For the second year in a row, the Governor vetoed a bill that would have eliminated draconian mandatory minimum sentences contained in some of Rhode Island’s drug laws, which are the harshest in all of New England. When the Governor vetoed the bill last year at the request of the State Police, the ACLU argued that he not only ignored the proposal’s beneficial impact on the state’s ongoing prison population crisis and deep fiscal problems, he closed his eyes to the severe and discriminatory impact of drug sentencing laws on the state’s African-American and Latino population. However, he once again claimed that the bill interfered with the judiciary’s ability to impose an appropriate sentence, notwithstanding the Superior Court’s support for the legislation.
