Jeff Sessions orders prosecutors to charge Americans "with the most serious offense you can prove"

[yuiyoshida]

Racist, perjuring Attorney General Jeff Sessions has issued guidance to federal prosecutors, ordering them to charge the people they will face in court with "the most serious offense you can prove," paving the way for a surge in America's already-shameful record of racially biased, family destroying, community-devastating, private-prison-enriching mass incarceration, which already outstrips the rates of incarceration in Apartheid-era South Africa, China and the USSR.

Sessions has also vowed to reinstate long prison sentences for minor drug offenses, including possession of marijuana in states where its use has been legalized.

In a brief one-and-a-half-page memo, Sessions outlined his new instructions for charging decisions in federal cases, saying that his new first principle is "that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense."

"The most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences," Sessions later adds.

While the federal sentencing guidelines are advisory -- and take into account everything from a defendant's criminal history to cooperation with authorities -- some judges have felt handcuffed by mandatory minimums, which provide a statutory sentencing minimum of months below which the judge cannot depart.

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