Sentencing system needs reform

I am reluctant to express my judgment on the U.S. government's raid on the Postville kosher meat processing plant and its results. I do so now because, as the former U.S. attorney for Northern Iowa (1976-1982), I feel I should speak out as one of the final events of the raid, the sentencing of Sholom Rubashkin, is about to occur.

When I was U.S. attorney, I made it a practice to not recommend sentences as I felt, under the separation of power of our Constitution, it was the judge's prerogative alone to sentence. I now give my opinion because of the harshness of the sentence recommended by my old office.

Sentencing in our country has become problematic because of the implementation of the sentencing guidelines experiment and its resulting filling of our prisons to embarrassing levels. To impose the equivalent of a life sentence on a 50-year-old defendant, like Rubashkin, who has violated the law but without dire consequences other than the results of the raid, would warrant the harshest of sentences. That would only highlight the need for reform of our sentencing system.

I rely on the judge to be just and that in the future the appropriate changes will be made to relieve the undue pressure on the taxpayers, prisoners and their families from our incarceration system.

James H. Reynolds

Naples, Fla.