Are federal mandatory sentencing laws unconstitutional?

The Eighth Amendment prohibits, among other things, cruel and unusual punishment. The statute forbids arbitrary and inconsistent criminal sanctions, which would seem to include: guidelines that are used to impose sentencing; length of incarceration; or the conditions under which a criminal defendant serves time. The so-called “War on Drugs” of the 1980’s, with its ‘get tough’ policies on criminals was a disaster because it caught up a disproportionately high number of Black offenders in its far-reaching and arbitrary drug enforcement dragnet. African-Americans are prosecuted at rates that are out of proportion compared to Whites in the actual use and sale of drugs, through receiving higher conviction rates and longer prison sentences. When it pertains to convictions on drug offenses racial minorities are routinely remanded over to federal authorities, where justices can impose mandatory sentencing verdicts on criminal defendants without the requirement for judicial review.

From 1992 to 1994, approximately 96.5% of all federal crack prosecutions were non-White. The U.S. Sentencing Commission Report (1992) determined that only minorities were prosecuted for crack offenses in over half of the federal judicial districts that handled crack cases. In a survey taken by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), between 1991 and 1993 Whites were twice as likely to have used crack nationwide than Blacks and Hispanics combined. Ironically, powder cocaine was used among upper class and affluent Whites, especially celebrities, with very little concern or interest among the police. When powdered cocaine started being cut into “crack” rocks and made more affordable and accessible to Blacks, especially in the inner cities, then it became a priority target of politicians and law enforcement agencies. As a result, this emphasis helped to initiate a series of aggressive and punitive drug prosecution and sentencing laws that hit the Black community especially hard.

Dan Wiekel, Los Angeles Times reporter wrote the article, “War on Crack Targets Minorities over Whites” (May, 21, 1995), in which his investigation revealed that not a single White offender has been convicted of crack cocaine offenses in federal court in the LA metropolitan area since 1986, despite the fact that “Whites are majority crack users.” He goes on to say that many African-Americans were low-level dealers [small time hustlers], first-time users or accomplices [non-violent??]; not the heavy traffickers in the drug trade with major distribution networks. Also, a 1993 report by NIDA found that African-Americans only comprise 13% of all drug users but account for 39% of all the arrests. Researchers James Lynch and William Sabol found a significant incarceration rate among non-poor Black drug users increased six-fold, while the rates for their White counterparts were the exact opposite (Mauer and Huling 11). The U.S. Sentencing Commission found that Blacks accounted for 84.5% of all federal crack possession convictions in 1993 (Welch and Argulo 9).

The numbers are even direr for females, especially those who are arrested for drug convictions, and crimes committed to support a drug habit. Nationwide, the number of women in state prisons increased 433% between 1896 and 1991. Black women were sentenced on drug offenses overall, with half of the charges stemming from crack offenses; compared to 5% for Hispanic women and 7% for White women. In a study of Black women crack users, Mindy Fullilone and her colleagues at Columbia University School of Public Health, their research found a complex pattern associated with depression and trauma resulting from physical, sexual and mental abuse that were the driving factors leading to drug abuse. So, to wrap this up, the question that needs to be asked is this: Is there an implicit and inherent bias in the criminal justice system that not only disproportionately but deliberately targets non-Whites (esp. African-Americans) with unfair criminal sanctions leading to unfair prosecution and excessive sentencing terms?  This is not only an Eight Amendment issue but also violates the “Due Process/Equal Protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. U.S. District Court Judge Consuela B. Marshall, said: “We do see a lot of those [crack] cases, and one does ask why some are in state court [Whites??], and others are being prosecuted in federal court [Blacks??]. . .  and if it’s not based on race, [then] what’s it based on?”-Good question.  (Weich and Argulo 9).

REFERENCES

 

Mauer, Mark and Huling, Tracy. “Young Black Americans and the Criminal Justice System: Five Years
            Later,” The Sentencing Project, October 1995, pp. 1-36

Ulmer, Jeffrey T, Kurlchek, Megan C, and Kramer, John H (2007). Prosecutorial Discretion and the

            Imposition of Mandatory Minimum Sentences. Journal of Research in Crime and Deliquency,
            44.4, 427-459

Weich, Ronald and Argulo, Carlos (2012 November 21). Racial Disparities in the American Criminal
            Justice System. Retrieved October 26, 2013 from
           www.urbanpoverty,qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/.../Ronald-Weich-and-Carlos-Angul...

Wiekel, Dan, ‘War on Crack Targets Minorities over Whites.” The Los Angeles Times May 21, 1995:

            Print.

 

Robert Randle

776 Commerce St Apt 701
Tacoma, WA 98402
October 7, 2016
robertrandle51@yahoo.com