SUPREME COURT RULING A MOVE TOWARD EQUALITY

The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling giving federal judges more
discretion to give lesser sentences in crack cocaine cases was an
overdue adjustment.

Although sentencing disparities for powdered cocaine and crack
evolved from an understandable concern about the crack epidemic of
the 1980s, the difference became an inequitable punishment for
African American defendants.

By no stretch of the imagination does the ruling signal intent to go
easy in crack cases; it merely equalizes justice. The district judge
in the case heard by the high court handed down a 15-year sentence
instead of the recommended minimum of 19 years.

The opinion written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the Virginia
case details the numerous recommendations of the U.S. Sentencing
Commission to equalize treatment of defendants in crack and powder
cocaine cases.

And Ginsburg noted, "Approximately 85 percent of defendants convicted
of crack offenses in federal court are black; thus the severe
sentences required by the 100-to-1 ratio are imposed primarily upon
black offenders."

The ratio she referred to is the 1986 law that treated 1 gram of
crack as the equivalent of 100 grams of cocaine. Legislation is
pending in Congress to change the ratio to 20-to-1.

The sentencing commission has supported the change.

Crack and powdered cocaine are dangerous and insidious. Sentencing
for distributing either form of the drug should remain stiff, but
treatment should be equal and judges need reasonable discretion.