Pubdate: Tue, 08 Nov 2011
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2011 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: John Ingold

CRACK-COCAINE OFFENDERS' SENTENCES REDUCED UNDER NEW FEDERAL RULES

It's been five years since Kira Mackey was able to visit her brother 
without going through security screening.

Five years since she could talk to him without someone in uniform 
standing nearby.

But that changed Friday, when Mackey's brother, Mario, walked out of 
federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, as one of hundreds of people 
released nationwide in the past week after their federal sentences 
for crack-cocaine offenses were reduced.

"I'm very excited," said Kira Mackey, a native of Denver now living 
in Chicago. "There's not words to describe the feelings I have for 
him to come home."

The sentence reductions came as part of an effort to bring 
crack-cocaine penalties closer to those of powder cocaine. In the 
late 1980s, when crack was closely linked with street violence, 
lawmakers raised the penalties for even nonviolent crack offenses. 
The disparity between crack- and powder-cocaine punishments grew so 
wide that an offender had to possess 100 times more powder cocaine to 
trigger the same kind of prison sentences that crack cocaine brought.

The disparity received extra scrutiny because people sentenced to 
harsher crack-cocaine sentences were overwhelmingly black.

"Crack-cocaine sentences were widely understood to overstate the 
seriousness of crack-cocaine offenses," said Mary Price, vice 
president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which campaigned 
for the sentencing changes. ". . . There was a great deal of injustice."

Congress last year passed the Fair Sentencing Act, bringing crack 
sentences down to an 18-to-1 ratio with powder-cocaine sentences. The 
U.S. Sentencing Commission then decided to apply those new rules 
retroactively, making roughly 12,000 federal inmates eligible to 
apply for sentencing reductions when the rules went into effect Nov. 
1. Those who are eligible will have an average of three years shaved 
off their sentences, Price said.

In Colorado, federal prosecutors and defense attorneys have so far 
identified close to 30 inmates whose cases originated in the state 
and are likely in line for sentence reductions, said Jeff Dorschner, 
a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Denver.

Attorneys have filed motions for sentence reductions in close to 20 
of those cases, said Raymond Moore, the federal public defender for 
Colorado. And at least 15 of those motions have been approved - with 
at least seven offenders being released from prison in the past week, 
according to federal court records.

That is how Mario Mackey found himself at the front door of the Fort 
Worth Federal Correctional Institution on Friday.

In 2006, Mackey was arrested in Denver and charged with possession 
with intent to distribute more than 5 grams of crack cocaine and 
possession of a handgun by a felon. He pleaded guilty and was 
sentenced to nine years in prison.

A similar 2008 sentence-reduction measure dropped that to about seven 
years. The federal public defender's office filed a motion for an 
additional sentence reduction in October, and U.S. District Judge 
William J. Martinez reduced Mackey's sentence to time served.

"We don't really know too much about it at all," Kira Mackey said of 
the sentencing changes. "We're just happy he's coming home."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom