Kimbrough v. U.S.
Kimbrough, Derrick v. U.S.
Does cocaine by any other name merit a higher federal drug trafficking sentence? The Supreme Court has held that the answer is no, in a case permitting judges to fashion prison terms outside the Sentencing Guidelines range to reflect a view that crack and powder cocaine merit equal treatment.
In the case, Kimbrough v. United States, No. 06-6330, the Court reviewed the sentence applied to Derrick Kimbrough, who pled guilty in 2005 to possession of 92 grams of powder cocaine and 56 grams of crack cocaine, as well as gun possession.
The sentencing judge sliced about ten years off the punishment recommended by the federal Sentencing Guidelines, noting that the Guidelines unreasonably jacked up the sentence for defendants caught with crack cocaine. The Guidelines had officially adopted a so-called 100:1 ration for crack to powder cocaine offenses, although the U.S. Sentencing Commission amended its approach in November 2007 to reduce that ratio.
The court said it was authorized to disregard the crack-driven sentence of 19-22 years in prison thanks to the Court’s 2005 decision , United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005). In Booker, the Court held that the Sentencing Guidelines were no longer mandatory, thus freeing courts to consider not only the range dictated by the Guidelines, but other factors identified in the federal criminal code. Appellate courts must then review those sentences for “reasonableness.”
In this case, U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson called the Guidelines sentence “ridiculous,” because it was excessively high in light of the defendant’s crimes. It also pointed out that although the Guidelines weigh crack cocaine more heavily than powder, the Sentencing Commission concluded, in a 2002 report to Congress, that the existing Guidelines exaggerate the threat posed by crack cocaine, and fall disproportionately on low-level offenders and minorities. In fact, according to Kimbrough, crack sentences are, on average, more than three years longer than powder cocaine sentences. “The vast majority of those defendants . . . are black men.”
The powder-crack controversy had landed before the Court in part because Congress has failed to reach a clear conclusion about how to treat the various forms of cocaine. While Congress did specify in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 that any statutorily required mandatory minimum sentences must employ the 100:1 ratio, it has stopped short of requiring the Sentencing Commission to incorporate that ratio into the Guidelines. When the Commission tried to change the ratio in 1995, Congress put off action, asking the Commission to study the issue more deeply.
The government had the Court that if sentencing judges can ignore the 100:1 ratio, they will begin to issue wildly disparate crack cocaine sentences and thereby undermine Congress’s effort to achieve uniform punishments via the Guidelines.
The Court swept aside that argument, noting first that it accepted in Booker that returning discretion to sentencing judges would inevitably drive down uniformity. Moreover, it added, the drug trafficking statute will prevent a sentencing hodgepodge because it specifies some mandatory minimum sentences that judges must follow even if they go outside the Guidelines range. Finally, it suggested that district courts could be trusted to maintain reasonably uniform approaches to cocaine sentencing.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg authored the opinion. It was announced with a companion sentencing opinion, Gall v. United States, No. 06-7949, which endorsed the assignment of non-Guidelines sentences when trial courts found them appropriate. The two opinions together represented a significant relaxation of the Sentencing Guidelines' grip on trial courts. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined in dissenting from both opinions.
Dec. 10, 2007Questions presented: Whether a district court may cut the sentence imposed on a defendant found to possess crack cocaine in order to reflect the Sentencing Commission's view that the so-called 100:1 ratio applied to sentences for crack and powder sentences for cocaine are unwarranted.