Crack cocaine sentencing survives high court test

Chicago Tribune, April 14, 1997

WASHINGTON (AP) The Supreme Court today rejected an
appeal challenging as racially discriminatory the federal
sentencing laws that punish crack cocaine offenders more
harshly than those caught with powdered cocaine.

The court, without comment, let stand the 10year
prison sentence of a man convicted of distributing crack
cocaine in the District of Columbia.

``There is a perception among AfricanAmericans that
there is no more unequal treatment by the criminal
justice system than in the crack vs. powder cocaine,
racially biased federal sentencing provisions,'' the
justices were told by lawyers for Duane Edwards.

The appeal was submitted in Edwards' behalf by John C.
Floyd III, who chairs the National Bar Association's
criminal law section; Harvard law professor Charles
Ogletree; and Los Angeles lawyer Johnnie Cochran, who
successfully defended O.J. Simpson against murder
charges.

The appeal noted that it takes 100 times more cocaine
powder than crack to draw the same 10year minimum
sentence for drug trafficking.

People convicted of selling at least 50 grams of crack
must be sentenced to 10 years, while a cocaine powder
offender gets the same sentence only if 5,000 grams or
more are involved.

``Can Congress pass a law that targets young poor
AfricanAmerican urban males?'' Edwards' lawyers asked
rhetorically.

Edwards was arrested by an undercover U.S. Park Police
officer after he accompanied Vonda Dortch to a 1995
meeting in which Dortch sold the officer 126.6 grams of
crack cocaine for $3,400.

Edwards' racial bias argument was rejected last
December when the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia upheld his conviction. ``Congress
has not acted with a discriminatory purpose in setting
greater penalties for cocaine base crimes than for powder
cocaine offenses,'' the appeals court said.

Every federal appeals court that has studied such a
challenge has rejected it, but the U.S. Sentencing
Commission favors making the penalties the same for both
kinds of cocaine.

Attorney General Janet Reno opposes such a move,
saying that prison sentences must reflect the ``harsh and
terrible impact'' of crack on U.S. communities.

The debate raises issues of race and class because
crack is known as an innercity drug while cocaine powder
is used more often in the suburbs.

States have their own sentencing laws for drug crimes
prosecuted in state courts, but many prosecutors are
taking everincreasing numbers of drug cases to federal
court because stiffer sentences are available.

The case acted on today is Edwards vs. U.S., 961492.

By Richard Carelli

Alan Randell
1821 Knutsford Place, Victoria, B.C., Canada, V8N 6E3

Email: arandell@islandnet.com

Telephone: 2507210356