From Mandatory to Discretionary: Florida's McGrill Decision on Non-Violent Offenses Should be Used as the Beacon of Change on the Nation's and Florida's Fight on the War on Drugs and its Sentencing Policies
Deborah Ductant
“And still I see no changes; can't a brother
get a little peace? It's war on the streets and a war in the Middle
East. Instead of war on poverty,
[t]hey got a war on drugs so the police can
bother me.”[i] Tupac Shakur was onto something when he wrote these
lyrics, that there needs to be changes and one of those changes is the war on
drugs sentencing policies.[ii] Florida needs to change its
sentencing policies in regards to non-violent drug offenders, and the fifth
district court of appeals’ decision in McGrill v. State may be
the beacon of change that the state needs.[iii] This note discusses the
War on Drugs on both the federal and state level, and proposes a reform where
Florida allows the court to have full discretion when the court is imposing a
sentencing for non-violent drug offenders, just as the court ruled in McGrill.[iv] Most
sentencing laws were passed as a result of the war on drugs.[v]
The war on drugs, after its 1971 declaration
by President Nixon, have seen a vast array of policies that have changed the
way the United States have handled drug offenders, especially non-violent drug
offenders.[vi] The federal policies introduced mandatory minimums,
which placed constraints on the court’s ability to apply a sentence that is
unique to every individual defendant and tailored to every unique case.[vii] Florida’s
battle with drug abuse was by far one of the worst in the nation, and in
response to this battle Florida’s legislators created harsh drug policies,
which included in it even harsher penalties.[viii] Individuals that have
committed non-violent offenses represent forty percent of Florida’s prison
population and about twenty percent of that forty percent in prison is in
prison for drug offenses.[ix] Florida’s primary sentencing guide is
controlled by the Criminal Punishment Code (“CPC”), which mandates the court to
impose a sentence term for any defendant that has a total of forty-four points.[x] The
goal of CPC scoresheet is to provide punishment and uniformity.[xi] However,
if Florida courts are allowed to navigate away from the CPC scoresheet for
non-violent drug offenders and broaden the scope of offenders that can be
allowed to be sentenced to any of the alternative sentences that Florida has to
offer, there will be a drastic change in the amount of money spent on prisons
as well as the prison population.[xii] The state of Florida needs to
correct its wrongs in terms of its sentencing of non-violent offenders and this
note proposes a change that Florida needs to begin with and allow the McGrill
decision to be the beacon of change.[xiii]
[i] Tupac
Shakur, Greatest Hits (1998).
[ii]
Id.
[iii]
82 So. 3d 130 (Fla. 4th Dist. Ct. App. 2012).
[iv]
Id. at 133.
[v]
Hon. Pattie B. Saris, A Generational
Shift for Federal Drug Sentences, 52 Am.
Crim. L. Rev. 1, 9 (2015).
[vi] Thomas C. Rowe, Federal Narcotics Laws and the War on Drugs:
Money Down a Rat Hole 87 (2006).
[vii] Hon.
Pattie B. Saris, A Generational Shift for Federal Drug Sentences,
52 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 1,
6 (2015).
[viii] Lauren
Galik, The High Cost of Incarceration in Florida: Recommendation for
Reform, Reason Found. 1,
1 (April 2015), reason.org/files/florida_prison_reform.pdf
[ix]
Lauren Krisai, Smart on
Sentencing: Safety Valve for Florida’s Drug Trafficking Offenses, The James Madison Institute 1 (June
30, 2016),
http://reason.org/files/florida_mandatory_minimums_safety_valves.pdf.
[x]
Fla.
Stat. § 921.002(3) (2017).
[xi]
Id.
[xii]
Intermediate Sanctions for Non-violent
Offenders Could Produce Savings, Office
of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability 2 (March
2010), www.oppaga.state.fl.us/monitordocs/reports/pdf/1027rpt.pdf.
[xiii]
Id.
