SUPREME COURT RESTRICTS SENTENCE-REDUCING BENEFIT

Federal Inmates Who Used Guns Cannot Cut Term With Drug
Program

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that federal inmates
who used guns in their crimes cannot receive a credit that cuts a year
off prisoners' sentences if they undergo treatment for drug abuse.

In a program enacted six years ago, Congress barred only violent
criminals from that sentence-reducing benefit. But yesterday, the
court decided by a vote of 6-3 that the U.S. Bureau of Prisons was
free to exclude another group - inmates who committed nonviolent
crimes while carrying or using guns.

The bureau adopted that position after concluding that inmates who had
a gun in connection with the crime that sent them to prison had shown
a tendency to endanger lives and that public safety required them to
be kept in prison until they served out their sentences.

The court majority rejected a South Dakota inmate's argument that
Congress intended to create an incentive for all inmates to receive
substance abuse treatment, so long as the crimes they committed were
classified as nonviolent.

"When an eligible prisoner successfully completes drug treatment, the
bureau has the authority, but not the duty, to reduce his term of
imprisonment," the court said in an opinion written by Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg.

"The bureau need not blind itself to conduct that the agency
reasonably views as jeopardizing life and limb - the very conduct
leading to conviction," she wrote.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the three dissenters, said that
Congress had drawn the line for early release "between violent and
non-violent offenses. ... By moving this line, the bureau exceeded its
authority."