{"id":1229,"date":"2015-03-26T14:29:37","date_gmt":"2015-03-26T19:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/?p=1229"},"modified":"2015-06-22T16:29:17","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T16:29:17","slug":"supreme-judicial-court-chief-justice-ralph-gants-calls-for-the-abolition-of-mandatory-minimum-sentences-for-drug-sentences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/2015\/03\/26\/supreme-judicial-court-chief-justice-ralph-gants-calls-for-the-abolition-of-mandatory-minimum-sentences-for-drug-sentences\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Ralph Gants calls for the abolition of mandatory minimum sentences for drug sentences"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/files\/2015\/03\/Gants.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-1231\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/files\/2015\/03\/Gants.jpg\" alt=\"Gants\" width=\"378\" height=\"432\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The title says it all. In an impassioned\u00a0keynote speech at the second annual MassINC Criminal Justice Reform Coalition Summit, Chief Justice Gants asserted,\u00a0&#8220;doing so makes fiscal sense, justice sense, policy sense and common sense, and ultimately, good sense will prevail&#8221;, to loud applause from the audience. Not everyone, however was in agreement with Chief Justice Gants. Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley argued in favor of mandatory minimums, rebuking the notion that drug offenses are non-violent crimes, and asserting that the vast majority of inmates in Massachusetts are incarcerated for violent crimes, leading to\u00a0an increased public perception of safety.<\/p>\n<p>Though he spoke before District Attorney Conley, Chief Justice Gants anticipated an opposition, saying &#8220;When some district attorneys say they fear judicial leniency, they really are saying that they do not want to relinquish to judges the power to impose sentences that minimum mandatory sentences give to prosecutors,&#8221;. After the event, Bristol County District Attorney Tom Quinn affirmed, saying\u00a0&#8220;&#8216;I don\u2019t feel comfortable, being in the criminal justice system a number of years, ceding that power back to the judiciary,&#8217; Mandatory minimum sentences, he added, help establish consistent sentencing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>For the full <a href=\"http:\/\/www.southcoasttoday.com\/\">SouthCoastToday<\/a>\u00a0article with Tom Quinn&#8217;s quote, click <a href=\"http:\/\/www.southcoasttoday.com\/article\/20150317\/NEWS\/150319521\/101193\/SPORTS\">here<\/a>. The other two quotes in this blog post come from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.masslive.com\/politics\/index.ssf\/2015\/03\/sjc_chief_justice_ralph_grants.html\">this<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.masslive.com\/\">Masslive<\/a> article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The title says it all. In an impassioned\u00a0keynote speech at the second annual MassINC Criminal Justice Reform Coalition Summit, Chief Justice Gants asserted,\u00a0&#8220;doing so makes fiscal sense, justice sense, policy sense and common sense, and ultimately, good sense will prevail&#8221;, to loud applause from the audience. Not everyone, however was in agreement with Chief Justice [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}