CRACK CONVICTS MAY GET OUT EARLY

Judges, Others See Sentences As Unfair

WASHINGTON - Under pressure from federal judges, inmate advocacy
groups and civil rights organizations, federal authorities are
considering a sweeping cut in prison sentences that could bring early
release for thousands of federal inmates.

The proposal being weighed by the U.S. Sentencing Commission would
shave an average of at least two years off the sentences of 19,500
federal prisoners, about 1 in 10 in the 200,000-inmate system. More
than 2,500 of them, mainly those who have already served lengthy
sentences, would be eligible for release within a year if the rule is adopted.

Such a mass commutation would be unprecedented: No other single rule
in the two-decade history of the Sentencing Commission has affected
nearly so many inmates. And no single law or act of presidential
clemency, such as grants of amnesty to draft resisters and
conscientious objectors after World War II and the Vietnam War, has
affected so many people at one time. The far-reaching move is aimed
at addressing what is seen as an unfair disparity in the effect of
federal cocaine laws dating to the mid-1980s. The laws imposed much
harsher punishment on people who use and sell crack cocaine than on
those who use and sell powder cocaine. About 80 percent of people
sentenced on federal crack charges every year are black. Sounding
alarm bells The Justice Department is warning of dire consequences if
the proposal goes through, including the possibility that returning
thousands of serious drug offenders to the streets will compound a
recent increase in violent crime across the country.

"The unexpected release of 20,000 prisoners ... would jeopardize
community safety and threaten to unravel the success we have achieved
in removing violent crack offenders from high crime neighborhoods,"
the department said in a letter to the commission this month.

The congressionally chartered commission, which sets sentencing
guidelines for federal judges, has already adopted the reduced
penalties for new crack cases hitting the courts effective Nov. 1.
That decision alone will affect about 4,000 a cases a year. The
debate now is about its plans to make those changes retroactive to
inmates already in prison. The seven-member commission is considering
the proposal at a hearing today; a vote is expected sometime next year.

A wave of fear Congress started enacting tougher penalties for crack
in the 1980s at the height of public fears about spreading street
violence associated with the drug. There was also concern that crack
was more dangerous and addictive than powder cocaine.

The distinction became embedded in federal law and in the guidelines
that the sentencing commission promulgated for two decades. For
example, it takes 100 times more powder cocaine than crack to trigger
mandatory five- and 10-year prison terms under federal law.

Most experts now believe that the penalties exaggerate the relative
harmfulness of crack compared with powder cocaine. Another concern is
that setting such low thresholds for punishing crack offenders has
led to the lengthy imprisonment of low-level street dealers, couriers
and lookouts, rather than major drug traffickers.

The disparity is now under siege on several fronts. There is
bipartisan legislation in Congress that would narrow the penalties
for crack compared with powder cocaine. The Supreme Court is
considering a case this term that would give judges even more
discretion to reduce sentences in crack cases. 'Fundamentally unjust'
The widely differing treatment of crack offenders is "fundamentally
unjust," said Reggie B. Walton, a federal judge in Washington. As a
top White House drug-control official in the 1980s, Walton advocated
for tougher sentences in crack cases. But he said the penalties in
hindsight have become too severe. Walton is testifying at the hearing
today on behalf of the policy-making arm of the federal courts, which
supports the sentencing proposal.

Inmate advocacy groups, such as Families against Mandatory Minimums,
are being flooded with calls about the new sentencing-commission
proposal. Mary Price, the general counsel of the Washington-based
group, says a co-worker has two sons in prison who would benefit from
the sentencing change. "It is one of the very important civil rights
issues of our day," said Hilary O. Shelton, director of the NAACP
Washington office, which has long pushed for reform of cocaine laws.

Fallen athlete The potential beneficiaries include the likes of
Willie Mays Aikens, a former Major League Baseball star with the
Kansas City Royals, who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison
in 1994 for selling 63 grams of crack to an undercover police officer.

His case illustrates the powerful effect that the crack-powder divide
can have: If the charges against him had involved a similar amount of
powder cocaine, he would have received a sentence of no more than 27
months. Now, if the sentencing-commission proposal passes, he would
be eligible for release in 2009, about three years earlier than his
current release date, says his attorney, Margaret Love.