Report: Federal Crack Sentences Getting Shorter
The Sentencing Project has completed a (pdf) new report on post-Booker federal crack sentences:
The report coincides with the one-year anniversary of the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Booker, in which the Court struck down the mandatory application of the federal sentencing guidelines as unconstitutional, but kept the guidelines intact by requiring that they be consulted in an advisory capacity. Examining published court decisions, the new report assesses how judges have utilized their expanded range of discretion in one of the most contentious areas of federal sentencing, crack cocaine offenses.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, crack cocaine is punished at the rate of 100:1 compared to powder cocaine sentences. Here are the report's key findings: