REPEAL THE RACIALLY DISCRIMINATORY CRACK COCAINE MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCE
91.3% of the mandatory minimum sentences of 5 or 10 years for selling crack cocaine are being served by African Americans. 5 grams of crack (the weight of 2 pennies) gets 5 years. 50 grams of crack (less than two ounces) gets a minimum of 10 years. Powder cocaine, more typically sold by whites, but no less dangerous or addictive, triggers 5 years at 500 grams (more than a pound) and triggers 10 years at 5 kilograms (more than 11 pounds). THE TINY TRIGGERING WEIGHTS FOR CRACK ARE RACIALLY DISCRIMINATORY.
U.S. Rep. William J. Hughes (D-NJ) has submitted an amendment to eliminate this racially discriminatory sentence.
The House Rules Committee will meet on April 11 or 12 on the House Crime Bill, H.R. 4092. They need to be called, faxed or written to, urgently: Make the Hughes Amendment on crack cocaine "in order."
The racially discriminatory crack law can be changed -
- but the people must write to their Member of Congress, the House leadership, and members of the House Rules Committee.
This posting includes the text of the letter I sent to the House Rules Committee, and the names, addresses and fax numbers (area code 202) of the 13 members of the committee. The first nine names are Democrats.
March 31, 1994
Representative 1~ 2~ House Office Building U.S. House of Representatives Washington, D.C. 20515
Re: The Hughes Amendment (117) to H.R. 4092, The Crime Bill
Dear Rep. 4~:
The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation urges the Committee on Rules, in the rule on the Crime Bill, to make in order the Hughes amendment regarding penalties for crack cocaine.
In 1986, Congress passed the "Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986" establishing two classes of mandatory minimum sentences. For the highest level drug offenders, it provided a minimum 10-year sentence up to life imprisonment, without parole, for participating in the manufacture, distribution or conspiracy to manufacture or distribute large quantities of drugs (for a first offense). This sentence was intended for international or national level dealers. The minimum quantity of cocaine hydrochloride required to trigger this sentence is set at 5 kilograms (approximately 11 pounds, currently worth approximately $100,000-150,000 wholesale).
For managers of wholesale distribution, Congress provided for a five year minimum up to forty years (for a first offense). The minimum quantity of cocaine hydrochloride to trigger this level sentence is 500 grams (a little more than one pound, about $10,000-20,000 wholesale).
However, because of the substantial increase in street crime committed by crack addicts and enormous media attention to crack use, the minimum quantities triggering the mandatory minimum sentences for crack (called cocaine base in the statute) were improperly set at an extremely low level.
The ten year mandatory minimum/life imprisonment maximum is triggered by transactions of only 50 grams of crack -- less than two ounces, worth roughly $2000-3000.
The five year minimum/forty year maximum is triggered by five grams, about the weight of two pennies, worth roughly $400-500.
The dollar values for these quantities of crack cocaine are indicative of amounts that are frequently entrusted to couriers to deliver, but are hardly indicative of major players on the multi-billion dollar domestic cocaine market who are the appropriate targets two of the highest of Federal criminal sentences.
The employees and couriers of those dealing in 5 or 50 gram quantities of crack (who are tried as conspirators, 21 U.S.C. 846), while serious felons, are not the high level offenders for whom these mandatory minimum penalties were intended. Indeed, they are truly at very bottom of the international cocaine distribution system.
The Hughes amendment corrects this anomaly. It provides that crack distributors will get the same types of sentences as other cocaine traffickers.
What has resulted from this low triggering quantity for crack cocaine? A large number of crack addicts and other low-level functionaries in the retailing of crack are getting long mandatory minimum sentences intended for major drug traffickers. Not only is this unjust, but it wastes taxpayers' money.
Strikingly, a 1992 study by the U.S. Sentencing Commission of the race of those who are receiving the mandatory minimum sentences for crack revealed that 91.3% of them were Black and only 3% were white. This is the most commonly cited datum to support the argument that the fight against drug abuse is racist.
This accusation can be eliminated by adopting the Hughes amendment, without weakening the Federal fight against drug trafficking. All major crack distributors --
responsible for as little as 500 grams of crack -- will continue to be eligible for mandatory minimum sentences after the Hughes amendment.
Crack is not different enough from powder cocaine to justify the current 100-1 difference in weights triggering the mandatory sentences. Indeed, Charles R. Schuster, Ph.D., the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse under President Reagan, testified before the U.S. Sentencing Commission last November that essentially there is no difference between crack and powder cocaine.
Crack is a preparation of cocaine hydrochloride (a salt) in which the hydrochloride is removed. (This process happens anytime cocaine hydrochloride is dissolved in water, for example, in the body when cocaine hydrochloride enters the blood or mucus.) Crack is cocaine hydrochloride which has been processed slightly with baking soda so that the cocaine vaporizes when heated and can be inhaled.
The racial disparity of those receiving crack mandatory sentences is not explained by racial differences in use patterns -- whites are a much higher proportion of crack users than blacks: 2.4 million whites (64.4%), 990,000 African-Americans (26.2%), and 384,000 Hispanics (9.2%) (NIDA National Household Survey, 1992).
It certainly appears that the mandatory minimum sentencing provisions of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act are applied disproportionately against African-Americans.
African Americans are 28.2% of those convicted, but were 38.5% of those convicted of mandatory minimum offenses.
Whites were 46.9% of the total convicted, but only 34.8% of those convicted of mandatory minimum offenses. 67% of the African American defendants received sentences at or above the mandatory minimum range, but only 54.0% of the white defendants received sentences at such a range.
To fight crime effectively, law enforcement must be just in the imposition of criminal sentences because a community which believes that the criminal justice system is prejudiced against its members will abandon respect for law and order. Those of us who demand an effective fight against crime cannot tolerate a sentencing scheme which is not justified by scientific differences or by genuine market differences, but which results in such pronounced racial disparity in its application.
Most importantly, the Hughes amendment carries out the original purpose of the mandatory minimum sentences created in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 of targeting the highest level traffickers (See H. Rept. 99-845, to accompany the Narcotics Penalties and Enforcement Act, pp. 11-12; 16-
18.). In enticing U.S. Attorneys to bring so many prosecutions of couriers, runners, and other low-level participants in the crack trade, the current crack mandatory minimum sentencing provisions have been ineffective in meeting "One of the major goals of this bill [the mandatory minimum sentencing provisions of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, ...] to give greater direction to the DEA and the U.S. Attorneys on how to focus scarce law enforcement resources." (H.Rept. 99-845, p. 11).
I urge you to allow the Hughes Amendment (No.
117) to be made in order.
Sincerely yours,
Eric E.
Sterling
John Joseph Moakley 235 Cannon 225-3984 Moakley
Butler Derrick 221 Cannon 225-5383 Derrick
David E. Bonior 2207 Rayburn 225-1169 Bonior
Bart Gordon 103 Cannon 225-6887 Gordon
Louise M. Slaughter 2421 Rayburn 225-7822 Slaughter
Martin Frost 2459 Rayburn 225-4951 Frost
Anthony C. Beilenson 2465 Rayburn 225-0092 Beilenson
Tony P. Hall 2264 Rayburn 225-6766 Hall
Alan Wheat 2334 Rayburn 225-5990 Wheat
Gerald B. H. Solomon 2265 Rayburn 225-6234 Solomon
James H. Quillen 102 Cannon 225-7812 Quillen
David Dreier 411 Cannon 225-4745 Dreier
Porter J. Goss 330 Cannon 225-6820 Goss
** End of text from cdp:alt.drugs **
