Reno Favors Reducing
Crack Cocaine Penalties

Chronicle News Services
Miami

Attorney General Janet Reno told black police executives meeting here
yesterday that she favors easing sentences for possession of crack cocaine,
but she said they should remain stiffer than sentences for powder cocaine.

Although she favors substantially narrowing the gap between the penalties
for possession, "those who sell crack ought to be punished more" than those
who sell powder cocaine, she said at the annual convention of the National
Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, noting the violence and
havoc crack wreaks on inner cities.

Federal law requires a five year minimum sentence for people possessing
five grams or more of crack. However, someone convicted of possessing
powder cocaine would get the same sentence only if 500 grams or more was
involved.

"I want the (sentencing policy) to be one that is fair and one that the
community thinks is fair," Reno said. "I want it to be one that also
imposes a fair, stiff penalty that fits the crime."

President Clinton has received specific recommendations from Reno and the
White House drug policy director, retired General Barry McCaffrey,
suggesting reducing the disparity in sentencing, Presidential spokesman
Mike Curry said.

But both Reno and McCaffrey ve stopped well short of urging that the
sentencing disparity be eliminated altogether, although McCaffrey said in a
telephone interview yesterday that he personally favors doing so.

With their recommendation, whose adoption would require Congressional
approval, Reno and McCaffrey have stepped into one the most contentious and
protracted debates in the long war against drugs: whether there is
justification for harsher penalties for crack than for powder cocaine, a
policy that in practice has tended treat blacks more severely than whites.

Opponents of the disparity say it puts far more blacks than whites behind
bars for five years or longer, because whites are statistically more likely
to snort or inject coke, while blacks are likelier to smoke cocaine in its
cheaper crack form. The disparity has also been faulted for punishing
lowlevel pushers just as harshly as highlevel dealers, or even more
harshly.

In 1995, the Federal Sentencing commission recommended equalizing the
penalties for possession and sale of the two varieties, partly because of
complaints of racial bias. More than 90 percent of defendants in the more
heavily penalized crack cases are black, compared with only 25 percent of
powder defendants.

Although 25 grams still amounts to less than an ounce of crack, and
although crack is not pure cocaine, the proposal seems bound to find
resistance among some members of Congress and others who support severe
penalties for any drug use. But it is also likely to be welcomed by federal
judges and prosecutors, who feel that the current fivegram crack threshold
deprives them of discretion in making the punishment fit the crime.

In the interview yesterday, McCaffery said he had wanted to propose
eliminating the sentencing disparity entirely because pharmacologically,
crack and powder cocaine are the same psychoactive compound and, he said,
are equally addictive.

But, he said, he ultimately accepted the argument of federal law
enforcement officials, including Reno, that crack must continue to be
punished more severely, on the ground that it has long been associated with
greater violence, particularly among streetlevel dealers.

Reno and McCaffrey submitted their recommendation after Clinton requested
that they study a report issued April 29 by the U.S. Sentencing Commission,
which draws up sentencing guidelines for federal courts.

In that report, the commission proposed that Congress change the fiveyear
minimum sentence for possessing crack from 5 grams at present to a level
between 25 and 75 grams, and that it adjust the minimum sentence for
possessing powdered cocaine from 500 grams to a level between 125 and 375
grams.

In their recommendation to Clinton, Reno and McCaffrey said the disparity
"has become an important symbol of racial injustice
in our criminal justice system, adding, "We cannot turn a blind eye to the
corrosive effect this has had on respect for the law in certain communities
and on the effective administration of justice."

The sentencing disparity survived a legal challenge in the Supreme Court,
which ruled May 13, 1996, that the statistical predominance of blacks
prosecuted for possessing crack cocaine did not in itself sufficiently
prove that the federal government selectively gave African Americans
harsher sentences.