Texas must keep its promise and ensure that Mr. Buck receives a new, fair sentencing hearing.
JODY KENT LAVY Director and National Coordinator Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth Washington, Sept. 13, 2011.
Congress shifted the crack cocaine punishments for new cases when it passed the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010.
Although the Fair Sentencing Act reduced penalties for crack-cocaine possession, it increased them for drug trafficking.
President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act, which narrowed the disparity in punishment between possessing crack and possessing powdered cocaine.
Judge Gleeson called on the commission to fashion fair sentencing ranges based on an offender's role and to reduce all sentencing ranges for drug trafficking by a third.
"Because of the Fair Sentencing Act, our nation is now closer to fulfilling its fundamental, and founding, promise of equal treatment under law," Mr. Holder said.
The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 addressed a gross inequity in federal sentences by reducing the disparity in punishment for a crime involving crack versus powdered cocaine.
Congress moderated, but unfortunately didn't eliminate, that disparity last year by passing the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, reducing the ratio to 18 to 1.
Congress tinkered at the margins of the law but failed to eliminate the sentencing disparity when it passed the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010.
The new law, the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, narrowed the vast gap between penalties for crimes involving crack and powder cocaine, a development many judges welcomed.
