[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Judge Questions Long Sentence in Drug Case

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Judge Questions Long Sentence in Drug Case

November 17, 2004
 By NICK MADIGAN 



 

SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 16 - In a case that has spurred
intense soul-searching in legal circles, a 25-year-old
convicted drug dealer, who was arrested two years ago for
selling small bags of marijuana to a police informant, was
sentenced on Tuesday to 55 years in prison. 

The judge who sentenced him, Paul G. Cassell of the United
States District Court here, said that he pronounced the
sentence "reluctantly" but that his hands were tied by a
mandatory-minimum law that required the imposition of 55
years on Weldon H. Angelos because he had a gun during at
least two of the drug transactions. 

"I have no choice," Judge Cassell said to Mr. Angelos, who
seemed frozen in place as the extent of the sentence became
apparent. 

The judge then urged Mr. Angelos's lawyer, Jerome H.
Mooney, not only to appeal his decision but to ask
President Bush for clemency once all appeals were
exhausted. He also urged Congress to set aside the law that
made the sentence mandatory. 

Judge Cassell said that sentencing Mr. Angelos to prison
until he is 70 years old was "unjust, cruel and even
irrational," but that the law that forced him to do so had
not proved to be unconstitutional and thus had to stand.
The sentence was all the more ironic, he said, because only
two hours earlier he had been legally able to impose a
sentence of 22 years on a man convicted of aggravated
second-degree murder for beating an elderly woman to death
with a log. That crime, he argued, was far more serious. 

Mr. Angelos's wife, Zandrah, who sat in court with the
couple's two boys, aged 5 and 7, began crying. "He might as
well have killed someone," she said bitterly, wiping her
eyes, referring to her husband. "He should have done worse
than he did if he was going to get 55 years." 

The question of Mr. Angelos's sentence was at the center of
a debate as to whether it was fair to send a minor drug
dealer to prison for 55 years when a murderer, rapist or
terrorist, according to the same sentencing directives,
would ordinarily receive no more than about 25 years. 

During a court hearing in September, Judge Cassell posed a
question to the opposing legal teams in the case: "Is there
a rational basis," he asked, "for giving Mr. Angelos more
time than the hijacker, the murderer, the rapist?" 

The sentence against Mr. Angelos, the founder of the rap
music label Extravagant Records, stemmed from his
conviction on three counts of possession of a firearm while
engaged in drug trafficking. The first count carried a
mandatory five-year sentence, with each subsequent count
calling for 25 years. 

According to trial testimony, Mr. Angelos was carrying a
pistol in an ankle holster while selling marijuana. He was
not accused of brandishing the weapon or threatening anyone
with it. 

But in court on Tuesday, Robert Lund, an assistant United
States attorney who prosecuted the case, called Mr. Angelos
a "purveyor of poison," and said he had been dealing drugs
for more than four years before his arrest. Carrying a gun
in the commission of such crimes, he said, meant that Mr.
Angelos was prepared "to kill other human beings." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/national/17sentencing.html?ex=1101704228&ei=1&en=8d6f5c21e2109daf


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