WASHINGTON (CBS News) ― The Supreme Court on Monday said judges may impose shorter prison terms for crack cocaine crimes, enhancing judicial discretion to reduce the disparity between sentences for crack and cocaine powder.
By a 7-2 vote, the court said that a 15-year sentence given to Derrick Kimbrough, a black veteran of the 1991 war with Iraq, was acceptable, even though federal sentencing guidelines called for Kimbrough to receive 19 to 22 years.
In a separate sentencing case that did not involve crack cocaine, the court also ruled in favor of judicial discretion to impose more lenient sentences than federal guidelines recommend.
The crack disparity has long had racial overtones, reports CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews. For crack dealers, who are mostly black, 50 grams draws a 10-year minimum sentence. But for powder dealers, who are mostly white, it takes 5 kilos to draw 10 years, a 100-1 difference.
The challenges to criminal sentences center on a judge's discretion to impose a shorter sentence than is called for in guidelines established by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, at Congress' direction. The guidelines were adopted in the mid-1980s to help produce uniform punishments for similar crimes.
The cases are the result of a decision three years ago in which the justices ruled that judges need not strictly follow the sentencing guidelines.
"The decision is part of a recent trend on the Court - a trend away from rigid sentencing rules and toward giving back to judges some discretion to impose sentences that track the facts of a particular case," says CBS News senior legal analyst Andrew Cohen. "Lower court judges have pushed hard for that wiggle room and the Court once again has obliged."
Kimbrough's case did not present the justices with the ultimate question of the fairness of the disparity in crack and powder cocaine sentences.
Judges will have more discretion in an estimated 30 percent of future crack prosecutions, adds Andrews. But the sentencing laws don't change. The basic 100-1 disparity still exists and only Congress can change that.
Seventy percent of crack defendants are given the mandatory prison terms.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, said, "A reviewing court could not rationally conclude that it was an abuse of discretion" to cut four years off the guidelines-recommended sentence for Kimbrough.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.
"Whatever else it does, the ruling does not do away with that enormous discrepancy in sentences for people caught with powder cocaine versus those caught with crack cocaine," says Cohen. "If that's going to happen, it's going to have to happen in Congress, which created the different sentence maximums in the first place, or through the Sentencing Commission, which already is moving in that direction."
The Sentencing Commission recently changed the guidelines to reduce the disparity in prison time for the two crimes. New guidelines took effect Nov. 1 after Congress took no action to overturn the change.
The commission is scheduled to vote Tuesday afternoon on the retroactive application of the crack cocaine guideline amendment that went into effect on Nov. 1. The commission has estimated 19,500 inmates could apply for sentence reductions under the proposal.
In the other case, the court, also by a 7-2 vote, upheld a sentence of probation for Brian Gall for his role in a conspiracy to sell 10,000 pills of ecstasy. U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt of Des Moines, Iowa, determined that Gall had voluntarily quit selling drugs several years before he was implicated, stopped drinking, graduated from college and built a successful business. The guidelines said Gall should have been sent to prison for 30 to 37 months.
The sentence was reasonable, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion. Alito and Thomas again dissented.
Under the decisions in both cases, Alito said, "Sentencing disparities will gradually increase."
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, David Souter, Ginsburg and Stevens formed the majority in both cases.
By a 7-2 vote, the court said that a 15-year sentence given to Derrick Kimbrough, a black veteran of the 1991 war with Iraq, was acceptable, even though federal sentencing guidelines called for Kimbrough to receive 19 to 22 years.
In a separate sentencing case that did not involve crack cocaine, the court also ruled in favor of judicial discretion to impose more lenient sentences than federal guidelines recommend.
The crack disparity has long had racial overtones, reports CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews. For crack dealers, who are mostly black, 50 grams draws a 10-year minimum sentence. But for powder dealers, who are mostly white, it takes 5 kilos to draw 10 years, a 100-1 difference.
The challenges to criminal sentences center on a judge's discretion to impose a shorter sentence than is called for in guidelines established by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, at Congress' direction. The guidelines were adopted in the mid-1980s to help produce uniform punishments for similar crimes.
The cases are the result of a decision three years ago in which the justices ruled that judges need not strictly follow the sentencing guidelines.
"The decision is part of a recent trend on the Court - a trend away from rigid sentencing rules and toward giving back to judges some discretion to impose sentences that track the facts of a particular case," says CBS News senior legal analyst Andrew Cohen. "Lower court judges have pushed hard for that wiggle room and the Court once again has obliged."
Kimbrough's case did not present the justices with the ultimate question of the fairness of the disparity in crack and powder cocaine sentences.
Judges will have more discretion in an estimated 30 percent of future crack prosecutions, adds Andrews. But the sentencing laws don't change. The basic 100-1 disparity still exists and only Congress can change that.
Seventy percent of crack defendants are given the mandatory prison terms.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, said, "A reviewing court could not rationally conclude that it was an abuse of discretion" to cut four years off the guidelines-recommended sentence for Kimbrough.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.
"Whatever else it does, the ruling does not do away with that enormous discrepancy in sentences for people caught with powder cocaine versus those caught with crack cocaine," says Cohen. "If that's going to happen, it's going to have to happen in Congress, which created the different sentence maximums in the first place, or through the Sentencing Commission, which already is moving in that direction."
The Sentencing Commission recently changed the guidelines to reduce the disparity in prison time for the two crimes. New guidelines took effect Nov. 1 after Congress took no action to overturn the change.
The commission is scheduled to vote Tuesday afternoon on the retroactive application of the crack cocaine guideline amendment that went into effect on Nov. 1. The commission has estimated 19,500 inmates could apply for sentence reductions under the proposal.
In the other case, the court, also by a 7-2 vote, upheld a sentence of probation for Brian Gall for his role in a conspiracy to sell 10,000 pills of ecstasy. U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt of Des Moines, Iowa, determined that Gall had voluntarily quit selling drugs several years before he was implicated, stopped drinking, graduated from college and built a successful business. The guidelines said Gall should have been sent to prison for 30 to 37 months.
The sentence was reasonable, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion. Alito and Thomas again dissented.
Under the decisions in both cases, Alito said, "Sentencing disparities will gradually increase."
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, David Souter, Ginsburg and Stevens formed the majority in both cases.
