Prepping To Leave, AG Holder Still Has A To-Do List

With months left in his tenure as U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder told The Marshall Project he still hopes to establish a drug court in every district in the country, to achieve fairer sentencing. He called the bipartisan support for addressing the country’s massive incarceration rate “jaw-dropping and heart-warming,” and he has hope that some version of the Smarter Sentencing Act will become law in the new year. The original act was “a victim of the dysfunction” of Washington, D.C., he said, but “I think the stars are kind of lined up.”

Holder said his office continues to examine the death penalty. “I disagree very much with Justice Scalia’s certitude that we have never put to death an innocent person,” he said. He also called the caseload for the average public defender “just unbearable,” and said it’s something that must be fixed.