If she wants to go easy on a given defendant, she can indict for the most minor possible crime, present a skimpy criminal history, and downplay the offense.
"Under laws that Congressman Foley helped write, soliciting sex from a minor online is a federal crime, " the Nevada Democrat said.
Mandatory minimum sentences for drug offences, for example, have been a double disaster, diverting a lot of money from the war on serious crime and turning huge numbers of minor miscreants into hardened criminals.
The suspects are also being charged with involving a minor in a crime, Mr. Braga said, as a boy between 10 and 12 years of age is believed to have participated in the robbery, but not the rape.
Yet if the DOJ had gotten its way, that minor violation would be a federal crime.
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The vast majority of prisoners in any country are not violent criminals or dangerous psychopaths, but young men who have committed a non-violent property crime, or got into some relatively minor scrape with the law.
Women were forced into Magdalene laundries for a crime as minor as not paying for a train ticket, the McAleese report found.
BBC: Magdalene laundries: UK women's 'fast settlement' calls
The Conservative candidate for the job of Nottinghamshire police and crime commissioner is pulling out due to a "minor offence" committed 44 years ago.
"Like it or not, the archdiocese is canonically responsible for the financial care of a priest -- even a priest who has committed such a horrible crime and sin such as clergy sexual abuse of a minor, " the statement said.
CNN: Top U.S. archbishop linked to abusive priest payout plan
When serious bad guys get nabbed for a minor crime, it provides an opportunity to check for outstanding warrants on them and get them off the streets.
Separate versions of federal bills on the issue passed the U.S. House and Senate this year, that would make it a crime to take a minor across state lines for an abortion.
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