PENALTY GAP CLOSING FOR POWDER AND CRACK COCAINE

At least 17 people have been released from prison in the Upstate in
the month since federal judges have had the leeway to reduce crack
cocaine sentences, and more are to come as orders to release
prisoners trickle daily through the federal court system.

Early estimates are that 800-900 federal inmates serving sentences on
crack convictions will be granted early release statewide under new
sentencing guidelines that are designed to shrink the disparity with
powder cocaine sentences, said Quincy Avinger, deputy chief of the
South Carolina District U.S. Probation Office.

The number of inmates leaving prison early will be spread out over
the course of the next three decades, depending on the length of
their sentences for crack and, in many cases, accompanying crimes,
Avinger said.

Officials in South Carolina agreed to have the state's federal
probation office identify eligible inmates and present
recommendations to the public defender's office, said Ben Stepp, an
assistant federal public defender in Greenville.

The defender's office o which is handling all defendants even if they
employed a private attorney during their legal proceedings o then
presents the suggested reduction to federal prosecutors for approval.

The South Carolina U.S. Attorney's Office reviews the suggestions and
takes into account factors that might make a reduced sentence
unwarranted, including an inmate's behavior in prison, said Nancy
Wicker, a spokeswoman for the South Carolina District U.S. Attorney's Office.

"We, the government, are not opposing the motions unless there is
post-sentencing evidence that the defendant is either a danger to the
community or for some other reason just flat doesn't qualify," Wicker said.

Avinger said probation officers still have about a third of the
estimated 1,300 inmates serving crack sentences left to review. The
17 released in the Greenville district court as of last week are all
now under probationary supervision, like dozens of others across the
state, he said.

"We've already had a number of folks o at least several dozen o who
have been released, have shown up at the probation office and are now
being supervised in the community," he said. "At this point, it's
hard to tell how many, because we haven't hit the crest on it."

In December, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously to
allow judges the freedom to depart from federal sentencing guidelines
to reduce crack cocaine sentences for those already convicted.

Since 1987, when lawmakers sought to stamp out what was a relatively
new and dangerous drug trend, crack cocaine offenses have brought
penalties more severe than those for similar amounts of powder cocaine.

The disparity makes for sentences that are three to six times longer
than those for powder cocaine, according to a sentencing commission report.

Greenville district court records show several reductions ranging
from as little as one month to as much as three years.

For example, in 2005, Barron Johnson, a Greenville man whose arrest
launched a federal investigation into a cocaine network known as the
Sin City Mafia, was sentenced to seven years in prison on
crack-distribution charges. A federal judge has now reduced his
sentence by 2 years, according to federal court records.

For years, policymakers have debated the disparity between penalties
for the crack and powder cocaine, a debate that gave rise to claims
that harsher crack sentences have disproportionately affected blacks,
while more whites and Hispanics are sentenced under powder cocaine
guidelines, according to the sentencing commission.

The U.S. Department of Justice has opposed reducing sentences, citing
fears of inmates being released and causing more trouble. In
February, Congress shot down a bill proposed by U.S. Attorney General
Michael Mukasey to overrule the commission's decision.

William Wilkins, a former chief judge of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals who is now on senior status and is serving a temporary
stint as a Greenville district judge, said the flexibility given to
judges to impose crack sentences has been overdue since Congress
enacted the crack laws when "there was no data, no information, no
basis for doing that."

"I think it was the right thing to do," said Wilkins, the first
chairman of the sentencing commission. "Crack is a dangerous drug,
and it should be punished more severely than powder cocaine in my
judgment, because it is more associated with violence and associated
with guns and so forth. But it's not a hundred times more dangerous."

Wilkins said he believes a more appropriate ratio would be 20-1, a
reduction proposed by lawmakers that he said would still ensure that
crack dealers serve lengthy sentences.

Most of the reductions, Wilkins said, will come in the form of
handwritten judges' orders rather than calling inmates into court for
re-sentencing.

Judges have been granted freedom to handle the reductions as they see
fit, whether it's reducing a sentence drastically or not at all, Stepp said.

In Greenville, the federal public defender's office has handled at
least two dozen requests since March 3, Stepp said. One inmate has
been denied, he said.

"We've been kind of developing the protocol as we go along because
it's not something we've ever done before," Stepp said. "We're
handling them the best way we can, as quickly as we can."