The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday advanced bipartisan legislation despite objections from Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
After passing through the committee on a 16-5 vote without an amendment attached, the responsibility falls on Senate Majority Mitch McConnell to decide to take up the legislation.
Since being introduced by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., in October, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act has gained bipartisan support among the committee. Grassley tried with similar legislation in 2016, but it faltered after McConnell opted to not bring it to the full Senate floor for a vote.
The legislation would reduce mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent repeat drug offenders, and eliminate the three-strike mandatory life in prison provision that critics said dramatically increased the nation’s prison population. It would also give judges more discretion in how the sentence nonviolent offenders.
Sessions wrote Grassley a letter Wednesday afternoon that argued the legislation is a “grave error,” and would lighten sentences for dangerous drug traffickers.
Ahead of the legislation’s passage on Thursday, the Fraternal Order of Police wrote a letter to President Trump asking him to “prevent” it “from advancing in Congress.”
“At a time when our nation is being ravaged by an epidemic of overdoses from the use of heroin and opioids, it seems at variance with common sense and sound policy to drastically reduce sentences for drug traffickers,” the letter reads, adding the policy is at odds with Sessions’ memo directing all U.S. attorneys to “charge and pursue the most serious, provable offense.”
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Sentencing Project both praised the committee for passing the legislation.
During the hearing, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., remarked: “We don’t have to report to the Justice Department. We’re 100 individual senators, and we can make up our own mind.”
