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Opinions of Judges
 November
17, 2004 - The New York Times
Judge Questions Long Sentence in Drug Case
By Nick Madigan
SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 16 - In a case that has spurred intense
soul-searching in legal circles, a 25-year-old convicted drug
dealer, who was arrested two years ago for selling small bags
of marijuana to a police informant, was sentenced on Tuesday
to 55 years in prison.
The judge who sentenced him, Paul G. Cassell of the United
States District Court here, said that he pronounced the sentence
"reluctantly" but that his hands were tied by a mandatory-minimum
law that required the imposition of 55 years on Weldon H. Angelos
because he had a gun during at least two of the drug transactions.
"I have no choice," Judge Cassell said to Mr. Angelos,
who seemed frozen in place as the extent of the sentence became
apparent.
The judge then urged Mr. Angelos's lawyer, Jerome H. Mooney,
not only to appeal his decision but to ask President Bush for
clemency once all appeals were exhausted. He also urged Congress
to set aside the law that made the sentence mandatory.
Judge Cassell said that sentencing Mr. Angelos to prison until
he is 70 years old was "unjust, cruel and even irrational,"
but that the law that forced him to do so had not proved to be
unconstitutional and thus had to stand. The sentence was all
the more ironic, he said, because only two hours earlier he had
been legally able to impose a sentence of 22 years on a man convicted
of aggravated second-degree murder for beating an elderly woman
to death with a log. That crime, he argued, was far more serious.
Mr. Angelos's wife, Zandrah, who sat in court with the couple's
two boys, aged 5 and 7, began crying. "He might as well
have killed someone," she said bitterly, wiping her eyes,
referring to her husband. "He should have done worse than
he did if he was going to get 55 years."
The question of Mr. Angelos's sentence was at the center of
a debate as to whether it was fair to send a minor drug dealer
to prison for 55 years when a murderer, rapist or terrorist,
according to the same sentencing directives, would ordinarily
receive no more than about 25 years.
During a court hearing in September, Judge Cassell posed a
question to the opposing legal teams in the case: "Is there
a rational basis," he asked, "for giving Mr. Angelos
more time than the hijacker, the murderer, the rapist?"
The sentence against Mr. Angelos, the founder of the rap music
label Extravagant Records, stemmed from his conviction on three
counts of possession of a firearm while engaged in drug trafficking.
The first count carried a mandatory five-year sentence, with
each subsequent count calling for 25 years.
According to trial testimony, Mr. Angelos was carrying a pistol
in an ankle holster while selling marijuana. He was not accused
of brandishing the weapon or threatening anyone with it.
But in court on Tuesday, Robert Lund, an assistant United
States attorney who prosecuted the case, called Mr. Angelos a
"purveyor of poison," and said he had been dealing
drugs for more than four years before his arrest. Carrying a
gun in the commission of such crimes, he said, meant that Mr.
Angelos was prepared "to kill other human beings."
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