Crack Cocaine Sentencing Survives

By RICHARD CARELLI

WASHINGTON (AP) The Supreme Court today rejected an appeal challenging as
racially discriminatory the federal sentencing laws that punish crack cocaine
offenders more harshly than those caught with powdered cocaine.

The court, without comment, let stand the 10year prison sentence of a man
convicted of distributing crack cocaine in the District of Columbia.

``There is a perception among AfricanAmericans that there is no more unequal
treatment by the criminal justice system than in the crack vs. powder
cocaine, racially biased federal sentencing provisions,'' the justices were
told by lawyers for Duane Edwards.

In other action, the court:

Agreed to clarify when people forced by federal agencies to pay civil fines
can also be criminally prosecuted for the same conduct. The justices will use
an Oklahoma case to review the doublejeopardy issue.

Rejected an appeal by a Miami firefighter seeking reinstatement of a $1.3
million award he won from the city over sexual hazing by his fellow
firefighters.

Declined to consider compensating two Maryland girls whose pet ferret was
killed by state health officials testing for rabies after the animal bit
someone.

The appeal in the cocaine case was submitted in Edwards' behalf by John C.
Floyd III, who chairs the National Bar Association's criminal law section;
Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree; and Los Angeles lawyer Johnnie
Cochran, who successfully defended O.J. Simpson against murder charges.

The appeal noted that it takes 100 times more cocaine powder than crack to
draw the same 10year minimum sentence for drug trafficking.

People convicted of selling at least 50 grams of crack must be sentenced to
10 years, while a cocaine powder offender gets the same sentence only if
5,000 grams or more are involved.

``Can Congress pass a law that targets young poor AfricanAmerican urban
males?'' Edwards' lawyers asked rhetorically.

Edwards was arrested by an undercover U.S. Park Police officer after he
accompanied Vonda Dortch to a 1995 meeting in which Dortch sold the officer
126.6 grams of crack cocaine for $3,400.

Edwards' racial bias argument was rejected last December when the U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld his conviction.
``Congress has not acted with a discriminatory purpose in setting greater
penalties for cocaine base crimes than for powder cocaine offenses,'' the
appeals court said.

Every federal appeals court that has studied such a challenge has rejected
it, but the U.S. Sentencing Commission favors making the penalties the same
for both kinds of cocaine.

Attorney General Janet Reno opposes such a move, saying that prison sentences
must reflect the ``harsh and terrible impact'' of crack on U.S. communities.

The debate raises issues of race and class because crack is known as an
innercity drug while cocaine powder is used more often in the suburbs.

States have their own sentencing laws for drug crimes prosecuted in state
courts, but many prosecutors are taking everincreasing numbers of drug cases
to federal court because stiffer sentences are available.

The case acted on today is Edwards vs. U.S., 961492.