John Doe Essay

John Doe was a man who had fallen on hard times. He knew a couple people from his time in high school; although he had only done drugs once, he was talked into trying marijuana to help relieve some of the stress in his life. He began to use marijuana regularly without any problems, until late one afternoon he was pulled over by a police officer because of a bad tail light. He was arrested for possession of one ounce of marijuana. He later went to court where he was offered a plea bargain for five years and five years of parole after his time was served in prison. Although john was a nonviolent drug offender, he was being treated as if he was a constant felon. Dispit the fact that the plea deal was far too harsh, John decided to take the plea …show more content…
Since 27 October 1986, congress did not hold a level of respect for making the right calls with deciding sentences for criminals. Thanks to the anti-drug abuse act, which mandated minimum sentencing laws, thus creating the quake that would soon start an avalanche within the United States justice system (H.R. 5484 — 99th Congress: Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986). The power to decide on a case-by-case basis was taken away from judges and replaced with the one-size fits all sentencing that began to take its firm grasp on the justice system. At the time, congress and the populace in the 1986 wanted to have uniform sentencing length in order to lower drug use, in order to do that, Congress had to restrict the power of judges and pass the Anti-Drug Abuse act of 1986 in order to do so. The problem with that the assumption from that time is that the populace thought that judges were being too lenient with drug offenders. Instead of looking at drug use as a health issue, congress went full throttle and placed iron-fisted laws in order to criminalize those who had fallen on hard times. When the power to decide the punishment for a guilty criminal was usurped from judges, the justice system was left