Pubdate: Sun, 22 Dec 2013
Source: Trentonian, The (NJ)
Copyright: 2013 The Trentonian
Contact:  http://www.trentonian.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1006
Author: Stephen a. Crockett Jr., The Root

A CRACK IN 'AFFLUENZA' JUSTICE

President Barack Obama announced on Thursday that he will be 
commuting the sentences of eight crack-cocaine offenders who were 
given extremely lengthy prison terms basically for being black and 
possessing a drug whose users are incorrectly perceived to be majority black.

We can stammer around the issue, but ever since crack cocaine entered 
urban cities during the 1980s, the war on drugs has really been a war 
on black skin. Scores of black, mostly male, faces were sent to 
prison as the drug ravished the community as well as individuals and families.

Prisons were overflowing with first-time offenders: Possession of 5 
grams of crack cocaine at that time yielded a five-year 
mandatory-minimum sentence, while it would have taken 500 grams of 
powder cocaine to prompt the same time. To put this in simpler terms, 
a portion of crack roughly the size of a pair of dice was five years 
in prison. Straight, no chaser. (Today it takes 28 grams of crack 
cocaine to yield a five-year sentence.)

Guess who was more likely to use which version of the same drug.

This is the reason the case of Ethan Couch, the 16-year-old drunk 
driver who killed four innocent people and is slated to serve no jail 
time at all, feels like such a miscarriage of justice.

This is why there is community outrage from blacks who see this 
happen all too often and, despite the unfair doling out of 
punishment, still believe in a justice system that shows little 
belief in us. Missteps or misfortune in the black community don't 
allow for adjustments, apologies or rehabilitation. We are thrown the 
book, as heavy as that book might be, and we are unfairly and 
unflinchingly punished for our faults.

It is justified outrage, considering that African-Americans make up 
13.6 percent of the U.S. population, according to 2010 census data, 
but black men are estimated to make up 40.2 percent of all prison inmates.

So the timing of President Obama's commutation of these unfairly 
lengthy punishments isn't lost on those who note that prosecutors are 
currently begging the judge to throw Couch in prison.

The Couch defense: "affluenza"-a term coined to describe the burden 
and lack of consequences associated with wealth. His punishment: 10 
years' probation and a posh stay in a residential facility that 
believes in horseback riding and massage as therapy.

And then there is Clarence Aaron, who, in 1993, was a 23-year-old 
college student who introduced two participants in a drug buy. His 
payment for making the introduction: $1,500. His sentence: three life terms.

Thanks to the president some 20 years after his conviction, Aaron 
will soon be a free man. My question is, now that he is free, what is 
left for him to become?
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