Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Supreme Court eases 100-1 crack/powder sentencing rules

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By a 7-2 vote, the Supreme Court today upheld a sentence for a crack cocaine-related offense that was well below the famous 100-1 ratio.  Under the 100-1 rule, an offense involving 5 grams of crack receives the same penalty as 500 grams of powder cocaine.  The 100-1 rule has been harshly criticized for, among other things, introducing gross racial disparities into sentencing.  

The lay of the land regarding federal sentencing laws, sentencing guidelines, and judicial discretion, is quite complicated these days, but today’s bottom line is that the federal district courts today have much more freedom to depart from the 100-1 rule than they did yesterday.

The decision is here.  As always, excellent analysis and commentary is available at SCOTUSblog.

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Comments

  1. that we should now also expect lighter crack sentences for whites than for blacks since judges can now give sentences that are less than the “minimum jail time”?

  2. Does anyone know whether federal prisoners convicted of using or selling crack cocaine who under the previous mandatory 100-1 ratio can now seek to have their sentences reduced by their original trial judge?

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    p>Is it too much to hope that these SC decisions might spark some re-thinking of our cruel, punitive drug laws and steer Congress, federal prosecutors, and judges towards emphasizing a treatment approach to drug crimes rather than emphasizing a counterproductive, cruel punitive approach to drug crimes?

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    p>Will federal prosecutors now turn to emphasizing gang violence, organized crime, and political corruption instead of pursuing a plethora of dubious federal drug crime investigations in federal court?

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    p>Will any of the presidential candidates now have the courage to address the insanity of our nation’s drug laws and prosecutions as a result of these SC decisions?

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    p>Please give me some hope that the answer to, at least, some of these questions is in the affirmative.

  3. The racial element shouldn’t even enter into the argument.

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    p>A drug that has the capacity to enslave the way crack does deserves to be in a special category.

    • or something like that.

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      p>What, pray tell, makes crack 100 times worse than cocaine?  I’d appreciate anything more than an allegory.

      • Crack is delivered through the lungs – very efficient, very powerful, very addictive.

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        p>Powder is delivered through the mucous membranes in the nasopharynx – far less effective, especially given that coke is a vasoconstrictor.

          • …isn’t free-basing a term used in connection with heroin injection?  I’ve never heard it used in connection with snorting cocaine, but, as I said, I’m not up on the lingo.

            • Is a means of producing high grade (pure) crack. It involves the use of diethyl ether, and users have an unfortunate habit of setting themselves ablaze.

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              p>Most street crack is essentially a dirtier form of freebasing, uses no ether in its production, and is full of contaminants.    

    • Although the [US Sentencing] Commission immediately used the 100-to-1 ratio to define base offense levels for all crack and powder offenses, it later determined that the crack/powder sentencing disparity is generally unwarranted. Based on additional research and experience with the 100-to-1 ratio, the Commission concluded that the disparity “fails to meet the sentencing objectives set forth by Congress in both the Sentencing Reform Act and the 1986 Act.” 2002 Report 91. In a series of reports, the Commission identified three problems with the crack/powder disparity.

         First, the Commission reported, the 100-to-1 ratio rested on assumptions about “the relative harmfulness of the two drugs and the relative prevalence of certain harmful conduct associated with their use and distribution that more recent research and data no longer support.” Ibid.; see United States Sentencing Commission, Report to Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy 8 (May 2007), available at http://www.ussc.gov/r_congress… (hereinafter 2007 Report) (ratio Congress embedded in the statute far “overstate[s]” both “the relative harmfulness” of crack cocaine, and the “seriousness of most crack cocaine offenses”). For example, the Commission found that crack is associated with “significantly less trafficking-related violence … than previously assumed.” 2002 Report 100. It also observed that “the negative effects of prenatal crack cocaine exposure are identical to the negative effects of prenatal powder cocaine exposure.” Id., at 94. The Commission furthermore noted that “the epidemic of crack cocaine use by youth never materialized to the extent feared.” Id., at 96.

         Second, the Commission concluded that the crack/powder disparity is inconsistent with the 1986 Act’s goal of punishing major drug traffickers more severely than low-level dealers. Drug importers and major traffickers generally deal in powder cocaine, which is then converted into crack by street-level sellers. See 1995 Report 66-67. But the 100-to-1 ratio can lead to the “anomalous” result that “retail crack dealers get longer sentences than the wholesale drug distributors who supply them the powder cocaine from which their crack is produced.” Id., at 174.

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      p>The third is the racial element you mention.

    • I wouldn’t have put it over 10 at the absolute worst.

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      p>Do you really think somebody dealing 5 grams (1/6 ounce) of crack (that’s about 1/6 of an ounce) should be treated equally with somebody dealing 500 grams of powder (that’s over a pound)?

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      p>No doubt crack is worse, for the very reason you cite, but 100 seems a little extreme.

      • I’m not going to quibble over whether it is ten times worse, one hundred times worse, or something in between.

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        p>What I think we can agree on is that crack is far worse than powder.

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        p>Crack is an enhanced product, designed to addict as quickly as possible for maximum profit. And there should be an enhanced penalty for its distribution – much the same as hashish possession gets more severe punishment than pot, by weight.

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        p>I believe that the guy producing the rock is doing society worse that the guy that sold him the powder. But it’s a distinction between two scumbags.  

        • …I had read that it was leaders in the black community who were pushing for enhanced penalties for possession and sale of crack.  The reason that was given was that crack was destroying primarily black communities.  I can’t vouch for the truthfullness of the report, but that’s what was reported.

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          p>As far as I’m concerned, all of this should be treated as a public health issue, not a criminal issue, but it’s obvious that that isn’t going to happen in the US any time soon.

  4. …Scalia concurred in the decision.  On second thought, I’m not particularly surprised since he has apparently been consistently critical of the Sentencing Guidelines, and correctly so.

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