Senate Democrats reject DOJ case against retroactive reduced crack cocaine penalties

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Senate Democrats reject DOJ case against retroactive reduced crack cocaine penalties

February 12, 2008 06:09:00 pm

[JURIST] US Senate Democrats announced their continued support Tuesday for a US Sentencing Commission [official website] decision to give retroactive effect [JURIST report] to sentencing guidelines that would narrow the disparity between sentences for offenses involving powder and crack cocaine, rejecting Department of Justice arguments against the retroactivity because the courts could be overwhelmed with inmates appealing their sentences. The sentencing disparity has long been politically controversial, as crack cocaine sentences disproportionately levied against blacks are traditionally up to 100 times more severe than powder cocaine sentences more often levied against whites. Revised sentencing guidelines took effect November 1, and the Sentencing Commission voted in December to give retroactive effect to the provision. Retroactivity will take effect on March 3, 2008.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) criticized [statement text] testimony given by Attorney General Michael Mukasey [official profile; JURIST news archive] to the House Judiciary Committee last week that the proposed guidelines would result in the early release of hundreds of violent criminals:

Most disappointing is this administration's failure to support even modest reforms of unjust, overreaching mandatory drug penalties. Last week the new Attorney General testified before the House Judiciary Committee in ways designed to raise fear and create the false impression that 1,600 violent gang members and dangerous drug offenders will be instantaneously and automatically set free to prey on hapless communities. As the Attorney General, himself a former Federal judge, should have known, and as he had to concede when questioned before that Committee, no one can be released without a hearing before a Federal judge who is obligated to evaluate each case and to consider factors such as the criminal history and violence. And the Justice Department participates in those hearings.

Mukasey's testimony [JURIST report; statement, PDF] before the House Judiciary Committee suggested he would ask Congress to enact legislation to prevent the new crack cocaine guidelines from taking retroactive effect, though he indicated that he may support the shorter recommended prison sentences for first-time, nonviolent offenders:

Retroactive application of these new lower guidelines will pose significant public safety risks; risks that will be disproportionately felt in urban communities. Many of these offenders are among the most serious and violent offenders in the federal system and their early release at a time when violent crime is rising in some communities will produce tragic, but predictable results. These individuals could very well be released without the benefit of appropriate re-entry programs, increasing the risks of recidivism and further imperiling the safety of the communities to which they would return. Moreover, retroactive application of these penalties will be difficult for the legal system to administer given the large number of cases requiring resentencing and uncertainties as to certain key legal issues, such as the degree to which the prior sentence can be reduced. This increase would impose significant hardships on the federal judicial docket and risk delaying the timely administration of justice in both criminal and civil cases, while diverting law enforcement resources critically needed to fight violent crime. Prosecutors reasonably made their cases based on the sentences available at the time.
As a result, we think it is imperative for Congress to pass legislation to address the Sentencing Commission's decision. In calling for action, I emphasize that we are not asking this Committee to prolong the sentences of those offenders who pose the least threat to their communities, such as first-time, non-violent offenders. Instead, our objective is to address the Sentencing Commission's decision in a way that protects public safety and addresses the adverse judicial and administrative consequences that will result from retroactive application of these lower guidelines.

AP has more.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.