Sentencing Commission—a bipartisan, independent agency within the judiciary responsible for articulating federal sentencing guidelines—drew reactions of horror and condemnation from criminal justice advocates.

"Bill Otis is a terrible choice," says Jason Pye, the vice president of legislative affairs at FreedomWorks, a conservative organization that has supported criminal justice reform. "Really, anyone who approaches criminal justice policy with an antiquated worldview is a bad choice for such an important post."

Jonathan Blanks, a research associate at the Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice, says Trump's nomination of Otis "signals another step back into the discredited 'tough on crime' policies of the 1980s."

"Otis's support of lengthy mandatory minimum sentences is outdated and counterproductive to effective criminal justice policy," Blanks continues. "If confirmed, my hope is that Mr. Otis makes himself familiar withthe Smarter Sentencing Act, a 2014 sentencing reform bill and a precursor to the current bipartisan legislation moving through the Senate.

As a lengthy 2015 Slate profile explained, Otis thinks giving judges leeway to depart from mandatory minimum sentences is just a way to coddle violent criminals. And when that happens, his logic goes, crime rises.

Otis has warned time and time again over his career that criminal justice reforms would lead to chaos in the streets, but as Julie Stewart, the founder of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, wrote in Reason in 2015, he has been wrong over and over. For example, when Congress reduced the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, Otis predicted the bill, which he dubbed the "Crack Dealers Relief Act," would result in "misery" once