Pubdate: Thu, 30 Jun 2011
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2011 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://mapinc.org/topic/United+States+Sentencing+Commission

REDUCING UNJUST COCAINE SENTENCES

The 1986 federal drug law that punished people caught with crack 
cocaine far more severely than those caught with powder cocaine was a 
disaster on many levels. It undermined faith in the justice system by 
discriminating against poor and mainly minority crack users and 
favoring affluent white users who preferred the chemically identical 
powdered form.

Congress tinkered at the margins of the law but failed to eliminate 
the sentencing disparity when it passed the Fair Sentencing Act of 
2010. Now Republican lawmakers are trying to compound a longstanding 
injustice by opposing a proposal that would allow some people 
sentenced under the original law to apply for reductions in their prison terms.

The original law was grossly unjust. It mandated a minimum 10-year 
sentence for anyone caught with 50 grams of crack - about the weight 
of a candy bar. To get a comparable sentence, a person arrested for 
powdered cocaine would have to be caught with 5,000 grams - enough to 
fill a briefcase.

Instead of equalizing sentences when it revisited the issue in 2010, 
Congress lowered the penalties for some crack offenses and reduced 
the sentencing disparity between crack and powered cocaine from 100 
to 1 to 18 to 1.

The United States Sentencing Commission, which sets federal 
guidelines, has issued temporary sentencing rules for people who were 
convicted of offenses after the new law took effect last fall. The 
commission is also empowered to determine if people convicted of 
trafficking under the original law should be eligible to apply for 
limited sentence reductions.

The commission has allowed retroactive reductions in other cases. If 
it votes to do so at a meeting scheduled for Thursday, about 12,000 
federal inmates could become eligible to apply for an average 
reduction of 37 months.

Republican lawmakers, however, are trying to intimidate the 
commission into rejecting retroactivity. Senator Charles Grassley of 
Iowa, for example, has threatened to require the commission to pay 
the administrative costs of reducing sentences out of its budget. The 
commission should ignore this harassment and vote in favor of 
sentencing fairness.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom