Motion to Discharge--S.J. Res. 65

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I would like to share with the Senate and those following this debate a story about a man named Alton Mills.

Alton Mills was a young African American in the city of Chicago. He was an above-average high school student. It looked like he might even go on to higher education, but he had some bad luck when it came to employment and jobs, and he made a stupid decision. He made a stupid decision by becoming part of a gang in the neighborhood that was selling drugs.

As a result of that, he was arrested and convicted of the possession and sale of a small amount of narcotics. The sentence was suspended because he had had no previous criminal record.

It happened a second time. Again, he didn't serve a day in jail. It was suspended with the promise that he would never do it again, but he stumbled and did it a third time. As a result of that, in 1994, at the age of 24, Alton Mills was given a mandatory sentence of life in prison. He had never been involved in a violent crime. He had never used a firearm, and he never was a drug kingpin but had been involved in the sale of drugs. At the age of 24, he received a life sentence for the three incidents I just mentioned.

How could we have ever reached a point at which a person would be sent to jail for life for those three crimes?

We reached that point because 25 years ago we did something that was just plain wrong. You will seldom hear a Senator say this in the course of a speech, but I am going to say it. The worst vote I ever cast in my life in the House or in the Senate was for the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. In other words, if you took the same amount of cocaine and if it were in a powder form, sitting next to the same amount of cocaine in a crystallized form that could be smoked and if you were arrested for the possession of one or the other, the sentence for crack cocaine was 100 times what it was for powder cocaine.

Why did we do that? Why did we have such a gross disparity? It was because we were frightened.

As a Member of the House of Representatives, I remember it well. They came to us and said that there was a new form of cocaine on the streets. It cost 5 bucks, and it was heavily addictive. If a mother were to ingest this cocaine while being pregnant, it could harm the fetus for life. So do something.

At about that same time, there was this great scandal here in Washington, DC, of an outstanding basketball player at the University of Maryland, named Len Bias, who overdosed on drugs and died. People were talking about his career in the NBA and this great talent, and he was dead. It had nothing to do with crack cocaine, but it was part of the environment and part of the overreaction that took place among politicians in Washington. I was one of them. I voted for that 100-to-1 disparity and said we had to accept a hard, tough message right now. We did--100 to 1.

It didn't have any measurable impact on drug sales in the United States, but it had a measurable impact on the number of people who were incarcerated in the United States and the lengths of their incarcerations. Those votes that I and many like me cast on both sides of the aisle resulted in mandatory sentences for people like Alton Mills--life sentences. Let me tell you how the Alton Mills story ends before I go on.

After serving 24 years in prison for those three street sales, Alton Mills came to my attention through a criminal defense attorney named-- of all things--MiAngel Cody. She was Alton's angel. That is for sure. She fought for him, and she believed that he deserved better than to spend the rest of his life rotting in prison for those stupid decisions he made in his early life. I appealed to President Obama to commute his sentence, and the President agreed to do that. So, after all of that service behind bars, Alton Mills was released.

What is he doing today?

He is a mechanic at the Chicago Transit Authority. He repairs the buses that I ride on. He got married. He is now working with his daughter and his new grandchild. He is contributing to society. He is a community college student, where he is pursuing an associate's agree. Finally, his life is on the right track. If he had not received a pardon, Alton Mills would have died in prison because of our existing Federal sentencing laws.

Yesterday, something happened which is remarkable. President Donald Trump had a press conference with representatives of law enforcement and announced that he was going to support legislation, which I have been working on for quite some time with Senator Lee and Senator Grassley, to change the sentencing provisions that I have described to you. What an amazing coalition--Durbin on the Democratic side, Grassley and Lee on the Republican side, and now President Trump. The stars are lined up in a way that we seldom see in Washington, DC.

What we are going to set out to do with this bill, if we can pass it in the closing weeks of this session, is to give a chance to thousands of people who are still serving sentences for nonviolent offenses involving crack cocaine under the old 100-to-1 ruling to petition individually, not as a group, to the court for a reduction in the sentencing.

I have been through this. It is not easy. They have to go right back to the U.S. Attorney's Office that prosecuted them to get the thumbs up and approval to go forward. Many times, they turn to victims, if there are victims in the crime, before any decision is made. They turn to the judges, particularly those sentencing judges who are still on the bench. If they clear all of those hurdles, they have a chance for reductions in their sentences.

