Tuesday - November 13, 2007

New Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Crack Cocaine

U.S. News and World Report has an interesting article on reduced Federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine convictions. Of course this will apply only at the Federal level.

Judges and defense attorneys are pushing the federal sentencing commission to retroactively apply newly reduced sentences for crack.

The move could affect up to 20,000 prisoners and is already generating fiery opposition from the Justice Department. Both sides are scheduled to air their opinions publicly during a hearing scheduled for Wednesday in Washington, D.C. The debate over crack sentencing stems from changes last month to the guidelines that were the first to alter a more than two-decades-old policy that required offenders possessing crack cocaine to receive the same mandatory minimum jail time as offenders caught with 100 times as much powder cocaine.

The recent changes lowered the ratio anywhere from 75 to 1 to 25 to 1, depending on the quantity of drugs. The question now is whether that change will be applied to those already behind bars. Read more....

Author: The Lockean
Technorati Tags: Crack cocaine
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