home

Crack-Powder Cocaine Disparity Hearing Today

By Jeralyn, Section Crime Policy
Posted on Thu May 21, 2009 at 08:12:00 AM EST
Tags: crack-powder cocaine penalties (all tags)
Share This: Digg! StumbleUpon del.icio.us reddit reddit

Bumped: Today the House Judiciary Committee (Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security)is holding a hearing on the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences.

Members of Congress will receive a petition with 21,000 signatures calling for an end to the disparity. The hearing is called “Unfairness in Federal Cocaine Sentencing: Is it Time to Crack the 100 to 1 Disparity?"

Among the witnesses is a former U.S. Attorney, Veronica Coleman-Davis (Tennessee). From her written testimony:

“After more than 20 years, multiple studies debunking the myths, recommendations from the United States Sentencing Commission, and at least two generations of families and children torn by the systemic imposition of imprisonment for one -100th the amount of cocaine than their white counterparts, it is surely not only good policy but also good politics to correct this injustice,”

The pending bills addressing the disparity are:[More...]

  • HR 1459, the Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act 2009
  • HR 1466, the Major Drug Trafficking Prosecution Act 2009
  • HR 265, the Drug Sentencing Reform and Cocaine Kingpin Trafficking Act of 2009
  • HR 2178, the Crack-Cocaine Equitable Sentencing Act of 2009
  • HR 18, the Powder-Crack Cocaine Penalty Equalization Act of 2009

Other witnesses include Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project and Willie May Aikens, a former major league baseball player who served 12 years for small amounts of crack.

Here's a little of my analysis of the bills: The best are H.R. 1459, H.R. 1466 and H.R. 2178:

H.R. 1459: Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2009

  • Amends the Controlled Substances Act and the Controlled Substances Import and Export Act to eliminate: (1) increased and mandatory minimum penalties for drug offenses involving mixtures or substances which contain cocaine base (i.e., crack cocaine); and (2) restrictions on judicial authority to grant probation or suspended sentences for certain cocaine offenses.
  • Good bill, has 17 co-sponsors.

H.R. 2178: Crack-Cocaine Equitable Sentencing Act of 2009

  • No frills. Equalizes the penalties and mandatory minimums at the current powder levels. Simple and direct. It would take 500 grams of crack