A miswritten law.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals notices a nonsensical "and," retrieves the original parchment signed by President Clinton, and the case of a man convicted of distributing child pornography is remanded for resentencing, permitting the judge to impose only a fine.

"It is inconceivable," prosecutors wrote, "that Congress meant to permit judges to impose either a fine or a 10-year term, and nothing in between, on first offenders."...



Judge [Gerard E.] Lynch, when he sentenced [Jorge Pabon-Cruz], called the 10-year penalty "unjust and harmful." He said that it had "the potential to do disastrous damage to someone who himself is not much more than a child."

The fortuitous discovery of a drafting error enabled the judges to wriggle out of the mandatory sentencing I presume they hate.