Pubdate: Fri, 14 Dec 2007 Source: Sacramento Bee (CA) Copyright: 2007 The Sacramento Bee Contact: http://www.sacbee.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing) Note: Does not publish letters from outside its circulation area. COURT GRANTS LEEWAY IN CRACK COCAINE CASES Crack or powder, it's still cocaine; but the sentences have had unintended effects Two significant steps occurred this week to correct the draconian and racially suspect sentences mandated for crack cocaine offenders. In a 7-2 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 15-year sentence of Derrick Kimbrough, convicted of selling both powder and crack cocaine. The Justice Department argued his sentence violated federal guidelines because it was less than the mandated 19 to 22.5 years and flouted the will of Congress requiring harsher penalties for crack dealers. Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg reiterated a previous court ruling that sentencing guidelines are not mandatory but "advisory." In sentencing the defendant to 15 years, the trial judge did not ignore the harsh mandatory minimum sentencing statutes of 10 years and the maximum of life for dealing 50 grams or more of crack. Within those two limits, Ginsberg argued, judges are free to use discretion. "The statute says nothing about appropriate sentences within these brackets and this court declines to read any implicit directive into the congressional silence." Sentencing guidelines in cocaine cases have ranked among the worst injustices created by the nation's overzealous "war on drugs." Ginsberg underscored the inequity, commenting beyond the law's technicalities. She recounted the long, unfortunate history of crack penalties. Wrongly believing crack cocaine to be more addictive than powder cocaine, Congress imposed harsh sentences for minor crack dealers, the vast majority of whom were black, while major traffickers of powder cocaine, most of them white, received lesser sentences or probation. "This disparity means that a major supplier of powder cocaine may receive a shorter sentence than a low-level dealer who buys powder from the supplier but then converts it to crack," Ginsberg wrote. Had Kimbrough been convicted of trafficking solely in powder cocaine, he would been sentenced to just over eight years. A day after the Supreme Court ruled, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to apply its new, more lenient sentencing guidelines for crack possession retroactively. Commission members have long complained that crack sentences were too harsh. Last month they used their limited discretion to slightly reduce penalties for newly convicted crack defendants but left open the question of how judges treat federal inmates already incarcerated. On Tuesday, they voted unanimously to allow the inmates to apply for reduced sentences, making some 19,500 federal prisoners eligible for early release. Justice Department officials opposed the decision, predicting that the public would be endangered by the inmates' early release. Such alarmist rhetoric ignores the fact that inmates won't be released automatically. They must apply for early release. A judge reviews their cases and considers any violence in their backgrounds, their prison behavior and other factors before deciding whether to release. As the commission rightly determined, to deny relief to minor drug dealers who have spent years in prison under laws acknowledged as unfairly harsh compounds injustice. The courts and the sentencing commission have done what they can to restore fairness to our drug laws. Now Congress should follow suit. - --- MAP posted-by: Steve Heath