Sentencing commission to apply new crack cocaine guidelines retroactively
In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in Kimbrough v. United States, the United States Sentencing Commission voted unanimously to retroactively apply a recent amendment to the federal sentencing guidelines that reduces the penalty for crack cocaine offenses.
Just a day earlier, the Supreme Court held in Kimbrough that a District Court was permitted to consider the great disparity in the sentencing guidelines' treatment of crack versus powder cocaine in issuing a sentence below the guideline range.
Prior to the recent amendment to the sentencing guidelines, a person convicted of possessing crack cocaine was subject to the same sentence as someone who possessed 100 times that amount in powder cocaine. This disparity was widely criticized as being racially motivated in that most of the crack cocaine offenses involved black defendants. For decades, we've watched defendant after defendant receive sentences of 10, 20 and sometimes 30 years for offenses involving just a few handfuls of crack.
Even with the guideline amendment, crack cases in federal court will be subject to mandatory minimum sentences for certain quantities that, for now, are still based on the disproportionate 100 to 1 ratio. For instance, in federal court the possession of 50 grams of crack triggers the same mandatory minimum 10 year sentence as 5,000 grams of powder cocaine. Hopefully, Congress will follow suit with amendments to the mandatory sentencing scheme to mirror the changes in the guidelines.
For now, it remains to be seen just how the retroactively applied guidelines will be implemented. It appears that the Commission has left it up to the District Courts to determine, on a case-by-case basis, whether a particular defendant's sentence should be reduced. It is evident though that the sentences of thousands of federal inmates will be cut.
