What is the worse crime, mass murder or the possession of drugs?
That should be no-brainer. But let's stop for a minute and consider - Comrade Duch, or Kaing Khek Eav, who was a Khmer Rouge leader and in charge of a detention/torture facility in Cambodia, was sentenced to 30 years for his role in the murder of 12,380 people over a 4 year period. That's only the small part that he played personally in the devastation - close to 1.7 million people (a quarter of Cambodia's population) were executed, starved, or died from forced labor during the rule of his government. Duch will get credit for 11 years time served.
In South Carolina, drug trafficking (possession of larger quantities of drugs) is punished by mandatory minimum sentences of 25 and 30 years. In the federal courts, sentences handed down for drug conspiracy convictions range into the hundreds of years ("but I can't do that much time," protests the defendant. The judge smiles gently as he says, "just do as much as you can, son.") The sentence is determined by the sentencing guidelines and is enhanced by factors such as the defendant's criminal history, the weight of drugs that are attributed to the defendant by others in exchange for time cuts on their sentences, and "relevant conduct" - even conduct that the defendant has been acquitted of.
In South Carolina the minimum sentence for murder is 30 years, and it is common for a defendant to plead to the minimum 30, or to a lesser sentence if the state reduces the charge to manslaughter. The mandatory minimum for some levels of trafficking cocaine, crack, or heroin is also 30 years. So what is the worse crime, murder or the possession of drugs? What about the murder of over 12,000 people?
