Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 25, 1992 TAG: 9203250013
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The justices, in a 7-2 decision, rejected Bush administration arguments, ruling that federal sentencing guidelines prohibit such results.
The administration had sought a longer prison sentence for a boy convicted in a fatal drunken-driving accident on an Indian reservation in Minnesota three years ago.
At issue was a provision of the federal Juvenile Delinquency Act that bars longer sentences for youths than those offenders would receive if they had been adults.
The boy, identified in court documents only as RLC, was 16 when a stolen car he was driving crashed into another car.
Two-year-old LeTesha Lynn Mountain, who was riding in the other car, was killed.
RLC, a member of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, was convicted in federal court and sentenced to three years in prison - the maximum penalty under the federal involuntary-manslaughter law he would have been prosecuted under had he been an adult.
But federal sentencing guidelines that took effect in 1987 made the maximum penalty for that crime 21 months.
A federal appeals court noted the guidelines and struck down RLC's three-year sentence. He later was sentenced to 18 months and has completed his prison term.
But Bush administration attorneys told the justices that the maximum penalty should be the one defined by law, not the one called for in the 1987 guidelines.
Writing for the court, Justice David Souter said the administration attorneys were misreading congressional intent.
Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Harry Blackmun dissented.
In another decision, the court ruled Tuesday in a Tennessee case that the U.S. attorney general, not federal judges, decides how much credit federal prisoners receive for time served in state jails.
by CNB