Please see recent letter (linked below) from the judge who had to impose mandatory sentence: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/02/09/former-fed...
Angelos was ensnared in an undercover marijuana purchase that reeked of entrapment. In 2003, over a year after he was arrested, Angelos was found guilty on several counts. Because of mandatory minimum statutes, the presiding judge—a Bush appointee named Paul Cassell—was left with no discretion at sentencing. After asking the prosecuting and defense attorneys to advise him on the constitutionality of the sentence, a distraught Cassell handed down a 55-year term, a punishment he called “unjust, cruel and even irrational.”