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Pelosi: Congress Should ‘Revisit’ Mandatory Minimum Sentences

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When asked Thursday about what action Congress can take in the wake of violence in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi pointed to a few proposals on racial profiling and police cameras, adding that Congress should revisit mandatory minimum sentences. “[Rep. Robert C. Scott] has a safety valve act to allow judges to propose sentences below the mandatory minimums … I served for a long time on the Appropriations Committee … and the judges at the highest level of our judicial system would come in there and say, ‘Give us discretion. Mandatory minimums take the discretion away from the judge. These are just — just not right,’” Pelosi said. “And whether they’d be — wherever they were on the philosophical spectrum, they all agreed mandatory minimums were not the way to go. So I think we should revisit that.”

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