powder cocaine

So you spend eight months listening to evidence in a federal drug conspiracy trial, and another two months deliberating, carefully considering the evidence and the judge’s instructions.

You convict one of the defendants of distribution of five grams of cocaine base (crack) but acquit him of (from PACER):

Wall Street Journal:

The Obama administration Wednesday asked Congress to end the disparity in penalties for use of crack- and powder-cocaine crimes, a stance sure to bring on contentious debate from the law-enforcement community.

Thanks to Mark Bennett for posting a .pdf to the Texas defense lawyers listserv of the recent letter by the Federal Defenders concerning sentencing reform to the U.S.

Sentencing Commission. The email contained specific instructions that the .pdf was a public document and was meant to be disseminated, so here’s a link.

Brian Williams had a scare piece on NBC Nightly News last night about the current ‘debate’ at the U.S.

Sentencing Commission regarding making the new Federal Sentencing Guidelines for crack cocaine retroactive. (Apologies: the only link I could find to the piece forces you to watch a 15 to 30 second commercial first.)

Williams starts off with: