Supreme Court OKs Shorter Crack Cocaine Terms

[Catherine Vincent]

Dec. 10, 2007, 9:50AM
Supreme Court OKs shorter crack cocaine terms

By MARK SHERMAN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court today said judges may impose shorter prison terms for crack cocaine crimes, enhancing judicial discretion to reduce the disparity between sentences for crack and cocaine powder. By a 7-2 vote, the court said that a 15-year sentence given to Derrick Kimbrough, a black veteran of the 1991 war with Iraq, was acceptable, even though federal sentencing guidelines called for Kimbrough to receive 19 to 22 years. In a separate sentencing case that did not involve crack cocaine, the court also ruled in favor of judicial discretion to impose more lenient sentences than federal guidelines recommend.

The challenges to criminal sentences center on a judge's discretion to impose a shorter sentence than is called for in guidelines established by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, at Congress' direction. The guidelines were adopted in the mid-1980s to help produce uniform punishments for similar crimes. The cases are the result of a decision three years ago in which the justices ruled that judges need not strictly follow the sentencing guidelines. Instead, appellate courts would review sentences for reasonableness, although the court has since struggled to define what it meant by that term.

Kimbrough's case did not present the justices with the ultimate question of the fairness of the disparity in crack and powder cocaine sentences. Congress wrote the harsher treatment for crack into a law that sets a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence for trafficking in 5 grams of crack cocaine or 100 times as much cocaine powder. The law also sets maximum terms. Seventy percent of crack defendants are given the mandatory prison terms. Kimbrough is among the remaining 30 percent who, under the guidelines, get even more time in prison because they are convicted of trafficking in more than the amount of crack that triggers the minimum sentences.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, said, "A reviewing court could not rationally conclude that it was an abuse of discretion" to cut four years off the guidelines-recommended sentence for Kimbrough.

more....http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5365320.html

[dbackjon]

1. Alito and Thomas dissent. Suprised Scalia didn't as well

[greenvpi]

2. Nice!

The laws are a little less racist now.

[mod mom]

3. Wasn't Hillary against this?

on edit...yes she was:

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2614

[spanone]

4. what a sane thing to do