Sentencing Guidelines

With the early release of some crack cocaine prisoners set to get underway next week and pressure mounting to do something about the disparity between sentences for crack and powder cocaine offenses, the House of Representatives this week turned its attention to the issue. A Tuesday hearing in the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security saw spirited discussion of both retroactive sentence reductions for current crack prisoners and a number of bills that seek to address the disparities between crack and powder sentences.

Alva Mae Groves died in prison at age 86 while serving a 24-year crack cocaine sentence after refusing to testify against her children. (photo courtesy november.org)

The day of lobbying was kicked off with a morning press conference featuring Reps. Bobby Scott (D-VA), Bobby Rush (D-IL), Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), and Chris Shays (R-CT), as well as former crack prisoners Dorothy Gaines and Michael Short, who was granted clemency in December by President Bush after serving more than 15 years. After that, it was on to the Hill.

"We were in meetings all day," said Bill Piper, national affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance, which joined forces with state delegations and national organizations including the ACLU, the Sentencing Project, and Families Against Mandatory Minimums in the day of action on the Hill. "There were a lot of good interactions, and there is a lot of optimism about the prospects for change on the Hill. There is a strong sense that legislation could move in the next week or two," he said.

The question is which legislation? At least four bills -- H.R. 79, H.R. 360, H.R. 4545, and H.R. 5035 -- that would address the crack-powder cocaine sentencing disparity have been introduced in the House, and there are more in the Senate. They mandate changes ranging from completely equalizing crack and powder sentencing to reducing the discrepancy to a ratio of 20:1.

Under current sentencing laws, written during the crack hysteria of the mid-1980s, it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to earn a five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence, but only 5 grams of crack. That 100:1 disparity has resulted in the imprisonment of thousands of people, mostly black (even though most crack users are white), for lengthy periods of time.

"It appears that most members of Congress, as well as the public, agree that the current disparity in crack and powder cocaine penalties is not justified and that it should be fixed," said subcommittee chair Rep. Scott as he kicked off Tuesday's hearing. "However, there is not yet a clear consensus on what that fix should be."

The basis for the sentencing disparity between crack and powder was based not on science or evidence, "but political bidding based on who could be the toughest on the crack epidemic that was believed to be sweeping America several years ago," Scott said. "There is certainly no sound basis for a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for the mere possession of five grams of crack, when you could get probation for possessing a ton of powder, because mandatory minimum sentences for powder only apply to distribution, not possession cases."

Scott then offered his bill, H.R. 5035, as the best fix. "It is a simple bill that goes the furthest in addressing the problems in the current cocaine sentencing laws," Scott said. "First, it eliminates the legal distinction between crack and powder cocaine, treating them as the same drug, which they are. The bill also eliminates all mandatory minimum sentences for cocaine offenses. And lastly, it authorizes funding for state and federal drug courts, which have both proven to be effective in preventing recidivism and saving money, when compared to longer periods of incarceration."

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), one of the architects of tough crack sentencing laws in the 1980s, was singing a different tune Tuesday -- as he has for some years now. "There's no question in my mind that those people who thought that people involved with possession of crack should be sentenced at higher thought that it would in some way serve the community better," he said. "Clearly, that is not the case, and we find that to take the discretion in determining who goes to jail and who doesn't go to jail is showing lack of confidence in our judges."

Rep. Jackson-Lee, whose own bill, H.R. 4545, also addresses the crack-powder sentencing disparity, said it was time to "finally eliminate the unjust and unequal" disparities and "right the wrongs" created by the harsh anti-drug laws of the 1980s. "For the last 21 years," said Jackson-Lee, "we have allowed people who have committed similar crimes to serve drastically different sentences for what we now know are discredited and unsubstantiated differences."

It wasn't entirely an anti-disparity, pro-reform love fest in the committee, though. Ranking minority member Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said that while he supported efforts to redress the crack-powder sentencing disparity, he was worried that the Sentencing Commission's decision to make changes in the sentencing guidelines retroactive would lead to the release of violent criminals. "As a former judge and chief justice, I am vigilantly reluctant to legislatively overturn the past judgment of judges or juries, who were in the best position to consider the offense and the offender," he said.

He was echoed by a Justice Department representative. "Any reforms should come from the Congress, not the US Sentencing Commission; and second, any reforms, except in very limited circumstances, should apply only prospectively, not retroactively," testified Gretchen Schappert, US Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, laying out the Justice Department position. "We continue to believe that a variety of factors fully justify higher penalties for crack offenses. It has been said, and certainly it has been my experience, that whereas powder cocaine destroys an individual, crack cocaine destroys a community." DOJ chief Michael Mukasey has been trying to stymie retroactive releases as well, and the DOJ home page currently devotes its top link to a speech he gave to the Fraternal Order of Police on the topic.

But the committee also heard from Michael Short, a Baltimore man who served nearly 16 years in prison for selling two ounces of crack before President Bush granted him clemency last year. "I know what I did was wrong," Short told the committee. "I sold illegal drugs, and I deserved to be punished. But what I did and who I was did not justify the sentence I received. And while today I am telling my story, it is also the story of many men that I know in prison, nonviolent offenders serving 10, 20 or 30 years for crack cocaine offenses. I did not need 20 years to convince me of the error in my ways, to punish me or to set me on a right path. My sentence was altogether too long. It was too long because of the way the law treats crack cocaine. Twenty years is the kind of sentence that drug kingpins should get -- big-time drug dealers. But I was not a drug kingpin. I was sentenced like one, because the drug I was convicted for was crack cocaine."

Short also took issue with the characterization by the Justice Department and some committee members of crack offenders as dangerous criminals. "I have heard some of the comments some people in positions of power have made about crack cocaine prisoners -- that we are violent gang members and that this is why our sentences have to be so much longer. I am not that person, and most of the people that I leave behind in prison aren't either," he said. "Although I made a terrible mistake, there was no violence in my crime. I was not a gang member. I was sentenced for such a long time because of a stereotype."

Now, with hearings having been held in both chambers of the Congress -- the Senate held one two weeks ago -- it is time to get those bills moving. And that is what is happening behind the scenes on the Hill, said Piper.

"Senators Sessions, Biden, and Hatch are sitting down and trying to work out a compromise," he said. "They're trying to come up with something they can all agree on that will also pass on the floor. My sense is that it will not be the complete elimination of the sentencing disparity, but somewhere in between Hatch's 20:1 ratio and Biden's 1:1. It will likely end up being 5:1 or 10:1," Piper predicted.

Reducing the crack-powder sentencing disparity would be a "wonderful development," said Robert Weiner, former public affairs director for drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey. "These sentences are just crazy, they're part of the gross distortion of the criminal justice system. If you're going to do the crime, you should do the time, but it should be the same time for the same crime," he said.

But the Justice Department's strident effort to roll back retroactivity could throw a wrench in the works, Piper warned. "That is a complicating factor," he conceded. "We hope to keep that out of any compromise bill. Thousands of families are waiting for their loved ones to come home soon, and we don't want to disappoint them."

Now, after years of inaction, Congress may finally act. But it's not a done deal yet, and there is many an obstacle between here and the passage of a bill that would restore a measure of justice to crack cocaine sentences.

Twice in two days last week, US Attorney General Robert Mukasey lashed out at the US Sentencing Commission's December decision to apply cuts in federal crack sentences to prisoners currently behind bars, warning last Thursday that they could spark an increase in violent crime and suggesting the following day he may try to block the releases.

an unfortunate choice by AG Mukasey

Still, speaking before the US Conference of Mayors last Thursday, Mukasey warned that some 1,600 convicted crack offenders, "many of them violent gang members," could be released as early as March. "Before we take that step, we need to think long and hard about whether that's the best way to go about this -- whether it best serves the interests of justice and public safety," Mukasey said. "A sudden influx of criminals from federal prison into your communities could lead to a surge in new victims with a tragic but predictable result."

Jurists and sentencing reform analysts contacted by the Los Angeles Times were quick to criticize Mukasey's remarks. "In the grand sweep of the nation's criminal justice system, the release of this minuscule number of prisoners will not affect crime rates. It will, however, significantly improve the perceived fairness of our federal criminal justice system," said Paul Cassell, a professor at the University of Utah law school and prominent conservative, noting that no prisoner would be released early unless a judge found he was not a threat to the community. "All of these prisoners were going to be released in the future," Cassell said, "so the retroactivity provision simply provides a slight acceleration of their release date."

Mukasey's numbers are misleading, said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project. "About 700,000 people are coming out of prison this year, many of whom were convicted of a violent offense. So now the change means we'll have 701,600 instead. Seems like he's kind of missing the point," said Mauer.

