Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperilled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law until himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the ends justifies the means – to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal – would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this Court should resolutely set its face.Justice Brandeis, dissenting
Olmstead v. United States
277 U.S. 438, 485 (1927)

Mandatory Minimum Sentences--Is it Really Mandatory Anymore?

09/13/2013 | 7:25 | Cheryll Bennett, Assistant Federal Public Defender (SDOH)

Cheryll Bennett, an attorney at the Office of the Federal Public Defender (SDOH), discusses Attorney General Eric Holder's speech at the American Bar Association convention in the summer of 2013 regarding mandatory minimum sentences.

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Mandatory Minimum Sentences--Is it Really Mandatory Anymore?