Lawmakers seek to cuff Sessions’ sentencing policy

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing back against sentencing guidelines announced last week by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In a memo to federal prosecutors, Sessions overturned Obama administration guidance to avoid charges that would trigger long mandatory sentences. Instead, prosecutors should pursue the most serious charges and the strongest penalties, Sessions said. Legislation filed today by Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., would give federal judges more discretion to impose lighter sentences. Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Bobby Scott, D-Va., filed a companion bill in the House. Sessions, then a U.S. Senator, helped kill similar legislation in 2015 despite wide bipartisan support. Today, Paul said the Sessions policy would “accentuate” the criminal justice system’s ongoing “injustice.”