Legal Research

Crack Cocaine: Resentencing Goes Smoothly
Follow up to previous postings on retroactivity for sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine, from The Third Branch: "Federal district courts...

Crack Resentencing Controversy Comes Before 11th Circuit
Today, two of the most controversial issues in sentencing law -- the length of sentences for crack cocaine offenders and judges' ability to go outside the federal sentencing guidelines -- will intersect in arguments at a federal appeals court panel...

EDNY Judge Denies Full-Blown Resentencing Under Crack Retroactivity Amendment
In what appears to be a case of first impression in this circuit, a district court in the EDNY has rejected a defendant's request for a de novo resentencing under the crack retroactivity amendment (which would have allowed the defendant...

Op-ed on "Crack-cocaine sentencing injustice"
Professor Mark Osler has this new op-ed titled "Crack-cocaine sentencing injustice." Here are snippets: By 1995, hundreds of African-Americans had been prosecuted for crack offenses, but relatively few whites...

Read Publication: Senate Crack-Cocaine Legislation
A comparison of the current law against three Senate bills introduced to reform sentencing policy on crack-cocaine. All of the bills raise the quantities for crack-cocaine that trigger mandatory minimum sentences, but Senator Biden's bill is the only bill that equalizes the trigger quantities to those of powder cocaine...

More coverage of crack retroactivity realities
The Friday papers bring these two notable stories about the new retroactive crack guidelines. From the Washingont Post here, "Crack Offenders Set for Release Mostly Nonviolent, Study Says": Most of the more than 1,500 crack cocaine offenders who are immediately...