Ana Ceballos
A proposal that would give judges discretion over drug trafficking mandatory minimum sentences advanced Tuesday after receiving strong pushback from a veteran Tallahassee lobbyist.
“I don’t ever want to help a trafficker, no sir, and I don’t want to give a judge not one iota of an opportunity to go less on a trafficking sentence,” said Barney Bishop III, a lobbyist with the Smart Justice Alliance, a conservative criminal justice reform group.
“A drug abuser? Every day of the week. A drug trafficker? Absolutely not,” Bishop added.
The proposal cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 7-3 vote, with some in the panel criticizing Bishop for “fear mongering” and painting all drug traffickers as violent offenders.
“A lot of these are nonviolent officer and to jump from someone facing a mandatory minimum to them being released from prison and killing someone is a huge assumption,” said Sen. Bobby Powell, a West Palm Beach Democrat.
The measure (SB 694) proposed by Sen. Jeff Brandes, a St. Petersburg Republican, would give a court power to depart from current state mandatory minimum prison terms. The judge would be able to look at evidence and part from them mandatory minimum if the offender was not part of a criminal organization, used violence or a weapon during the offense. Mandatory fines would still apply.
“One pill can make all the difference on how long you serve, whether it is three years or seven years,” Brandes said.
The minimum sentence may be lower or higher than the one set forth by state law under the court’s discretion, according to the bill’s staff analysis.
Republican Sen. Debbie Mayfield was one of the three senators that voted against the measure, saying she did not agree with including fentanyl cases.
“We have been trying to fight fentanyl for the last couple years,” Mayfield said.
Brandes’ proposal would impact those criminally charged under the drug trafficking statute, whether it be sale, delivery, importation, manufacturing or possession of large quantities of a controlled substance. That would include cocaine, marijuana and opioids such as fentanyl.
“Our point here is largely low level people who are addicts and get involved with heroin and they may purchase heroin that is mixed with fentanyl,” Brandes said.
Current law requires those convicted of a drug trafficking offense to serve a mandatory minimum sentence. Those terms depend on the drug trafficked. When it comes to cocaine, a person caught with at least 28 grams, but less than 200 grams must serve at least 3 years in prison and pay a fine of $50,000. For an amount of at least 400 grams, a traffickers must be sentenced to at least 15 years in prison and pay a $250,000 fine.
Bishop was skeptical about the proposal and said the drug amounts that are being discussed go way beyond personal use, adding that he has done drugs before and has never been in possession of large quantities that would qualify under the state’s drug trafficking laws.
“You are helping people that have so much drugs that they can’t use it themselves,” he said. “If I smoke over a gram of pot every year it would take me 1.1 years to smoke a pound.”
“Imagine what it would take me to smoke 25 pound.”
