America 
 
 Report: Threat Of Mandatory Minimums Used To Coerce Guilty Pleas 
 
 i itoggle caption Stephen Lam/Reuters /Landov Stephen Lam/Reuters /Landov 
 
 A new report says the Justice Department regularly coerces defendants in federal drug cases to plead guilty by threatening them with steep prison sentences or stacking charges to increase their time behind bars. 
 
 And for the first time, the study by Human Rights Watch finds that defendants who take their fate to a judge or jury face prison sentences on average 11 years longer than those who plead guilty. 
 
 In all, a whopping 97 percent of defendants plead guilty — no surprise, says author Jamie Fellner, given the enormous and essentially unchecked power that federal prosecutors wield. 
 
 "As long as there are mandatory minimums, prosecutors dictate the sentences by the charges they bring," Fellner told NPR in an interview. 
 
 The issue matters because about half of the people in costly and overcrowded U.S. prisons got there after being charged with and convicted of drug offenses. Even though many of those inmates worked on the ground floor of drug operations, they still serve long prison sentences because of five- and 10-year mandatory terms that Congress breathed into life during the heart of the crack cocaine scare in the 1980s. Prosecutors have the option of adding more charges based on a person's prior offenses, including low-level drug possession cases. 
 
 Fellner's interviews with prosecutors, judges and public defenders and her review of sentencing data uncovered dozens of cases where defendants got sent to prison for nearly a half-century for first-time drug offenses. 
 
 In one such case, the Human Rights Watch report said, Mary Beth Looney refused a plea deal that would have sent her to prison for 17 years for dealing methamphetamines and having guns in her house. Prosecutors added more charges against her. Ultimately, after trial and conviction, she was sentenced to more than 45 years behind bars. As a federal appeals court noted, mandatory minimum sentences left the trial judge with little discretion but to impose "effectively a life sentence" on the 53-year-old Texas woman who had no prior convictions. 
 
 For others with a history of small-time drug possession raps, the ability of the Justice Department to stack on those old histories adds up, too. One judge wrote that he was dismayed by the life sentence that prosecutors tried to impose on a defendant for carrying such a small amount of drugs over the course of his criminal history that the substance "would rattle around in a matchbox." But too often, Fellner wrote, judges find their hands are tied by the mandatory sentencing system. 
 
 "To have a judge and a jury relegated to essentially museum pieces, it's not healthy," Fellner said. "It doesn't lead to trust in the results. When you have innocent people tempted and also maybe pleading guilty just to avoid the possibility of a really long sentence, that doesn't give you a whole lot of faith in the integrity of the system." 
 
 Updated at 9:30 a.m. ET: DOJ Responds: 
 
 Justice Department spokeswoman Ellen Canale said in an email to NPR that "it is critical to ensure the criminal justice system operates fairly in every case, and the Department's charging policies reflect that goal." 
 
 She added: "Under the Department's policy, prosecutors are instructed not to file sentencing enhancements unless the defendant is involved in conduct that makes the case appropriate for severe sanctions. This seeks to ensure that these enhancements are reserved for serious, high-level, or violent drug traffickers. The Department agrees that the enhancements should not be used to coerce defendants." 
 
 Our original post continues: 
 
 In August, Attorney General Eric Holder told federal prosecutors not to hit low-level drug offenders with charges that carry mandatory minimum sentences, part of an effort to reduce U.S. incarceration levels, to reorient the criminal justice system toward violent criminals, and to become more "smart" on crime. Human Rights Watch says it's too early to say how prosecutors around the country will interpret that broad guidance. There's no apparent remedy if prosecutors refuse to follow the directive. And Fellner said she already has found some cases where the Justice Department appeared to do just that. 
 
 Fellner said Congress needs to restore discretion to federal judges, by getting rid of mandatory minimums or giving judges more power to depart from sentencing guidelines based on the facts in an individual case. The Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., will consider some of these options when the Senate returns from recess next week. Fellner said Holder, in the meantime, should bar prosecutors from threatening longer sentences because defendants in drug cases refuse to plead guilty. ||||| Only 3 percent of U.S. drug defendants in federal cases chose to go to trial instead of pleading guilty in 2012, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch. 
 
 The small number begins to make sense if you consider the consequences faced by drug defendants convicted in court, argues the report's author, Jamie Fellner. 
 
 “Prosecutors can say, ‘Take these 10 years or, if you get a trial and are convicted, you’re going to look at life,’” said Fellner, an attorney who specializes in criminal justice issues at Human Rights Watch. “That’s a pretty amazing power that unfortunately they are more than willing to wield." 
 
 The effect, she argues, is that prosecutors essentially “force” defendants to plead guilty. 
 
 Last year, drug defendants in federal cases who went to trial and lost were sentenced to more than three times as many years in prison as those who took a plea, according to the report’s analysis of data from the United States Sentencing Commission, a government agency. 
 
 And the majority of those who did go to trial -- 89 percent of them -- lost. 
 
 The percentage of defendants in 2012 who fought their charges is likely an all-time low. In 1980, the first year for which the report reviewed the relevant data, the percentage of federal drug defendants who pleaded guilty was slightly more than 60 percent, and it has risen steadily since then. 
 
 The advent of mandatory-minimum sentencing laws in the mid-80s is largely responsible for the steady increase in guilty pleas, according to Fellner. Such laws required judges to impose harsh, predetermined sentences on people convicted of the distribution and, in some circumstances, possession of illicit drugs, while giving prosecutors the ability to offer defendants smaller sentences as part of a deal. 
 
 “If you can get someone to acknowledge guilt without the burden and expense of a trial, without having to marshal witnesses and line up witnesses, and without risking an acquittal, why not?” said Fellner. “You don’t have the cost of a trial, it doesn’t take the time and resources, and it increases the notches on your belt of how many convictions you’ve gotten.” 
 
 But in reality, the government lacks the resources needed to try everyone who is charged with a drug offense, said Steven Jansen, the vice president and chief operating officer of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, a professional group based in Washington. 
 
 “Justice would almost stand still if we took the majority of our cases to trial,” he said. 
 
 Jansen noted that efforts are underway to reform the nation’s mandatory-minimum sentencing laws. Lawmakers from both parties have introduced bills that would scale back the reach of those laws, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has directed federal prosecutors to shift their attention away from drug cases. 
 
 “Our system is looking at mandatory minimums and what we’re going to either do or not do about them,” Jansen said. “But a defendant is really not forced to accept a guilty plea. Obviously they have a right to go to trial no matter what the sentence is.”
– Defendants in federal drug cases are getting unfairly sentenced, thanks to mandatory minimums and unchecked power wielded by the Justice Department, according to a Human Rights Watch report. Prosecutors basically "force" defendants into pleading guilty with threats of lengthy sentences and stacked-up charges if the case goes to trial, the study states. "Prosecutors can say, 'Take these 10 years or, if you get a trial and are convicted, you're going to look at life," study author Jamie Fellner tells the Huffington Post. "That's a pretty amazing power that unfortunately they are more than willing to wield." Just 3% of cases went to trial last year, and of those, 89% of defendants lost. On average, they were given an extra 11 years in prison compared with those who took a plea deal, NPR reports. In one case, a 53-year-old woman with no prior convictions was given "effectively a life sentence" of 45 years for dealing meth and having guns in her house; she had refused a plea deal of 17 years. "When you have innocent people tempted and also maybe pleading guilty just to avoid the possibility of a really long sentence, that doesn't give you a whole lot of faith in the integrity of the system," Fellner says. As for Eric Holder's promised reform: Fellner says she's already found cases where prosecutors have failed to take his advice.