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CRACK COCAINE & FEDERAL SENTENCING
C The average crack cocaine sentence, 120 months, is greater than: the 103-month average sentence for robbery; the 76-month average sentence for arson; the 64-month average sentence for sexual abuse; and the 31-month average sentence for manslaughter. United States Sentencing Commission, 1999 Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics.
C Sentences for crack offenders are roughly two to six times as great as sentences for powder cocaine offenders distributing equivalent quantities of drugs. Testimony of the Honorable Deanell Reece Tacha, United States Sentencing Commission, before the House Subcommittee on Crime, June 29, 1995.
C The average sentence for crack cocaine (ten years) is thirty-five percent longer than the average methamphetamine sentence and fifty-two percent longer than the average powder cocaine sentence. United States Sentencing Commission, 1999 Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics 69.
C While a majority of crack users in the United States are white, 94 percent of those sentenced under the incomparably severe penalties for crack cocaine are black or Hispanic. Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Justice on Trial: Racial Disparities in the American Criminal Justice System 30 (2000); United States Sentencing Commission, 1999 Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics 69.
C Amid widespread criticism directed at the severity and disparate impact of the crack sentencing regime, the Sentencing Commission has twice called for reduced crack penalties, noting A[t]he current penalty structure results in a perception of unfairness and inconsistency.@ United States Sentencing Commission, Special Report to Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy 8 (April 1997).
The Commission=s 1995 attempt to equalize the crack cocaine and cocaine powder penalties drew not only sharp criticism from members of Congress and the Attorney General but an unprecedented congressional rejection. The ball is now in Congress= court C Congress has yet to act on the recommendations in the congressionally ordered report issued by the Commission in 1997. It seems clear that the Commission is waiting for Congress to act in this area and that congressional action is necessary to initiate reform.
NACDL supports repeal of all mandatory minimums and greater latitude for the Commission to set drug penalties. As an intermediate step, we believe Congress should increase the quantity thresholds necessary to trigger the mandatory minimums for crack cocaine and direct the Commission to amend the guidelines accordingly.
Questioning Current Sentencing Policies
$ AAnd I think a lot of people are coming to the realization that maybe long minimum sentences for the first-time users may not be the best way to occupy jail space and/or heal people from their disease. And I'm willing to look at that. . . . [The crack-powder disparity] ought to be addressed by making sure the powder-cocaine and the crack- cocaine penalties are the same. I don't believe we ought to be discriminatory.@ Statement of President George W. Bush, CNN Inside Politics (CNN television broadcast, Jan. 18, 2001) (transcript on file with NACDL).
$ AThere is a conservative crime-control case to be made for repealing mandatory-minimum drug laws now. That=s a conservative crime-control case, as in a case for promoting public safety, respecting community mores, and reinstating the traditional sentencing prerogatives of criminal-court judges.@ John J. DiIulio, Jr., Against Mandatory Minimums, National Review, May 17, 1999, at 46.
$ AI believe it is time for us to look at the drug guidelines and the penalties we are imposing. . . . Judges think this minimum mandatory [for crack cocaine] which has the effect of driving up all of the sentencing guidelines is too tough.@ Cong. Rec. S14452 (Nov. 10, 1999) (statement of Senator Sessions).
$ A[T]he narcotics sentences generated by the Guidelines and the various minimum mandatory statutory sentencing provisions are often, if not always, too high. I say this as a former prosecutor of some fourteen years experience, seven of them as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Miami, who helped send a fair number of folks to prison for narcotics offenses.@ Frank O. Bowman, III, Fear of Law: Thoughts on Fear of Judging and the State of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 44 St. Louis U. L.J. 299, 337 (2000).
$ AFar from saving the inner cities, our barbaric crack penalties are only adding to the decimation of inner-city youth.@ Stuart Taylor Jr., Courage, Cowardice on Drug Sentencing, Legal Times, April 24, 1995, at 27.
$ AI think mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders ought to be reviewed. We have to see who has been incarcerated and what has come from it.@ Statement of Edwin Meese III, in Timothy Egan, Less Crime, More Criminals, N.Y. Times, Mar. 7, 1999.
$ AToo many lives are unfairly ruined by Draconian sentences that do not achieve the law-enforcement objectives C primarily deterrence C supposedly promoted by them. . . . The way to mitigate the unfairness of the crack-cocaine standards is not to toughen the powder-cocaine sentencing rules; it is to take the more courageous step of ameliorating the crack-sentencing scheme.@ Michael Bromwich (former inspector general of the Justice Department), Put A Stop to Savage Sentencing, Wash. Post, Nov. 22, 1999, at A23.
$ AToo often, our drug laws result in the long-term imprisonment of minor dealers or persons only marginally involved in the drug trade.@ John R. Dunne (former assistant attorney general under President George Bush), Paying For Failed Drug Laws, Wash. Post, Aug. 12, 1999. |
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National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL)
1660 L St., NW, 12th Floor, Washington, DC 20036
(202) 872-8600 • Fax (202) 872-8690 •
assist@nacdl.org
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