SUPREME COURT RESTORES SENSE TO SENTENCING GUIDELINES

The U.S. Supreme Court has taken what should have been an obvious step
toward more sensible sentencing -- though apparently it hasn't been
obvious enough for Congress to fix the mistake it made some two
decades ago. The result is a modest step toward equity in sentencing
practices.

Some two decades ago, in 1986, following the tragic cocaine-related
death of basketball star Len Bias and in the midst of a panic about a
crack "epidemic," Congress amended sentencing "guidelines" to increase
the penalties for crack cocaine as compared to the powder version.
Possession of 50 grams of crack has long carried the same penalty as
possession of 5,000 grams of powder cocaine.

Over the years numerous studies have documented that while
African-Americans and white people use cocaine at about the same rate
as a percentage of the general population, African-Americans are more
likely to use the cooked crack type, while white people tended to use
the powder. On top of the fact that black people tend to be arrested
in disproportionate numbers for drug possession, then, they ended up
serving grotesquely long sentences for having the more demonized
version of cocaine.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission, along with most judges, has been aware
of this disparity for some time. Recently it amended its sentencing
guidelines to reduce the crack/powder disparity, though not by much.
On Monday, it decided to apply its decision retroactively, meaning
some 19,000 people serving absurdly long sentences will be eligible to
appeal their sentences, which could save taxpayers as much as a
billion dollars.

The Supreme Court contributed to returning some common sense to
sentencing by overturning two appellate court decisions that had
overturned two sentences imposed by trial judges. In one case, a judge
in Virginia sentenced a Gulf War veteran who possessed 56 grams of
crack to 15 years instead of the 19-23 years the guidelines dictated.
In another, a judge gave an Iowa man who had given up selling and
using drugs and gotten a college education long before the police got
the evidence to convict him for his previous drug selling. The judge
gave him a suspended sentence instead of 30 to 37 years.

By a 7-2 margin (Justices Alito and Thomas dissenting), the high court
ruled that the trial judges in these cases exercised permissible
discretion in sentencing.

The trial judge generally knows the most about a defendant and about
circumstances that might suggest mitigating (or enhancing) a sentence
outside a set of guidelines. Before the creation of the sentencing
commission (1984) and the imposition of "mandatory minimum" sentences
for certain drug crimes, judges had had this kind of discretion for
centuries.

The Supreme Court and Sentencing Commission have set the stage for a
modest reduction of the inequity inherent in the crack/powder
sentencing disparity. Although it's unlikely in an election year,
however, Congress really should act to eliminate it altogether -- or to
end the ridiculous war on drugs that has created so much more misery
and despair than the drugs themselves ever did.