RETROACTIVELY, PANEL REDUCES DRUG SENTENCES

WASHINGTON -- The agency that sets guidelines for federal prison
sentences voted unanimously on Tuesday to lighten punishments
retroactively for some crimes related to crack cocaine, a decision
that could eventually affect about 19,500 inmates and mean freedom
for some within months.

The 7-to-0 vote by the United States Sentencing Commission was
intended to help narrow the stark disparity that has existed for two
decades between sentences for crack cocaine and those linked to the
powder form of the drug, a disparity written into law two decades ago
when it was widely assumed that crack was more dangerous than the
powdered drug.

Since then, experts have concluded that there are more similarities
than differences, and many people involved in sentencing have
lamented the fact that black people are disproportionately affected
by crack-related sentences. Statistics show that about 85 percent of
the federal inmates behind bars for crack offenses are black.

"At its core, this question is one of fairness," said one commission
member, Judge William K. Sessions III of the United States District
Court in Vermont. "This is an historic day. This system of justice
is, and must always be, colorblind."

The decision -- which does not affect mandatory minimum sentences
imposed by Congress -- will become effective on March 3, at which
point many inmates will be eligible to petition a judge to be
resentenced under the new guidelines. The delay will give prison
administrators and other correctional administrators time to prepare
for a surge of applications.

Hard numbers are elusive, but statistics kept by the commission
suggest that, on average, an eligible prisoner might have his
sentence reduced by 17 percent, and that about 3,800 inmates would be
eligible but not assured of release in the next year. But, addressing
concerns about public safety, commission members emphasized that
judges, newly empowered by a pair of Supreme Court decisions on
Monday, will have wide discretion over which inmates will be granted leniency.

Notwithstanding his own remark about the commission making history,
Judge Sessions suggested, and the other commission members agreed,
that it was up to Congress to rewrite what it did two decades ago.
Reacting to images -- or perhaps anecdotes -- about the evils of
crack, and the street crime it was presumed to stoke, the lawmakers
enacted penalties that many have called draconian, treating
crack-cocaine offenses far more harshly than ones involving powdered cocaine.

Several commission members said the perception over the years that
crack-related prosecutions had affected black defendants and their
relatives far more than white people was having a corrosive effect on
the criminal justice system, influencing juries, potential witnesses
and law enforcement officers as well as defendants.

The vote was followed by applause by relatives of prisoners who
attended the session. But the decision to apply retroactivity does
not mean a "get-out-of-jail-free card," as one panel member put it.

In addition to the 19,500 prisoners who may become eligible for early
release sooner or later, there are 16,000 to 17,000 people
incarcerated for crack-related crimes who have virtually no hope of a
break. Some of them were given the absolute minimum term in the first
place, and so have nothing to gain. Other were arrested with huge
amounts of crack, or deemed career offenders, and sentenced to long
terms with no hope of leniency.

The Bush administration restated its opposition to making the lighter
sentences retroactive. "Our position is clear," Attorney General
Michael B. Mukasey said Tuesday at a news conference.

That stance was repeated at the commission meeting by Kelli Ferry, an
assistant United States attorney in Virginia who is an ex-officio
member of the panel, asserting that the prospect of a large number of
prisoners being released posed "significant safety risks for the
communities to which they will be returned."

Drug offenders make up a high percentage of the roughly 200,000
federal inmates. About 60,000 prisoners are released in a typical
year, and some 63,000 new inmates take their place.

Cocaine-related offenses are covered under state as well as federal
law. A typical prisoner in the federal system was a street-level
trafficker -- not a kingpin -- who dealt in crack when there was
little or no public tolerance for drug peddlers, even those with
previously clean records.

Iralee Johnson of Orange, N.J., and the 16-year-old granddaughter she
is raising, Secoya Jenkins, attended the hearing in the hope that the
commission would give a break to Secoya's mother, Nerika. She was
convicted of conspiring to distribute crack in Philadelphia and has
been in prison more than a decade.

Ms. Johnson blamed her daughter's fall on "bad company" and said she
had "learned her lesson," after serving nearly 11 years. Her
relatives said she was a first-time nonviolent offender who had just
earned an associate college degree.

Because Congress has declined to take up legislation that would
reduce or eliminate mandatory minimum prison terms for drug offenses,
the sentencing commission can only offer leniency administratively,
without setting aside the mandatory minimum terms imposed by Congress.

The commission put new guidelines into effect on Nov. 1, after a
180-day waiting period expired without Congress doing anything to
stop them. But the effects were relatively modest: reducing the
average sentence for crack possession to 8 years 10 months from 10
years 1 month, for instance.

One commission member, Judge Ruben Castillo of the United States
District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, reminded the
audience that the commission first recommended in 1995 that the
sentencing disparity involving crack and powdered cocaine be erased
in the absence of any data that it made sense.

"No one has come before us to justify the 100-to-1 ratio," Judge
Castillo said, referring to a provision of federal law that imposes
the same 10-year minimum sentence for possessing 50 grams of crack
and for possessing 5,000 grams of powder cocaine.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of
the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said he was
pleased with the commission's action.

"Nearly 20,000 nonviolent, low-level drug offenders will be eligible
for a reduction in the excessive prison terms they received in the
past because of the unacceptable disparity in the sentencing
guidelines between crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses," Mr.
Kennedy said. "Those who break the law deserve to be punished, but
our system says that punishment must be proportionate and fair. The
current sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine is neither."

The commission chairman, Judge Ricardo H. Hinojosa of the United
States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, reflected
at Tuesday's meeting on the perspective he has acquired in 25 years
on the bench. "I didn't think sentencing would be as difficult as it
is when you actually have to do it," he said.