Criticism notwithstanding, Mukasey was back at it again last Friday. In a press briefing, he said that the Justice Department may try to block the sentencing guideline reforms that will lead to the early releases. "We're going to try to do whatever we can to mitigate it," Mukasey said. "We would obviously like to see something done about something that we think was unwise in the first place." The department could suggest legislation to block it, he said, although he acknowledged it could be hard to pass in the Democratic Congress.

"Many of those [defendants eligible for release] were involved in violence, and can be expected to continue after they get out," Mukasey told reporters. He reiterated his comments from the previous day that he was concerned the early release prisoners might not have received job training and drug treatment. "None of that will have happened, or a lot of it will not have happened, by the time some of these folks get out," he said. "And that's a cause of anxiety."

Douglas Berman, professor of law at Ohio State University and publisher of the Sentencing Law and Policy blog, speculated, "I suspect AG Mukasey is now being 'unusually outspoken' primarily to influence federal district judges as they consider motions for crack sentencing modifications. As the AG knows, no defendant will get a reduced sentence without judicial approval. During the post-Booker period, tough talk by DOJ has led judges to be particularly cautious about lenient sentences that might become 'tough-on-crime' political talking points. I suspect that the AG and main Justice hope that tough talk about going to Congress might make it easier for local federal prosecutors to oppose sentence reductions in individual cases."

The US Supreme Court Tuesday heard oral arguments in a pair of drug cases that will help clarify how much discretion federal judges have in sentencing under federal sentencing guidelines. When rendered, the court's opinion could impact the tens of thousands of people sentenced in the federal courts each year.

US Supreme Court

The court's taking up the two sentencing guideline cases comes as the nation's quarter-century-long experiment with mass incarceration is under increasing pressure. The federal prison population has expanded nearly ten-fold from 24,000 prisoners in 1982 to more than 200,000 this year, more than half of them drug offenders under the harsh regime of sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimum sentences.

The US Sentencing Commission is set to reduce the guidelines' crack-powder cocaine sentencing disparity administratively November 1 unless Congress acts to block it, though it has not yet decided whether to make the change retroactive. While the proposed reduction is slighter than advocates have called for, if made retroactive it would help about 19,500 current prisoners, most notably those serving the longer sentences, by an average of 27 months or relief -- 1,315 current prisoners would receive sentences reductions of 49 months or more. At least three bills addressing that disparity have been filed in Congress. And just yesterday, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), a member the Joint Economic Committee, held a hearing titled "Mass Incarceration in the United States: At What Cost?"

The Supreme Court threw the federal sentencing structure into a sort of judicial chaos when it ruled two years ago in Booker v. US, and a related case, US v. Fan Fan, that federal sentencing guidelines, which had for the past two decades limited judges' sentencing decisions to finding the proper box on a sentencing grid, were no longer mandatory, but only advisory. Since then, federal district and appellate courts have struggled to determine just what that means, with some judges sometimes handing out sentences below the guidelines, which have in turn sometimes been overturned on appeal.

The two cases before the court represent different aspects of the federal sentencing conundrum. In Gall v. US, Brian Gall was convicted of conspiracy to sell ecstasy in Iowa, but rather than sentence him to the 30-37 months in prison suggested by the guidelines, his sentencing judge gave him probation, noting that he had walked away from the conspiracy years earlier and led an exemplary life since. The probationary sentence was overturned by the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis.

In Kimbrough v. US, Derrick Kimbrough was convicted of selling crack and powder cocaine in Virginia. Citing Kimbrough's military service and the controversy over the crack-powder cocaine sentencing disparity, his trial judge sentenced him to the mandatory minimum 15 years instead of the 19-22 years suggested by the guidelines. His sentence, too, was overturned, this time by the US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond.

In Gall, the appeals court held that such an "extraordinary" departure from the guidelines required an "extraordinary" justification. In Kimbrough, the appeals court held that judges could not reject a guidelines sentence because of their disagreement with underlying sentencing policy.

In oral arguments in the two cases Tuesday, the court displayed some of the same confusion and ambivalence its previous sentencing rulings have generated on the federal bench. The court is caught between two seemingly irreconcilable goals: to ensure similar sentences for similar offenses, and to restore a measure of discretion to judges.

"It may be quite impossible to achieve uniformity through advisory guidelines, which is why Congress made them mandatory," Justice Antonin Scalia observed. But Scalia has led the bloc of the court that has moved to undo the mandatory federal guidelines scheme.

