http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/shared-gen/ap/US_Presidential_Cabinet/Cocaine_Sentencing.html
WASHINGTON — A Justice Department representative drew hostile questions from some U.S. Sentencing Commission members Tuesday as she tried to persuade them not to make their recent easing of crack cocaine sentences retroactive.
Gretchen C.F. Shappert, U.S. attorney in Charlotte, N.C., told the independent panel that sets sentencing guidelines for federal judges that the Bush administration opposes retroactivity because it could release "large numbers of convicted drug offenders into vulnerable communities."
The commission has estimated 19,500 inmates could apply for sentence reductions under the proposal.
The harm to neighborhoods that have struggled with drug abuse "will be swift; it will be sudden and, in my opinion, irreversible," Shappert told a commission hearing on the retroactivity proposal.
Commission member Ruben Castillo, a federal judge in Chicago, asked Shappert several times if prosecutors wouldn't have "a good chance of convincing judges to keep serious, violent drug offenders in prison."
"In some instances," Shappert eventually conceded.
The retroactivity proposal would not automatically shorten any sentence. A federal judge would have to approve each reduction. The commission estimates that sentences for the 19,500 could be reduced by an average of 27 months and 3,800 could be freed within a year.
The panel's easing of the guidelines for new crack offenders took effect Nov. 1 after Congress did not overturn it.
Like other crack cocaine questions, whether to make that decision retroactive has been racially charged. Congress has enacted much longer prison sentences for crack crimes, predominantly committed by blacks, than for crimes involving powder cocaine, predominantly committed by whites.
An estimated 86 percent of the 19,500 inmates are black.
The panel has set no deadline for a decision.
Justice's opposition was supported by the National District Attorneys Association and the Fraternal Order of Police.
Support for retroactivity came from representatives of federal judges, public defenders and private criminal defense lawyers, the American Bar Association, civil rights groups, inmate family groups and some academics.
Some commission members clearly supported retroactivity while others focused their questions on how the panel might mitigate any burden such a move would have on courts, prosecutors, U.S. marshals, probation officers and the public.
In previous years, the panel reduced penalties for crimes involving marijuana, LSD and OxyContin, which are primarily committed by whites, and made those decisions retroactive.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton of Washington mentioned those decisions in supporting retroactivity on behalf of the Criminal Law Committee of the federal judiciary. Walton said that if the panel rejected retroactivity blacks will notice "this was done for one segment of society but not for another."
"I struggled" with worries about public safety and extra work retroactivity would mean for judges, prosecutors, marshals and probation officers, Walton said, but "I'm convinced they have the capacity to deal with this."
Those concerns were outweighed by "the fundamental unfairness" of the original sentences, he said, adding that judges can release those merely caught up in drug trade and keep violent kingpins in prison.
"I don't see how we can say that someone sentenced on Oct. 30 is getting a different, longer sentence than someone sentenced on Nov. 1" for the same crime, Walton said.
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