washington -- Marion Hungerford, a 52-year-old woman diagnosed with a mental illness, was convicted two years ago as an accomplice after her live-in boyfriend pleaded guilty to a series of armed robberies in Billings, Mont.
Her sentence: 159 years in federal prison.
The judge said federal sentencing rules gave him no choice. The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed, as did the U.S. Supreme Court, which in May turned away her claim that the sentence was unconstitutional.
Increasingly, judges and legal activists -- conservative and liberal -- point to cases like Hungerford's and say the federal sentencing system is badly out of whack. They are hoping that Congress or the Supreme Court will move to give judges leeway to impose shorter -- and, they say, fairer -- prison terms. The high court will hear two cases next month that challenge mandatory minimum sentences.
"The worst aspect is the utter irrationality of the system," said U.S. District Judge Paul G. Cassell from Utah, an appointee of President Bush and former law clerk to Antonin Scalia before Scalia joined the Supreme Court. "When I have to sentence a midlevel drug dealer to more time than a murderer, something is wrong."
"This is not about being soft on crime," Cassell said in an interview. "I believe in tough sentences for severe crimes."
Three years ago, Cassell was forced to sentence 24-year-old Weldon Angelos to 59 years in prison for three marijuana sales of $350 each. On each occasion, Angelos had a gun in his car, which tacked on 55 years to his prison term.
"I believe that to sentence Mr. Angelos to prison for the rest of his life was unjust, cruel and even irrational," Cassell told a House committee in June. In contrast, he said, an airline hijacker or a terrorist who sets off a bomb in a public place would receive 20 to 25 years in prison.
The current system is a holdover of the mid-1980s and the war on drugs.
Congress set fixed prison terms for crimes involving guns and drugs and adopted sentencing guidelines that set prison terms for all other federal crimes, including white-collar offenses. It also eliminated parole, meaning those sent to federal prison cannot be released until they have served most of their terms.
The new rules have contributed to the nation's swelling prison population. Last year, 181,622 inmates were in federal prison, up from 24,363 in 1980, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
