By Rebecca McCray, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project at 2:16pm
Patricia Spottedcrow of Oklahoma made headlines in 2010 when she was sentenced to 12 years in prison for her first criminal offense: the sale of a $31 bag of marijuana to an undercover informant. The senseless severity of her sentence caught the attention of advocates who quickly moved to support Spottedcrow, spawning a grassroots uprising that led to a highly unusual decrease in her sentence and, ultimately, to her early release on parole.
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.
As states begin to realize that they can reduce their prison populations safely, the pace of reform has begun to pick up a bit this year. State legislative sessions are coming to a close, which makes it a good time to review the actions lawmakers have taken to reduce their unsustainable prison populations in 2012. Here are the some of the legislative reform highlights:
Alabama
Faced with a system of overcrowded prisons and fearing the same sort of court order that forced California to reform its prison system, Alabama took an indirect route toward depopulating its prisons. The state passed SB 386 inMay, which will allow the Alabama Sentencing Commission to set sentencing guidelines for nonviolent crimes that judges would generally have to follow. Under the new law, the Commission can make sentencing changes for nonviolent crimes, which will take effect unless the legislature takes action to reject any such the changes. The Sentencing Commission, which is insulated from the electoral pressure to reject proposals to soften criminal sentences, may now be poised to take action to reduce prison sentences for nonviolent offenses.
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.
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.
By Dan Zeidman, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:57pm
Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer has a lot to say on our country’s criminal system – some good, some bad.
That was clear from a speech he made Tuesday to the American Lawyer/National Law Journal Summit that discussed the serious challenges facing sentencing and corrections policy in the United States. In his remarks, Breuer raised concerns about how we help formerly incarcerated individuals become productive members of society, as well as what he understands to be disparities in how people are sentenced in the federal system.
By Dan Zeidman, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:00pm
In his 2007 State of the State address, Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) aptly explained, “I believe we can take an approach to crime that is both tough and smart…[T]here are thousands of non-violent offenders in the system whose future we cannot ignore. Let’s focus more resources on rehabilitating those offenders so we can ultimately spend less money locking them up again.”
Gov. Perry is just one voice in the chorus of policymakers, from both sides of the political aisle, calling for serious criminal justice reform that promotes public safety, reduces unsustainable prison populations and saves scarce taxpayer dollars. Elected officials like Gov. Perry are beginning to put their money where their mouths are by passing reform legislation to address overincarceration.
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.
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.
