AS I SEE IT
Cynthia Tucker

The Injustice
Of Colorcoded
Drug Laws

WHY DIDN'T the U.S. Supreme Court do the right thing? The nation's highest
court had a chance to erase a fundamental wrong in the criminal justice
system: a warped scale that serves up harsher justice to crack cocaine
dealerswho are mostly people of colorthan to those who traffic in
powdered cocaine. Those penalties, which have no legal or scientific
rationale, grew out of the 1980s hysteria over innercity drugrelated
crimes.

But the disparate penalties have not reduced the crime that plagues poor,
innercity neighborhoods or stopped the disintegration of families torn
apart by drug dependency. The only thing this colorcoded web of laws has
done is reinforce Black America's deep distrust of the criminal justice
system.

And that distrust gives criminals cover they don't deserve. As long as
lawabiding black residents of poor, crimeridden neighborhoods distrust the
courts and the police almost as much as they do the drug thugs and
gangbangers, they are unlikely to risk the wrath of the bad guys to help
the cops. They will put bars on their windows; they will keep their
children indoors; they will sleep on the floor to avoid the gunfire that
inevitably disturbs the night. But those citizens are unlikely to be the
eyes and ears that police officers need to break up drug rings or street
gangs.

The O.J. Simpson trial gave White America the merest glimpse of Black
America's suspicions about police and courts. That distrust has its roots
in hist~ ry: a history of Iynchings indulged by white sheriffs; of false
charges against black men endorsed by white juries; of routine police
brutality against blacks; of a criminal justice system that took umbrage at
the murders of whites but was uncaring about the murders of blacks.

The high court cannot do anything to change that history, but it could
moved to strike down any discriminatory remnants that remain. In the case
of cocaine sentencing laws, the Supreme Court refused to do that.

10 year sentence handed down to Duane Colbert Edwards, a Washington, D.C.,
man arrested in June 1995 for his involvement in the sale of more than 50
grams of crack. Had Edwards been involved in the sale of powdered cocaine,
he would not have drawn 10 years. He would have had to be caught with 100
times more powdered cocaine5,000 gramsto get so stiff a sentence.

The Supreme Court said it found no evidence that Congress had acted "with
discriminatory intent" when it established mandatory sentencing laws with a
builtin bias. That may be so. It is economicsnot racethat places cheap
crack cocaine in poor black and brown neighborhoods, while the more
expensive powdered cocaine remains a drig of choice among affluent whites.

Robert Byck, a Yale University drug expert, believes his testimony before
Congress in 1986 may have inadvertently provoked the 100 to1 disparity.
Byck testified that some experts believed crack was 50 times more
addictive. The gettough contingent in Congress simply doubled the number.
The resulting ratio "was a fabrication by whoever wrote the law, but not
reality," Byck said later.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission has recommended that the sentencing
disparities be eliminated. But Congress refuses to undo its error. And the
craven Clinton administration sticks by the discriminatory laws, too.

The irony is that these unequal laws will do nothing but harm the campaign
to control crime in our nation's cities. Criminals can continue to exploit
the widespread belief among America's black poor that the rules of justice
are rigged against them.

Chronicle Features

Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor of the Atlanta Constitution.