Congress Needs to Finish the Job

By Kevin Ring

Eighty-seven United States senators — Republicans and Democrats — came together in 2018 to repudiate some of the worst mandatory minimum sentences in the federal code. Eighty-seven. It’s hard to get 87 senators to agree on anything these days, so it tells you something about how awful these laws were.

These mandatory sentencing laws sent thousands of people guilty of low-level drug offenses away for decades and sometimes life because they had prior (and also minor) convictions. The laws also hammered people who had a gun when they committed a drug crime, even if they didn’t use or discharge the gun.

Mostly, the laws were used to destroy people for having the nerve to exercise their constitutional right to a trial. More often than not, the most extreme sentences went not to people who were the most culpable or did the most harm, but rather to those who decided to reject a prosecutor’s plea offer and go to trial. Public safety was not even a factor.

The good news is that these laws were so patently unjust that President Donald Trump agreed with those 87 senators (and 358 members of the House) to reform them. That was the First Step Act. The bad news is that these reforms were not applied retroactively.

People who were sentenced before the reforms were passed didn’t get any relief from the law. People like Adam Clausen, who was sentenced to 213 years in federal prison for bank robberies in which no one was hurt. His crime was serious, but no more serious than Shon Hopwood’s. Shon served 12 years, famously transformed his life, and is now a law professor at Georgetown University.

The major difference in their punishment? Shon pleaded guilty. Adam went to trial and got more than two centuries for a prison sentence. Fortunately, Adam was released last year — after serving 20 years — due to COVID-19; and to no one’s surprise, is thriving.

Yet there are many others who have compelling if less extreme stories, and they languish in prison today. Congress now has the chance to deliver justice to these people by passing the First Step Implementation Act (FSIA), sponsored by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). The law would not guarantee release to anyone punished under the old, repudiated sentencing laws, but it would give them the opportunity to seek a new, fairer sentence.

Some senators have already expressed opposition to the new law, yet some of them voted in favor of the First Step Act — and even took credit for its passage. This makes no sense. If seeing thousands of people get excessive, counterproductive prison sentences was enough to convince you to change the law, the burden is on you to explain why that change shouldn’t apply to the people whose stories moved you and inspired you to change the law.

Adam Clausen was relatively lucky. Justice has not yet been served for many more still serving extreme sentences already recognized as wrong. Make the First Step Act retroactive, pass the FSIA, and finish the job. That’s what true justice looks like.

Kevin Ring is FAMM’s president.