WASHINGTON — Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey told reporters Friday that the Justice Department may attempt to derail new sentencing guidelines that are expected to allow the early release of thousands of convicted drug offenders.
But that train already appears to be leaving the station. In a surprising development, federal judges in Portland, Ore., have truncated the prison sentences of five defendants convicted of crack cocaine offenses, getting a jump on controversial guidelines that are scheduled to go into effect in March.
The reduced sentences, including two ordered up in the last week, are believed to be the first in a nationwide program that could ultimately cut federal prison time for more than 19,500 convicts. One of the defendants has been released from prison, and the remaining four are in different stages of the process, said Steve Wax, the federal public defender in Oregon.
The fast-moving clemency program has drawn criticism from the Justice Department. On Friday at a briefing with reporters, Mukasey renewed his personal concern that the potential release of so many prisoners -- up to 1,600 in March alone -- could cause violent crime to spike in cities across the country.
"We're going to try to do whatever we can to mitigate it," Mukasey said. "We would obviously like to see something done about something that we think was unwise in the first place." Mukasey raised the possibility of federal legislation to block the sentence reduction program but acknowledged it would face trouble in the Democratic-controlled Congress.
In his first appearance as attorney general before Congress, scheduled for Wednesday, Mukasey is expected to be peppered with questions on issues including the status of a department investigation into the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes and his views on the limits of torture -- an issue that nearly tripped up his nomination by President Bush to succeed Alberto R. Gonzales at the Justice Department last fall.
Mukasey has refused to say whether he believes that waterboarding -- an interrogation method simulating drowning that dates to the Spanish Inquisition -- is illegal. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have put the former federal judge on notice that they plan to interrogate him about his views on the subject at the oversight hearing.