Justice Stephen Breyer, who helped author the guidelines and remains their strongest proponent on the court, accused Kimbrough's counsel, Michael Nachmanoff, of not offering the court a way out of its dilemma after Nachmanoff insisted that Booker required that judges be granted reasonable flexibility." You're saying either we have to make it [the sentencing guidelines] unconstitutional," he said, "or you have to say anything goes."

"Your position is not anything goes," Scalia jumped in in Nachmanoff's defense. "It's anything that's reasonable goes."

That led Justice Anthony M. Kennedy to ask, "How do we define 'reasonable?'" And so the argument turned in circles.

For his part, Justice Department lawyer Michael Dreeben, who argued both cases, argued that Congress intended to punish crack cocaine more seriously than powder, and judges should heed Congress' will. "For a judge to say Congress is crazy," Dreeben said, "is a sort of textbook example of an unreasonable sentencing factor."

"The guidelines are only guidelines. They are advisory," Scalia shot back, adding that sometimes sentences were too long.

While the tenor of oral arguments suggested a favorable ruling may be coming, especially for Kimbrough, observers of the court were reluctant to speculate. But they were not reluctant to talk about what it all means.

"Everyone is struggling" with the federal sentencing conundrum, said Doug Berman, professor of law at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and author of the Sentencing Law and Policy blog. "Most prominently, they are trying to figure out what to make of this opaque standard of reasonableness," he said.

"If the Supreme Court reverses the circuit courts and upholds the trial courts, emphasizing the discretion district court judges have to reduce sentences below the guidelines, that could have a significant impact, especially on first offenders and others with mitigating factors," Berman said.

"The national debate over the excessive penalties prescribed under the federal sentencing guidelines for low-level crack cocaine offenses has infiltrated Congress, the advocacy community and now the US Supreme Court," said Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project. "There is nearly universal agreement that current sentences for crack cocaine offenses are unfair and ineffective. The court's action will certainly influence the policy debate," he added.

"The Supreme Court's consideration of the magnitude of discretion afforded to federal sentencing judges is a step towards creating a more just sentencing system," said Mauer. "In light of recent events in Jena, Louisiana, and concerns about disparity within the justice system, a new consciousness about the unfairness and ineffectiveness of our criminal justice system has emerged," Mauer continued.

"These cases have to be considered against the backdrop of extraordinarily long terms for minor drug offenders," Berman said. "That the government can argue that sending Kimbrough to prison for 15 years is unreasonably lenient and the length of that sentence hardly gets questioned suggests that everyone has drunk the federal sentencing guideline kool-aid," he said.

For some groups with a deep interest in justice in sentencing, whatever the Supreme Court does won't be enough. "Whatever the court decides, the real solution to unjust crack sentences lies in Congress," said Mary Price, vice president and general counsel for Families Against Mandatory Minimums. "Even if the court permits judges to avoid unjust crack sentences called for by the guidelines, many defendants will still be sentenced under unjust mandatory minimum statutes. Congress made a mistake by basing sentencing almost exclusively on one factor -- drug quantity. Judges should be permitted to sentence based on all facts about the defendant and the offense, not just quantity. These cases show why mandatory minimum sentencing laws are unwise, unnecessary, and unjust."

It goes even deeper than that, said Chuck Armsbury of the November Coalition, an anti-prohibitionist group that concentrates on freeing drug war prisoners. "No amount of Supreme Court tinkering with the sentencing guidelines can guarantee an end to sentencing disparities," he said. "Most of the sentencing disparity is due to rules and results of deal making by informants, police and prosecutors working together secretly. The justices are unlikely to admit they can't determine the fairness of a hidden system's operations," he argued. "To fix this broken system would mean to rein in police, prosecutors and the snitch system producing substantial differences in drug sentences."

That's not going to happen through the Supreme Court chipping at the edges of draconian sentencing, Armsbury said. "Even if they win, the cases under review this week will likely join a long line of previous Supreme Court cases that failed to correct wrongful sentencing practices or result in the release of thousands of over-incarcerated people, the great majority convicted of drug crimes."

Still, if further reform of the draconian federal sentencing laws comes out of this pair of cases, some drug defendants will get lesser sentences, and that's a good thing. But as the critics point out, it's not enough. The mass incarceration juggernaut has been speeding along for decades now, and it's going to require more than some Supreme Court decisions tinkering at the edges to achieve fundamental change.