Pubdate: Fri, 31 Jan 2014
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Timothy M. Phelps

MANDATORY DRUG SENTENCES TARGETED

A Senate Committee Approves a Bipartisan Bill That Would Cut Lengthy 
Jail Terms for Many Offenders.

WASHINGTON - Most mandatory drug sentences would be cut in half under 
a bipartisan bill approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on 
Thursday, another victory in the campaign to roll back decades-old 
laws that require lengthy jail terms for drug offenders and, 
according to critics, fall heaviest on minorities.

The committee voted 13 to 5 to change most mandatory minimum jail 
terms from five, 10 or 20 years to two, five or 10 years, and to make 
retroactive a 2010 law that reduced the sentences for possession of 
crack cocaine compared with those for powder cocaine. Mandatory 
minimum terms are applied in about 15,000 drug sentences a year.

"Today's vote is a major step in what could be a historic shift in 
the decades long war on drugs," said Marc Mauer, executive director 
of the Sentencing Project, a Washington nonprofit.

The most notable change in the political equation was the support of 
some prominent Republicans, notably Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz 
of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, making it highly likely that the 
bill will clear the full Senate.

The Republican shift appears to be focused on libertarians, some tea 
party conservatives worried about the high costs of incarceration, 
and members of the Christian right. But the committee's top 
Republican, Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, warned sharply against 
the changes.

"Heroin addiction is spreading in areas that have never seen the 
problem before," Grassley said. "Given the real world that we live 
in, why should we vote to cut mandatory minimum sentences? We will be 
sending messages to judges to give far lower sentences."

Grassley said Republicans would not filibuster the measure on the 
Senate floor, virtually assuring passage. Mandatory minimum 
legislation is also pending in the House with bipartisan support, but 
the positions of the key players there - Judiciary Committee Chairman 
Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) - 
were not clear Thursday.

Federal judges have been complaining for years about having their 
hands tied in drug cases and being forced to sentence people they 
regard as minor offenders to lengthy prison terms, sometimes 
effectively for life.

The bill would also provide a path to freedom for an estimated 7,000 
imprisoned crack users or dealers sentenced before the Fair 
Sentencing Act was approved nearly four years ago. That law corrected 
huge term disparities between possession of crack cocaine, 
predominantly used by African Americans, and similar amounts of powder cocaine.

Though the bill was slightly watered down in committee to attract 
Republican votes, it is a key feature of Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder 
Jr.'s campaign to increase fairness in sentencing and reduce prison 
populations.

Holder and Deputy Atty. Gen. James Cole have recently been 
encouraging private lawyers to represent prisoners they believe to be 
unfairly languishing in jail in a large-scale effort to apply for 
commutations of their sentences from President Obama.

"While the United States comprises only 5% of the world's population, 
we incarcerate almost a quarter of the world's prisoners," Cole told 
the New York State Bar Assn. on Thursday, appealing for help from its 
members. "And while the entire U.S. population has increased by about 
one-third over the last 30 years, the federal prison population has 
increased at a staggering rate of 800% - currently totaling nearly 
216,000 inmates."

In December, Obama commuted the sentences of just eight of the 
estimated 7,000 prisoners still in jail because of the crack cocaine disparity.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom