Justice raps sentencing rules

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy yesterday praised federal judges who are willing to buck sentencing rules that were enacted for what the justice suggested were political motives.

Congress and judges are at loggerheads over a law passed last year that makes it more difficult for judges to depart from guidelines and hand out a more lenient term.

"I do think federal judges who depart downward are courageous," Kennedy told the House Appropriations Committee during a hearing on the court's budget. Judges should not have to "follow, blindly, these unjust guidelines," he said.

Kennedy, who is seen as a moderate conservative, took aim yesterday at laws that set out "mandatory minimum" sentences for certain crimes, and at the guidelines for sentences in other areas.

"The mandatory minimums enacted by the Congress are in my view unfair, unjust, unwise," Kennedy said. When determining sentencing guidelines, "there are two different philosophies. One was the tough-on-crime argument, the other was well, everybody should be treated the same," Kennedy said. "Every time they compromised, it was for higher sentences . . . this is wrong."

The US Sentencing Commission, which sets the guidelines, also was meeting this week to consider changes in the system for punishing corporate wrongdoing, and stricter penalties for public corruption.