Recently, a federal appeals court judge jokingly called The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 “The Not Quite as Fair as it could be Sentencing Act of 2010.” This is because, although the act lessened the gap between penalties for crimes involving crack and powder cocaine, the act only applies to offenses committed after the law went into effect last August, 2010.
Because criminal cases take time to navigate through the federal court system, federal judges are still sentencing defendants for crack cocaine crimes committed before the law went into effect. Thus, these defendants are being sentenced much more harshly than they would have been had their offense taken place after August, 2010. When drafting a federal law, Congress has the option of making the law retroactive (meaning it would apply to those defendants who committed the offense before the effective date of the law, but whose sentencing is still occurring). However, Congress did not do this with The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010.
We have sympathy for the two defendants
Federals judges report having a tough time sentencing a defendant based on the old federal crack cocaine sentencing law, which Congress clearly showed its distaste for by repealing. One federal judge, Terence T. Evans, recently wrote in one case, “We have sympathy for the two defendants here, who lost on a temporal roll of the cosmic dice and were sentenced under a structure which has now been recognized as unfair.”
Cocaine crimes, like any other drug charge, are taken seriously by law enforcement and prosecutors. Especially when it comes to federal drug crimes, defendants are likely to end up in federal prison. And because The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 was not made retroactive, prison sentences for defendants convicted of crack cocaine offenses continue to be longer than those of defendants convicted of powder cocaine offenses.
If you are being investigated for, or have been charged with, a Michigan or federal drug crime, you need a team of expert criminal defense lawyers. Your attorney can help you with every stage of your case, including plea negotiations, trial, and sentencing.