55 YEARS FOR POT!

A 55-year prison sentence for a convicted Utah marijuana seller was challenged in a federal appeals court yesterday as unconstitutional by 163 former U.S. attorneys general and retired federal judges and prosecutors. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver, they urged the court to vacate the sentence of Weldon H. Angelos, 25, saying it violated the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Angelos, a first-time offender, was sentenced in November under the federal mandatory minimum sentences law. At the time, U.S. District Judge Paul G. Cassell called the sentence "unjust, cruel and even irrational," but said he had no choice under the law. Yesterday's brief called Angelos' sentence "grossly disproportionate" to the offenses on which he was convicted and "contrary to the evolving standards of decency which are the hallmark of our civilized society." Harry H. Rimm, a former federal prosecutor now at the New York law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP, wrote the brief. He said he was astounded at the support among former federal judges and prosecutors for Angelos' position.

Before Angelos was sentenced, Rimm filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that the recommended sentencing was unconstitutional and disproportionately harsh for a first-time offender. That brief was signed by 29 former federal judges and prosecutors, including nine from Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The 163 who signed yesterday's brief pointed to the growing interest in the case in legal circles. The signers included appointees of every president from Lyndon B. Johnson to Bill Clinton, including 17 from Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Since the mid-1980s, Congress has passed a series of anticrime measures, including the 1987 federal sentencing guidelines, and has added escalating mandatory minimum prison terms for a number of crimes. Congress argued that the changes were a reaction to disparities in sentencing among federal judges. But many judges have said the laws limited their discretion to impose sentences tailored to the individual before them.

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal sentencing guidelines were advisory, making it easier for judges to depart from them.

The father of two young children, Angelos was a producer of rap records. He was convicted in 2002 of selling marijuana to a police informant - two half-pounds at $350 each - and faced a likely eight years in prison. But three gun counts involving a concealed handgun in an ankle holster he wore during the sale and guns found later by police in a search of his home, triggered escalating, mandatory and consecutive prison terms that boosted Angelos' sentence to 55 years.

The U.S. attorney in Utah argued that the sentence was authorized by Congress and was constitutional.

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THE COPS CAN DO NO WRONG IN JAMAICA

And you risk prosecution if you say so

The Jamaican Government is exploring what legal action can be taken against an Amnesty International official who argued, in Monday's Observer, that Reneto Adams - like other Jamaican lawmen before him - will be acquitted of murder. The comments made by Piers Bannister, according to Justice Minister and Attorney-General A J Nicholson, amounted to contempt of court. Said Nicholson: "This statement. purports to prophesy what the result of the trial will be and to assert, in effect, that this result will not only be a miscarriage of justice in itself but will be typical of the way in which certain categories of cases are dealt with by our judicial system." He added: "This official would not have dared to make such a comment in England in respect of a case pending in their courts."

Bannister is the London-based researcher on Amnesty International's North American/English-speaking Caribbean team. His original comments were made in an exchange of emails with Desmond Allen, whose extensive interview with Adams was carried in the Sunday Observer on June 5 and 12. Bannister had argued that the ground was being prepared for Adams' return to front-line duties.

Adams, the former head of the now-disbanded Crime Management Unit, was given a desk job after he and other CMU members were charged with murder after a May 2003 shooting in Crawle, Clarendon, left two women and two men dead. "I think that everyone knows that Mr Adams and his colleagues will be found not guilty in September just as (in the case of) the Braeton Seven," Bannister told Allen via email.

On February 11 of this year, six police officers were freed of the March 2001 murder of seven young men at a home in Braeton. The cops were also members of the CMU.

Arguing that no police officer had been convicted of murder in Jamaica in the last six years, the Amnesty official said Jamaican police are "immune from effective prosecution and are allowed to carry out killings with impunity".

Bannister's comments, Nicholson said yesterday, were a " kind of broadside attack upon the integrity of the judicial system" and also threatened Adams' ability to get a fair trial. Though there was "an absence of specific statutory enactment in Jamaica", the justice minister said, there is a remedy for this swipe at the country's judicial system at common law. "I am therefore considering," Nicholson said, "along with the legal officers of the government, what steps may be taken in order to protect the good name of our country, its reputation for strict adherence to the rule of law and to prevent this kind of mischievous and damaging allegation being made in the future."

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(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)