Court looks at sentencing disparities

A decision three years ago led to some of the confusion.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Less than 2 ounces of crack cocaine was enough to get Derrick Kimbrough a 15-year prison term.

The Supreme Court debated Tuesday whether it should be even longer, taking on a topic with a strong racial dimension.

The court heard arguments Tuesday in a pair of drug cases that included one dealing with a law that calls for tougher punishment for possession and distribution of crack cocaine than the powdered variety. The vast majority of crack offenders are black.

Kimbrough, a black veteran of the 1991 war with Iraq, received a 15-year sentence for selling crack and powder cocaine, and possessing a firearm. U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson of Norfolk, Va., considered the prison term ample, despite federal sentencing guidelines that recommended 19 to 22 years.

In the other case, Brian Gall was given probation for his role in a conspiracy to sell 10,000 pills of ecstasy after U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt of Des Moines, Iowa, determined that Gall had voluntarily quit selling drugs several years before he was implicated, stopped drinking, graduated from college and built a successful business.

The guidelines said Gall should have been sent to prison for 30 to 37 months.

Appeals courts threw out both sentences.

Judicial discretion

The challenges to criminal sentences center on a judge’s discretion to impose a shorter sentence than is called for in guidelines established, at Congress’ direction, by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. The guidelines were adopted in the mid-1980s to help produce uniform punishments for similar crimes.

The cases are the result of a decision three years ago in which the justices ruled that judges need not strictly follow the sentencing guidelines. Instead, appellate courts would review sentences for reasonableness, although the court has since struggled to define what it meant by that term.

Justice Stephen Breyer wondered whether there was a way for the court to find a path between forcing judges to adhere to the guidelines in all cases “and the opposite, which is to say they don’t have to do anything the commission says.”

The cases will be decided by spring 2008.

Lawyers for Kimbrough and Gall said the court gave judges a lot of room to vary sentences when they support their decisions with good reasons.

“If you have two district judges in the same courthouse and the one says, when I have a young defendant... I always go down, and the next judge says, I never consider age. Both of those are upheld under your view, I take it?” Chief Justice John Roberts asked Gall’s lawyer, Jeffrey Green.

“Yes, both,” Green said.