Disparity in Sentencing for Crack Cocaine Offenders: the U.S. Supreme Court Speaks
I previously authored a post entitled "Disparity in Sentencing and Crack Cocaine." Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed this same issue in two different cases. The result was a resounding win for both defendants.
In his blog entitled "Sentencing Law and Policy," Professor Douglas A. Berman summarizes the two cases as follows:
The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the federal guidelines on sentencing for cocaine violations are advisory only, rejecting a lower court ruling that they are effectively mandatory. Judges must consider the Guideline range for a cocaine violation, the Court said, but may conclude that they are too harsh when considering the disparity between punishment for crack cocaine and cocaine in powder form. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the decision in Kimbrough v. U.S. (06-6330)....
Ruling in a second Guidelines case, Gall v. U.S. (06-7949), the Court — also by a 7-2 vote — cleared the way for judges to impose sentences below the specified range and still have such punishment regarded as “reasonable.” The Justices, in an opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, told federal appeals courts to use a “deferential abuse-of-discretion standard” even when a trial sets sets a punishment below the range. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., announced the opinion in Stevens’ absence.
Florida drug offense lawyer Ronald Chapman has been representing people accused of committing drug crimes in Florida since 1990. You can read more about Mr. Chapman’s experience as a Florida drug offense attorney as well as review news articles about some of his cases. Some of the types of cases and issues that Mr. Chapman has handled since 1990 include:
• Death Penalty Cases
• Assault and Battery Cases
• DUI Cases
• Drug Cases
• Sex Crimes Cases
• Sealing & Expunging Criminal Records
• Bond|Bail
• Mistaken Identification and Wrongful Conviction
• Police Interrogations
• Sentencing
To Whom It May Concern:
My name is Danny Tate and I am a crack addict. I have fought with alcoholism and substance abuse for most of my adult life. I was clean and sober for eighteen of those years from 1986-2004. For reasons that even the most knowledgeable doctors and scientists don’t comprehend, as an alcoholic/addict I have found myself in the throws of this disease once again; but this time it was not just another monkey on my back; it was the eight hundred pound guerrilla known as “crack”. Crack cocaine appealed to my disease in a way no other drug had. It slam dunked me and I have no problem admitting it.
This is not an exceptional story to the average man. Crack cocaine has been demonized in the media since day one; and, for most reasons, justifiably so. It is truly the “devil’s dandruff” and as a crack addicts we are considered dirty outcasts by the public; even so in the drug world. To this point in history there is nothing redeeming when regarding the crack addict. It is not a “cool” drug, death thereby is not considered tragically glorious and crack cocaine carries with it a stigma equivalent to the leper of Bible days. Why is that?
Twenty odd years ago when crack broke on to the scene it was considered a black man’s drug mostly contained within the ghetto. That’s just the facts. When black leaders came out saying it was planted in the ghetto to kill off the black man, like many white people, I rolled my eyes literally and figuratively. Now, as a white man who has spent most of the last year and a half venturing into the “hood” to score “rock”, I have witnessed great evidence thereof. I can remember the day I said, “Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton, or whoever said it, was right.
Crack addicts have a look about them I call “the face of death” and I saw it everywhere as I drove the streets of north Nashville. Sadly, the last time I remember seeing “the face of death” I was looking in the mirror as I smoked my way to the end of a six week crack binge far away from Tennessee in East Oakland. Recovery experts say you can’t run from your disease. I’m convinced crack cocaine requires it.
But my point is, having been thrown into the court system by an envious brother prodded onward by a bitter ex-wife with intent to “conserve” my estate and well-being, I have first-handed experience at being faced maliciously with the great ignorance surrounding crack and the invisible underlying prejudice that goes hand in hand. Because I was on crack my brother has been allowed to swoop in, seize my assets and become the captain over a ship of fools trying to steer my recovery when in reality my brother is only interested in professional, personal and financial ruin; and is completely inexperienced and unknowledgeable in regards to the world of recovery along with the judge, the lawyers and the experts who have been allowed to introduce expert testimony. It is truly the Cain and dis-Able-d story. As crazy as it may sound, he is not interested in my recovery. He is only interested in my demise. But I digress for the greater good.
Having been institutionalized for most of the last year I was horrified to discover the almost complete lack of knowledge surrounding crack cocaine within the treatment world; centers, psych wards and half-way houses I’ve been shipped around to. Almost the only knowledge I gained to combat this truly evil drug was a greater expertise on how to abuse it. There is little valid information on how to address recovery from it; and as I finally did my own research I was greatly disturbed to find out that most of the “facts” bantered around these professional facilities was misinformation passed around from uneducated counselor to more uneducated counselor. I asked the crack “expert” at one highly acclaimed treatment center if I could borrow any medical studies he had on crack cocaine. He condescendingly retorted, “What do you need to know other than it fucks you up”. He had no medical research and was not aware of what was out there. I finally prodded another counselor to print out every thing he could find on-line. Sadly, though there were some very revealing studies, there was very little of it.
Crack cocaine has been swept under the rug and I, as a white man, am convinced it is because of the underlying prejudice that surrounds cocaine because it is considered a black drug. For the sake of the greater good I would ask that this be exposed for what it is; and I’m willing to take a stand knowing the stigma I will most likely live under for the rest of my life. But I would rather fight the battle against crack cocaine, and the great ignorance surrounding it, than be left a working slave to the addiction thereof.
Though the legal disparity between crack cocaine and powdered cocaine has been addressed and measures taken to remedy are underway, this is not where the true disparity lies. The true disparity lies between the white and black. You see government programs promoted on television attacking crystal meth. It’s the white red-neck’s crack. But do you see government programs attacking crack cocaine? On television? I haven’t. And why is the black crack addict so vacant from the professional treatment world? I rest my case.
I will wear a black ribbon like the ones representing the cause of aids, etc. as a protest and a campaign to right this wrong and, greater yet, help stop this epidemic. Not a campaign to put men in jail, but a campaign to free men from the slavery of addiction to a powerful enemy: Crack.
The justices will not rule on the constitutionality of the 21-year-old federal law, which gives first-time offenders convicted of selling five grams of crack cocaine the same five-year mandatory prison sentence as dealers of 500 grams of powder cocaine. Still, given the opposition to the crack sentencing law among many federal judges, the court's ruling could have a significant national impact.
http://www.crackcocaineaddictiontreatment.com