JUDGES GAIN MORE LEEWAY

Supreme Court Rules For More Flexibility In Cocaine
Sentencing

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Monday granted judges more
discretion to be lenient with drug defendants, further chipping away
at the harsh sentences once imposed for crack cocaine.

In a closely watched 7-2 ruling that temporarily united conservatives,
centrists and liberals on the bench, the court ruled that trial judges
can impose less severe punishment than federal sentencing guidelines
call for. Increasingly, trial judges and lawmakers contend that crack
cocaine sentencing guidelines are draconian and racially biased,
because most convicted crack dealers are African American.

"It would not be an abuse of discretion for a district court to
conclude when sentencing a particular defendant that the crack/powder
(cocaine) disparity yields a sentence greater than necessary," Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority.

The decision involving Derrick Kimbrough, a convicted Virginia drug
dealer and Persian Gulf War veteran, doesn't eliminate all sentencing
distinctions between powder and crack cocaine.

Rather, the ruling gives trial judges more leeway when they disagree
with federal sentencing guidelines.

Spooked by stories of crack's super-potency, Congress set much
stricter penalties for crack than for powder cocaine two decades ago.
The so-called "100 to 1" sentencing disparity means that possessing 5
grams of crack brings the same five-year prison term as possessing 500
grams of powder cocaine.

The ruling in Kimbrough v. United States means that judges can give
shorter sentences without being second-guessed.

Three years ago, the Supreme Court made all federal sentencing
guidelines advisory rather than mandatory. That decision, though, left
unclear how much discretion judges retained to deviate from
recommended sentences. "The court is free to make its own reasonable
(decision) and to reject, after due consideration, the advice of the
guidelines," Ginsburg wrote. The results could be sweeping.

Some 25,000 defendants were sentenced in federal court on crack
cocaine charges in the past five years, according to the U.S.
Sentencing Commission. Eighty-one percent of those sentenced last year
on federal crack charges were, like Kimbrough, African American.

By contrast, African Americans accounted for only 27 percent of those
sentenced on powder cocaine charges last year.

On average, the crack cocaine defendants received sentences that were
50 percent longer than those that the powder cocaine defendants got.
Earlier this year, Congress allowed new guidelines to take effect that
will reduce the disparity between sentences for crack and powder
cocaine. Today, in a potentially more controversial move, the U.S.
Sentencing Commission will consider whether to make those more lenient
guidelines retroactive for those already in prison.

Monday's ruling is a defeat for the Bush administration, which had
argued that judges shouldn't have as much sentencing discretion.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the majority
opinion, contending that Congress should set sentencing rules.