Sen. Mike Lee on Thursday rejected arguments that the criminal justice reform bill he unveiled with his Senate partners would make people less safe, and said passing the bill is the best way to boost safety across the country.
“Those who will oppose this bill will undoubtedly do so using the argument that to do so will make us less safe,” Lee told reporters. “I couldn’t disagree more. We have to remember that if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. Here, making a choice not to reform will make us less safe.”
Lee appeared with other Republican senators in an apparent celebration of the fact that four new Republicans have endorsed the bill in light of recent revisions. The architects of the legislation, which revises some of the mandatory minimum sentences passed during the tough-on-crime era of 90s, maintain that majorities of Democrats and Republicans would back the legislation if it came to a vote on the Senate floor.
But they still face a fight with Senate Republicans who oppose the legislation, which could deter Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from scheduling a vote.
Lee, the first Tea Party candidate to win a Senate seat in 2010, argued that conservatives who oppose big government policies should be skeptical of “the due process deprivation” that mandatory minimum sentencing requirements can create, especially given the high cost of lengthy incarceration. “We currently spend about 25 percent of the Department of Justice’s budget on the Bureau of Prisons,” he said. “This is roughly on par with what we spend on both the FBI and the DEA combined.”
Even as the would-be reformers touted their revisions, however, Republican opponents decried the “criminal leniency bill” as a product of false advertising. “The idea that we are only allowing low-level criminals out of jail is a smoke screen,” Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., said in a press release.
“The bill’s definition of what constitutes a ‘serious violent felony’ creates a loophole that would allow these serious felons to slip through the system. As currently written, this bill would put thousands of dangerous felons back on the streets early, potentially endangering our families and communities, and therefore I still cannot support it.”
Perdue’s contention about the definition of a violent criminal and what kinds of prisoners should be allowed to apply for early release reflects a fundamental divide within the Republican conference. Lee described to reporters the case of Weldon Angelos, who sold “three dime bag quantities” of marijuana one weekend while in possession of a firearm and was consequently sentenced to 55 years’ imprisonment.
“I have yet to meet a single person, male or female, Democrat or Republican, old or young, who thinks that sentence was correct,” Lee said.
To write a reform that would benefit a prisoner such as Angelos, Lee and his allies agreed that drug dealers who carry weapons but don’t use them should be allowed to ask a judge to review their case. “If you simply happen to have a gun in your backpack or something [while selling drugs], then you are eligible because you’re not brandishing it,” a Senate GOP aide said. “But if you brandish [a weapon], then you are a violent offender.”
Several Republicans disagree with that definition, and cite the example of Wendell Callahan, a drug dealer who was granted early release from prison and went on to murder his ex-girlfriend and her two daughters. “The result will be tens of thousands of serious drug traffickers back on the streets,” Perdue said.
Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn noted that the drafters used the standard definition of what constitutes “a serious crime as defined by federal law.” He also emphasized that the sentencing reform package would not automatically release any prisoner.
“If you benefit from the reduction in mandatory minimums under this law, it does not entitle you to a get-out-of-jail free card,” Cornyn told the Washington Examiner. “All you get under this bill is a hearing in front of the same federal judge who put you in prison in the first place, in front of the same prosecutor who prosecuted you, who can consider all the facts and circumstances in determining whether it is something he ought to grant … we also insisted that the victims be notified and be able to participate in the process.”
