Pubdate: Mon, 12 Nov 2007
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Page: Front Page, top of the page
Copyright: 2007 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Richard B. Schmitt, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Cited: Families Against Mandatory Minimums http://www.famm.org
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?244 (Sentencing - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/crack+cocaine
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

PANEL MAY CUT THOUSANDS OF PRISON TERMS

The early release of 19,500 inmates could result as officials try to 
address perceived unfairness in sentencing under federal cocaine laws.

WASHINGTON -- Under pressure from federal judges, inmate advocacy 
groups and civil rights organizations, federal authorities are 
considering a sweeping cut in prison sentences that could bring early 
release for thousands of federal inmates.

The proposal being weighed by the U.S. Sentencing Commission would 
shave an average of at least two years off the sentences of 19,500 
federal prisoners, about 1 in 10 in the 200,000-inmate system. More 
than 2,500 of them, mainly those who have already served lengthy 
sentences, would be eligible for release within a year if the rule is adopted.

Such a mass commutation would be unprecedented: No other single rule 
in the two-decade history of the Sentencing Commission has affected 
nearly as many inmates. And no single law or act of presidential 
clemency, such as grants of amnesty to draft resisters and 
conscientious objectors after World War II and the Vietnam War, has 
affected so many people at one time.

The far-reaching move is aimed at addressing what is seen as an 
unfair disparity in federal cocaine laws dating to the mid-1980s that 
have imposed much harsher punishment on crack cocaine users and 
dealers than in powder cocaine cases. About 80% of those sentenced on 
federal crack charges every year are African American.

The Justice Department is warning of dire consequences if the 
proposal goes through, including the possibility that returning 
thousands of serious drug offenders to the streets would compound a 
recent increase in violent crime across the country.

"The unexpected release of 20,000 prisoners . . . would jeopardize 
community safety and threaten to unravel the success we have achieved 
in removing violent crack offenders from high-crime neighborhoods," 
the department said in a letter to the commission this month.

The congressionally chartered commission, which sets sentencing 
guidelines for federal judges, has already adopted reduced penalties 
for new crack cases hitting the courts effective Nov. 1. That 
decision will affect about 4,000 a cases a year. The debate now is 
about its plans to make those changes retroactive to inmates. The 
seven-member commission is considering the proposal at a hearing 
Tuesday; a vote is expected next year.

Congress started enacting tougher penalties for crack offenders in 
the 1980s, at the height of public fears about spreading street 
violence associated with the drug, and amid concern that crack was 
more dangerous and addictive than powder cocaine.

The distinction became embedded in federal law and shaped the 
guidelines that the Sentencing Commission promulgated for two 
decades. For example, it takes 100 times as much powder cocaine as 
crack to trigger mandatory five- and 10-year prison terms under federal law.

Most experts now believe that the penalties exaggerate the relative 
harmfulness of crack compared with powder cocaine.

Another concern is that setting such relatively low thresholds for 
punishing crack offenders has led to the lengthy imprisonment not of 
major drug traffickers but of low-level street dealers, couriers and lookouts.

The disparity is under siege on several fronts. There is bipartisan 
legislation in Congress that would narrow the penalties for crack 
compared with those for powder cocaine. The Supreme Court is 
considering a case this term that would give judges even more 
discretion to reduce sentences in crack cases.

The widely differing treatment of crack offenders is "fundamentally 
unjust," said Reggie B. Walton, a federal judge in Washington.

As a top White House drug-control official in the 1980s, Walton 
advocated tougher sentences in crack cases. But the penalties have 
become too severe, he says. Walton is testifying at the hearing 
Tuesday on behalf of the policymaking arm of the federal courts, 
which supports the sentencing proposal.

Walton is greatly concerned that the distinction has eroded 
confidence in the courts, he says. In Washington, potential jurors 
often refuse to serve in crack cases, knowing that the penalties hurt 
African Americans more, he said.

He noted that a few years ago the commission made retroactive 
reductions in sentences for LSD offenders, who were mainly white. If 
it does not do the same for defendants in crack cases, he said, it 
could be accused of a double standard.

"If you are trying to send the message to the greater society that 
our process is a fair and just process, it becomes very difficult to 
say, Well, we lower the sentences retroactively for other types of 
drugs, but in reference to crack cocaine, which we know has had a 
significantly greater adverse impact on people of color, we are not 
going to do it," Walton said.

Advocacy groups for inmates, such as Families Against Mandatory 
Minimums, are being flooded with calls about the Sentencing 
Commission proposal. Mary Price, the general counsel of the 
Washington-based group, says a co-worker has two sons in prison who 
would benefit from the sentencing change.

"It is one of the very important civil rights issues of our day," 
said Hilary O. Shelton, director of the Washington office for the 
National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, which has long 
pushed for changing cocaine laws.

Potential beneficiaries of the proposal include Willie Mays Aikens, a 
former Major League Baseball star with the Kansas City Royals, who 
was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 1994 for selling 63 
grams of crack to an undercover cop.

Aikens' case illustrates the effect of the crack/powder divide: If 
the charges against him involved a similar amount of powder cocaine, 
he would have received a sentence of no more than 27 months.

Now, if the proposal passes, he will be eligible for release in 2009, 
about three years earlier than his current release date, said his 
attorney, Margaret Love.

Justice Department officials question the wisdom of releasing drug 
dealers earlier than planned without sufficient time to train them to 
assimilate back into their communities. The department estimates that 
about a third of those who could be released were convicted on 
related weapons charges and would pose a worrisome threat.

The department also said it was concerned about the courts being 
swamped with applications for reduced sentences.

"This surge of litigation, much of which may be frivolous, would 
detract from our ability to investigate and prosecute current crime 
and will impede the courts' ability to deal with pending cases, both 
criminal and civil," Assistant Atty. Gen. Alice Fisher said in a 
letter to the commission this month.

But federal judges said they would be willing to shoulder the load.

While acknowledging the possible risk to public safety, they also 
note that judges have discretion under the proposal to decline to 
reduce the sentence of a defendant who is considered a threat based 
on criminal history and other factors.

Some experts believe the quandary is the price for a tough-on-crime 
mentality that at the federal level has included longer sentences, 
the abolition of parole, and under the Bush administration, the 
virtual elimination of executive clemency.

They said that in the war on drugs over the last two decades, these 
measures had not necessarily worked out as expected: Despite prisons 
crowded with inmates, massive amounts of illegal drugs continue to 
flow into the country.

"We are struggling to find ways to introduce some flexibility into 
this very rigid system," said Love, the Justice Department pardon 
attorney in the 1990s. "The only question is whether we are willing 
to give people currently doing hard time the benefit of this change of heart." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake