A Reasonable Top Court Ruling On An Unreasonable Sentencing Guideline

Reasonable is not a word that most centrists and left-of-center folks would apply to the current Supreme Court.

But today in a racially sensitive 7-2 vote, the justices ruled that judges who disagree with federal sentencing guidelines can impose lighter prison sentences in crack cocaine cases.

The high court overturned a U.S. appeals court ruling in Kimbrough v. U.S. that judges cannot hand down a lighter punishment simply because they disagree with wide disparities for crack and powder cocaine sentences.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote for the majority. Justices Clarence Thomas (natch) and Samuel Alito (I would have guessed Antonin Scalia) dissented.

Blacks account for about 85 percent of the federal crack cocaine convictions. The guidelines call for lighter prison terms for the sale of powder cocaine, a drug more popular with whites and Hispanics.

Lyle Denniston, one of the best high court reporters of our time, summarizes the ruling at SCOTUSBlog:

“The Kimbrough ruling on punishing crack cocaine offenses marks a major shift in the debate that has raged for 21 years over the much more severe sentencing required for those whose crimes involved crack cocaine. The Sentencing Commission for years asked Congress to ease the 100-to-1 ratio, and usually failed, but only recently gained some flexibility to vary the Guideline range outside that ratio. The disparity in punishment has often been challenged as racially oriented, because black offenders more often are involved in possessing or distributing crack than powder. Justice Ginsburg noted that 85 percent of those punished for crack crimes in federal court are black.

“The 100-to-1 ratio is keyed to the quantity of the cocaine involved in the crime. As Justice Ginsburg explained it in practical effect: ‘A dealer in crack cocaine was subject to the same sentence range as a dealer in 100 times more powder cocaine.’ One effect of this, Ginsburg noted, is ‘that a major supplier of powder cocaine may receive a shorter sentence than a low-level dealer who buys powder from the supplier but then converts it to crack.’ The 100-to-1 Guidelines disparity has been somewhat relaxed as of Nov. 1 by the Sentencing Commission. The Commission is now pondering whether to make the reduced range retroactive. The change, allowed by Congress, would generally result in crack sentences between two and five times longer than for equal amounts of powder, rather than 100 times longer. With Monday’s decision, even that reduction is not binding on federal judges.”

In a separate case that involved the drug ecstacy, the court ruled 7-2 (with Thomas and Alito again dissenting) that judges can impose sentences that are more lenient than the recommended federal guidelines.

The minimum-maximum sentencing guidelines were adopted in the mid-1980s to help produce uniform punishments for similar crimes.