WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats on Tuesday rebuffed Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s request for legislation that would cancel the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s recent decision to apply lower jail terms retroactively to as many as 19,500 crack-cocaine offenders sentenced under tough “war on drugs” legislation from the 1980s.
An estimated 1,600 of those inmates will be eligible to apply for reduced sentences this year, according to the commission. The new guidelines take effect March 3.
Mukasey asked last week that the new recommendations be rolled back, arguing that applications for reductions in sentences could flood the federal courts and put dangerous criminals on the streets.
But during Tuesday’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and drugs, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., accused Mukasey of creating public fear that “dangerous drug offenders will be instantaneously and automatically set free to prey on hapless communities.”
Current federal law requires possession of 100 times more powdered cocaine than crack cocaine to receive the same sentence. The disparity stems from the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which was enacted amid fears that the smoked drug was more addictive than its powdered counterpart and thus more likely to be associated with violent crime.
“Our intentions were good,” said Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., D-Del., who drafted the 1986 act. “A lot of our information turns out to be not as good.”