Senator Grassley and I are about to introduce legislation that President Trump endorsed yesterday, and we will begin working to build bipartisan support to pass it before we leave. Congress needs to pass this legislation. We have a different drug crisis facing us today. It isn't crack cocaine anymore. It is an opioid epidemic. It is a Federal epidemic. It is the deadliest drug epidemic that we have ever faced.

We have a totally different view of drugs than we did when Alton Mills was sentenced. In those days, most of the defendants were people of color--primarily African Americans. Yet today this opioid epidemic has gone far beyond the hood. It has gone far beyond the inner city. It affects suburbs, even the wealthiest of suburbs, and towns--rural towns--no matter how small they are.

People are starting to think anew about what to do with drug addiction. Is our goal to put people in prison for drug addiction or is our goal to end the addiction? We know that in some cases those who have been imprisoned will not use again. Many times, they will. We know, if people go successfully through treatment, they may be spared the addiction, and it may save their lives. We are coming of age when it comes to drugs in America.

What we try to do with this bill is also to take into consideration criminal defendants who meet certain limited criteria, such as with drug offenses, which is the No. 1 prosecution offense in our Federal system. It takes into consideration drug offenders who are not kingpins, who are not the bosses and are not involved in any violence in the crime, when there is no gun involved and if they are willing to cooperate with the government in closing down the drug operation. If they meet all of those criteria, we say that the court can take that into consideration in sentencing. I think that is a good thing.

I think, in Alton Mills' situation, it would have resulted in a much, much different sentence than what he faced before the commutation by President Obama.

We also want to make certain that in the future those who were sentenced under the old 100-to-1 disparity, as I mentioned earlier, could petition the government for a reconsideration of their sentencing on an individual basis. There will be no guarantee that they will be released, but they will have the opportunity to petition in those situations. I think this is a step in the right direction.

The bill also contains provisions which, I think, are extraordinary when it comes to prison reform. What are we going to do with all of these people? Most of those who are in prison will be coming out someday. Will they come out to commit another crime or create another victim? That would be a failure of the system completely.

Two Senators--one Republican, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, and one Democrat, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island--came together with the prison reform bill that has already passed the House with 386 votes, and we have improved it some in the Senate. Basically, it gives to those who are in prison an incentive to develop skills and training and education levels that will serve them when they leave in order to reduce recidivism and reduce the commission of crime in the future.

I think that is humane. It is sensible. It says to those who truly want to turn their lives around that we are going to give you a chance to prove it. Prove it with your actions, and we will give you a chance to be released earlier and have a chance to go into society in a positive way.

We brought these two together--criminal sentencing and prison reform. It doesn't happen very often around here. The last time we had any measurable impact on the subject was 8 years ago. It was 8 years ago when I introduced my first bill on criminal sentencing reform. I think that bill worked, which, incidentally, I cosponsored with former Senator Jeff Sessions. It gave the individuals an opportunity to petition for early release. In many cases, it saved their lives and gave them a chance. We are back with a bipartisan bill that is called the FIRST STEP Act. This bill, I think, deserves our consideration in the Senate as quickly as possible.

Do you see this empty Senate floor? This is a place to do business. We have some business to do. In the 3 weeks we will be in session at the end of November and in the month of December, we can easily pass this legislation. I sat down with Senator Grassley and Republican and Democratic leaders from the House. They are anxious--we are all anxious--to bring this up. I am going to plead with Senator McConnell and ask everyone to join me to put this measure on the calendar. I believe it will have strong bipartisan support. Democrats and Republicans will join in an effort endorsed by President Trump. How about that for your headline? You don't see that sort of thing happening very often. We have a chance to do it here with this revised FIRST STEP Act.

I thank all those who have worked so hard on it, starting with Mike Lee, my original cosponsor. I would add to that Chuck Grassley, who has been a terrific partner from start to finish in making this a bipartisan effort. Special thanks to Senators Cornyn and Whitehouse for marrying up their prison reform package with our sentencing reform package. This could be significant. It could be one of the most important things we do when it comes to criminal justice, not only this year but for a long time.

I commend my colleagues for their cooperation on that, and I hope we can get this job done in the closing weeks of this session.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source