A happy ending to a mandatory sentencing story

With thanks to TalkLeft for this tip, I was very pleased to see this commentary from Debra J. Saunders at the San Francisco Chronicle discussing the story of Serena Nunn.  Here are some highlights:

On May 6, Serena Nunn, 36, will graduate the University of Michigan Law School.  Armed with a law degree, she will be in a better position to challenge draconian federal drug laws that six years ago had her serving a 15-year, eight-month sentence for a first-time nonviolent drug offense committed when she was 19....

Be clear on this: Nunn broke the law.  After she dropped out of college, she took up with the wrong boyfriend, a drug dealer -- known as Monte -- whose father (Plukey Duke) was believed to be the leader of the biggest cocaine ring in Minnesota.  After Monte tried to buy cocaine from a government informant, the feds charged 24 people involved in the ring, including Serena, on felony charges involving cocaine distribution.

At trial, prosecutors established that Nunn drove Monte to drug deals and phoned people who owed Monte money.  They found 6.5 grams of cocaine and 4 grams of crack stashed in her bedroom.  A jury found Nunn guilty on all three counts. Meanwhile, prosecutors had offered sweet deals to repeat offenders who testified against others. 

Mandatory-minimum sentences were supposed to guarantee that drug kingpins serve hard time.  Yet the feds allowed the co-leader of this drug ring, Marvin McCaleb, to serve just seven years -- despite prior convictions for major drug dealing, rape and manslaughter....  [The] system routinely sacrifices small fish of the drug trade -- who don't have much information to trade -- while enabling the big fish to re-offend.  The system too frequently offers a get-out-of-jail-early card to the worst criminals....

President Clinton commuted Nunn's sentence in July 2000.  It helped that one of Nunn's prosecutors and then-Gov. Jesse Ventura of Minnesota wrote letters.... The most breathtaking argument came from the sentencing judge, David A. Doty, who wrote an eight-page letter that ripped the mandatory-minimum system to shreds....

On the phone Monday, Nunn told me of the frustration she faced after spending more than a decade behind bars -- and wanting just one chance to turn her life around -- while watching "someone who gets those opportunities, not once, not twice, but even three times" re-offend and return to prison....  [W]hen societies overpunish small-change offenders and underpunish kingpins -- when 19-year-old kids serve sentences that exceed a decade, while career thugs do shorter time -- you end up with expensive injustice.