| By Annika - Dec 10th, 2007 at 1:45 pm EST |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
The Supreme Court decided today that judges may reduce prison terms for crack cocaine convictions. Currently, federal sentencing guidelines call for significantly longer sentences for crack convictions than powder cocaine convictions.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission is scheduled to vote on Tuesday to consider reducing the discrepancy between crack and powder guidelines. As they currently stand, the guidelines prescribe a “mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence for trafficking in 5 grams of crack cocaine or 100 times as much cocaine powder.” Though they’re essentially the same drug, crack is more common among African Americans, and the guidelines are widely viewed as discriminatory against minorities.
The Court vote was split 7-2; Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas both dissented. Shocking, right? Alito wrote in the dissenting opinion that as a result of the Court's vote, "Sentencing disparities will gradually increase." Leave it to those two to call a reduction an increase and prop up a discriminatory, worn-out remnant of the 1980s' exaggerated crack baby hysteria.
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Given that Scalia and Alito are coming down on opposite sides of the issue, I don't think you could sum this up as simply "conservatives are content to fuck over minorities" (Though if anything, I'd argue it's more like they're willing to fuck over the poor of any color, and the real blame lies with the elected officials who haven't taken steps to end the drug war, and the populace that hasn't insisted upon it.)
I'd be interested in hearing about the actual, substantive legal argument that puts Thomas and Alito on one side and Scalia and Roberts on the other.