Federal district judge in Nebraska calls 10-year mandatory prison sentence for drug offender "absolutely ridiculous"

This local article from the Lincoln Journal Star, headlined "Judge: 10-year sentence is 'absolutely ridiculous'," reports on a notable comments from a federal district judge as he sentenced a seemingly low-level drug offender to a decade in federal prison. Here are the basics from the start and end of the lengthy article:

On a recent Friday in a federal courtroom in Lincoln, a federal judge spoke critically about the 10-year sentence he was on the verge of handing down to the Lincoln man, a nonviolent, recovering meth user. U.S. District Judge John Gerrard's hands were tied.

"The only reason I'm imposing the sentence that I am imposing today is because I have to," he told Leo Guthmiller III on Feb. 12. "That's what Congress mandates." He called Guthmiller, the man at the defense table, Exhibit A for why Congress should pass the Smart on Crime Act. Last June, in a similar case, he called Robyn Hamilton the poster child for it.

In both of the cases, Gerrard, a former Nebraska Supreme Court justice nominated to the federal bench by President Barack Obama in 2011, said the sentence didn't fit the crime. There should be imprisonment, he said, but 10 years in cases like these is ridiculous, draconian even....

[O]n Feb. 12, federal public defender John Vanderslice said Guthmiller got arrested June 20, 2013, at a Lincoln Walmart with a small amount of methamphetamine on him, got accepted into the Lancaster County Drug Court on the state charge and has been clean and sober ever since.

Guthmiller thought drugs were in his past, then, in 2015, he was federally indicted for being part of a conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine in Lincoln back in 2013 for introducing people who were buying and selling it and sometimes getting a cut for it. He pleaded guilty.

"This war on drugs that we are waging in this country with mandatory minimum sentences as applied to a person like Mr. Guthmiller, it's tragic," Vanderslice said at the sentencing. He said it's turned Guthmiller's life upside down.

An emotional Guthmiller apologized for all his past transactions "and everything that's led me to this moment in my life."

"I have worked really hard to turn my life around," he said. "And I'm proud to say that even with all this present stuff facing me that I will continue to do so."

Then, Gerrard handed down his sentence, saying there "should be just punishment, respect for the law. But a 10-year sentence is absolutely ridiculous in a case like this. But there may be another day in court at some point in time." He allowed Guthmiller to report to prison in April.