WASHINGTON — A long-standing dispute over huge disparities in sentencing between crack versus powdered cocaine appears to be headed for a resolution in Congress.
Senate lawmakers brokered a landmark deal last week to reduce criminal penalties for defendants caught with crack cocaine, hashing out the terms in a congressional gym.
Opportunity struck when Sen. Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., encountered colleagues Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in the Senate gym early Thursday, before they had started their workouts. Durbin seized the moment to advance the legislation and sent his aides an e-mail at 7:35 a.m., outlining the terms of his offer.
The deal was sealed with a handshake two hours later at a committee meeting in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.
The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously passed the measure 19-0 the same day, addressing for the first time in two decades a sentencing disparity that has troubled civil-rights organizations, prisoners-rights advocates and officials in the Obama White House.
Currently, someone caught with 5 grams of crack cocaine faces the same mandatory minimum prison sentence as someone caught with 500 grams of the drug in powdered form. That 100-1 ratio has disproportionately hurt African-Americans, who are convicted of crack possession in far greater numbers. The compromise would reduce the ratio to 18-1.
The Senate bill would increase the amount of crack cocaine required to trigger a five- year mandatory minimum sentence for possession with an intent to distribute from 5 grams to 28 grams. Possessing cocaine in rock form would no longer carry a mandatory minimum prison term, equalizing that penalty to that of other drugs.
The House Judiciary Committee passed a cocaine sentencing reform bill in July. That bill would treat all forms of cocaine the same for sentencing purposes, lowering the ratio to 1 to 1.
