Norton Calls on Sentencing Commission to Follow Supreme Court Lead and Eliminate Remaining Racial Unfairness
Press Release
Norton Calls on Sentencing Commission to Follow Supreme Court Lead and Eliminate Remaining Racial Unfairness
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Judicial Nominations Task Force, today called on the U.S. Sentencing Commission to do its part tomorrow (Tuesday) when it is scheduled vote on whether reduced sentences for crack cocaine possession should be retroactive, to match today's 7-2 Supreme Court decision allowing federal judges to give shorter sentences for crack cocaine convictions in order to reduce the 100 to 1 disparity in sentences for crack offenders and those sentenced for the same substance in powder form. The Sentencing Commission is scheduled to decide whether its November ruling equating penalties for powder cocaine and crack sentences should be retroactive like its similar ruling on marijuana, LSD, and oxycodone convictions.
Norton said, "The Supreme Court has demonstrated important leadership by responding to the most unfair and racially disparate policy in federal law today. The far greater penalty for many who did far less harm than those pedaling far larger amounts of the same drug guaranteed that 82 percent of those serving crack cocaine sentences would be African Americans. Concentrating on low-level crack dealers has had a major hand in all but destroying a generation of young African American men, and with them, much of the African American family structure. It will take years to build back what we have lost, but at least, the Court and the Sentencing Commission have begun to repair the damage. The 19-year sentence given to a Persian Gulf War veteran with a clean criminal record overturned today is all too typical. The new congressional majority has allowed the Commission's equal sentence ruling for crack and powder cocaine to stand. The Supreme Court has returned discretion in these matters long sought by federal judges. If the Commission fails to act on retroactivity for crack cocaine convictions as it has on drug crimes similarly penalized unfairly, it will create yet another racial disparity in sentencing. This is not the time for the Sentencing Commission to turn back on its own ruling, leaving 20,000 people, most of whom are black, incarcerated for a policy essentially overturned by both the Court and the Commission."
Source