Trump picked a mass-incarceration advocate for a job setting federal sentences.
Trump picked a mass-incarceration advocate obsessed with “black-on-black” crime for a job setting federal sentences.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/trump-picks-bill-otis-a-man-obsessed-with-black-on-black-crime-for-the-u-s-sentencing-commission.html
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced four nominees to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the powerful agency that promulgates sentencing guidelines for federal courts. Trump nominated three federal judges to the seven-member board as well as a man named Bill Otis, all of whom will require Senate confirmation. Otis’ nomination marks one of the Trump administration’s most aggressive moves against criminal justice reform, and all senators who have professed to care about the issue should vote against his nomination. A prominent pro-prosecution crusader, Otis passionately defends the same law-and-order policies that created our current crisis of mass incarceration.
Otis worked as a federal prosecutor at the Justice Department for 25 years, though he never tried cases himself. He also served as special counsel to President George H.W. Bush. He currently teaches one class at the Georgetown University Law Center and advocates incessantly for lengthy prison sentences. Otis vigorously supports mandatory minimum laws, particularly in drug sentencing, which he attributes (without empirical evidence) to the decline in crime rate. He sharply criticized then–Attorney General Eric Holder for shifting away from mandatory minimums for nonviolent offenders and praised Attorney General Jeff Sessions for shifting back to them. (To avoid longer sentences, he wrote, criminals should “consider quitting the smack business and getting a normal job like everybody else.”)
Naturally, Otis also despises the Black Lives Matter movement as well as intellectuals and academics who support its goals.
In 2016, Otis lambasted President Barack Obama for commuting the sentences of many nonviolent drug offenders, calling his move “over-the-top extremism.” Otis actually goes so far as to reject the notion that it’s possible for drug offenders to be nonviolent, because addicts can die of overdoses. (Prosecutors have increasingly used this theory to bring murder charges against drug dealers.) He dismisses reformers as “pro-criminal” advocates who want to be “nice to drug pushers” by letting “robe-wearing partisans” impose more lenient sentences. And he supports life without parole for juveniles.
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