Fair Sentencing Act

01/30/2012

Congress Stood Up for Fairer Sentencing. The Supreme Court Should Too.

By Emma Andersson, Criminal Law Reform Project at 3:17pm

Today we filed a friend-of-the-court brief in two Supreme Court cases that deal with the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (FSA), which reduced the disparity between federal mandatory minimum sentences for crack versus powder cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1. As we’ve written before, this was a significant step in the direction of fairness.

06/21/2012

Fair Sentencing Act

ACLU LENS: Supreme Court Rules Fairer Sentences Apply to More Drug Cases

By Ezekiel Edwards, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project at 3:28pm

The Supreme Court ruled today that the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (FSA), which reduced the disparity in federal sentencing between crack and powder cocaine, applies to people whose offenses pre-date the law but who were sentenced after its passage. Read the opinion here.

The FSA was passed to correct the problems with the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which created an unfair sentencing scheme that unequally punished comparable offenses involving crack and powder cocaine — two forms of the same drug – and resulted in racially biased sentencing. To remedy the fact that the 100:1 ratio was without penological or scientific justification, and that it resulted in black defendants suffering significantly harsher penalties than white defendants, Congress passed the FSA and reduced the ratio from 100:1 to 18:1. As we’ve written before, the new ratio is a step in the right direction, although the only truly fair and empirically sound ratio would be 1:1.

02/03/2012

Fair Sentencing Act

Threat to Current Sentencing Law Looms: Are We Headed Back to Mandatory Guidelines?

By Sandhya Bathija, Washington Legislative Office at 5:43pm

The debate over sentencing guidelines is about to heat up in Congress, according to a recent report by NPR. In a story that ran on Tuesday’s Morning Edition, Carrie Johnson reports that some GOP members of Congress aren’t happy with the current state of federal sentencing guidelines.

For decades, mandatory sentencing guidelines forced judges to hand down harsh and unfair sentences that did not always fit the offender and unnecessarily flooded our prisons. This included the mandatory sentencing scheme that unequally punished comparable offenses involving crack and powder cocaine at a ratio of 100:1 and resulted in racially biased sentencing.

12/11/2012

New York

Project Liberty Takes on Indigent Defense

By Lauren Alexander, ACLU of New York at 11:19am

Project Liberty, the New York Civil Liberties Union very own television show, is back and broadcasting across New York State. Our fourth episode highlights the NYCLU’s relentless fight to guarantee that New York’s criminal justice system respects the rights of all New Yorker’s, not just those who can afford their own Johnny Cochran.

This episode marks five years since we filed Hurrell-Haring v. State of New York – our landmark, class-action lawsuit challenging New York’s failed system for providing effective legal counsel to poor people accused of crimes.

04/16/2012

On the Agenda

On the Agenda: Week of April 16 – 20, 2012

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 11:29am

Congress is back in session, so we've got a busy week ahead.

Today, the ACLU, along with several other groups, is launching a weeklong campaign called "Stop Cyber Spying Week" to draw attention to the massive civil liberties problems in H.R. 3523, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011, better known as CISPA. CISPA is scheduled to be voted on by the House of Representatives next week. Tomorrow ACLU Legislative Counsel Michelle Richardson will speak at a House Hill Briefing called "The False Choice: Cybersecurity vs. Civil Liberties."

12/22/2011

Fair Sentencing Act

Will the Supreme Court Render the Fair Sentencing Act Less Fair?

By Emma Andersson, Criminal Law Reform Project & Ezekiel Edwards, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project at 5:58pm

(Also posted on ACSBlog.)

The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (FSA) is actually only kind of fair. The passage of the 2010 law, which reduced the crack to powder mandatory minimum ratio in federal cocaine sentences from 100:1 to 18:1, was a significant step in the direction of fairness. While we applaud this change, we also look forward to the day when Congress adopts the actually fair ratio of 1:1. In the meantime, the Supreme Court has granted certiorari on two FSA cases, Hill v. United States and Dorsey v. United States, both out of the Seventh Circuit. In these cases, the Court will decide whether people whose offense predates the enactment of the FSA but who were sentenced afterwards should be sentenced based on the old 100:1 ratio or the new 18:1 ratio. If the Court rules the wrong way, a sizeable class of people will be excluded from Congress’ attempt to restore fairness and racial neutrality to federal cocaine sentencing, and the kind-of-Fair Sentencing Act will become even less fair.

12/19/2011

Drug Law Reform

ACLU in NYT: Commutations are Good, Addressing Systemic Injustice is Better

By Will Matthews, ACLU of Northern California at 1:19pm

Borrowed from the British monarchy and codified in the United States Constitution after lively debate at the Philadelphia Convention, the power of pardon and commutation was bestowed upon American presidents because of the recognition that injustices can and do occur in our criminal justice system.

An example of those injustices is the unfair and racially biased 18-to-one crack-cocaine sentencing disparity, which was reduced last year from 100-to-one after Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act. The disparity has contributed to hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug offenders, a disproportionate number of whom, like Hamedah Hasan, are people of color, serving indefensibly long sentences behind bars.

11/01/2011

Crack Sentencing

Chance at Freedom: Retroactive Crack Sentence Reductions For Up to 12,000 May Begin Today

By Jesselyn McCurdy, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:11pm

Today, Hamedah Hasan can finally apply for her freedom.

Hamedah has been locked up for 18 years serving a prison sentence she never deserved.

When she was 21 years old, she and her two daughters escaped an abusive relationship to live with her cousin. Feeling indebted to this cousin, who was involved in dealing crack cocaine, she agreed to run various errands and transfer money. Though Hamedah never used drugs herself, she was later indicted and convicted for conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. Despite a previously clean record, the judge had no choice but to issue a life sentence, due to mandatory minimums for crack cocaine and the mandatory sentencing guidelines then on the books.

02/10/2012

Sentencing Reform

Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration: Weekly Highlights

By Alex Stamm, ACLU Center for Justice at 12:40pm

Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we’ve spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.

American Civil Liberties Union