“‘Calling the federal government’s decades-old War on Drugs ‘nothing but an abysmal failure,’ U.S. District Court Chief Judge B. Lynn Winmill said Monday that he has viewed mandatory life sentences for felony drug convictions as wrong.
“At a criminal justice reform conference, Winmill said he has dealt with ‘probably . . . six or seven (cases)’ involving mandatory life sentences for drug convictions.
“’And in every one of those cases, I said to myself ‘Somehow this is just not right,’ Winmill said.”