal justice process,
mandatory minimums contribute to disparate impact among racial groups.
They encourage policing practices, investigative techniques, and
prosecutorial strategies that are illogical, counterintuitive, and
sometimes arbitrary and abusive. The ultimate example of how
mandatory minimums have fostered prosecutorial excess is the
unfettered prosecutorial discretion to disregard those minimums for
so‐called cooperators. This essay provides a practitioner's view of
how mandatory mini‐mum sentences diminish fairness and contribute to
arbitrary justice.
Volume 160 Issue 1 2011 Essay