143: Sentencing
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
Daniel Rustinkowski was a congressman for 36 years, the powerful chairman of one of the most powerful committees, Ways and Means. But if anything happened when he was sentenced to prison for mail fraud, he started to meet people like one young man, 20 years old, who approached him in the exercise yard one day. And, uh, the gentleman, a very young, good-looking young man, said to me, uh, you know, are you a congressman and all, yeah, I am. I said, well, my guess, what did you do to do so bad? He said, well, he's like my transported drugs. I said, why would you do such a thing? He said, well, I was going to school and I needed the money. I said, okay. So what was the price that you sought for, for moving these drugs? He said, well, I got $10,000. I said, well, didn't you think that that was an exorbitant amount of money to carry a package, you know? I said, so you really knew that it was drugs. I mean, I figured that it was. I said, um, what was your sentence? He said, 17 years. I said, my gosh, first defense. To put this number in perspective, in federal courts, a first-time rapist gets five to seven years, kidnapping is four to five years, second-degree murder is 11 to 14 years. And here's the thing. The young man was sentenced under a 1980s drug law that Rostenkowski had voted for himself. It's at harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders, even first-time offenders. Rostenkowski thought the guy deserved to be punished, but locking him up from the end of adolescence until the beginning of middle age, it seemed excessive. The whole thing is a sham, in my opinion. It's not justice. It's this get-em idea. Now, the kind of sentencing laws that put him in for so long, can I ask you to explain the terms in which those were discussed among congressmen when those were being talked about? Why were those voted for? I can't tell you that. I don't remember it. I'm not trying to duck that question, but I was totally in a tunnel vacuum vision with my jurisdiction, and I expected out of the judiciary committee the committee that made these particular laws. To have the experts in the judiciary committee give me the best conclusion. Listening to debate about these things on the floor of the house representers had nothing to do with it. Not long after he got out of prison, Rostenkowski made a speech to lawyers, in which he said he voted for these laws because he was, quote, "swept along by the rhetoric about getting tough on crime." Few of us had the patience or courage to point out to the public that there was relatively little that changes in federal laws could do to reduce the violent crime in their neighborhood. So we acted, took our low bowels, and went on to other topics. As a result, he said, "We lock up too many people for too long." And I don't know how to correct it, I'm no member of the legislature that I know will take this on because it's not popular.
Transcription truncated.