Attorney General Holder says mending crack sentencing disparity is a high priority
On Wednesday, June 17, 2009, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. addressed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a wide range of issues, including the disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine. Dramatically illustrating the injustice of the disparity, Senator Dick Durbin held up a single sugar packet and a bag full of sugar packets and lamented that selling the equivalent amounts in crack and powder cocaine would result in the same sentence.
The Attorney General responded to Senator Durbin’s concerns by assuring the committee that addressing the crack-powder disparity was a high priority of the Department of Justice and stated unequivocally, “it is time to do away with [the crack-powder] disparity.” Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, described the disparity as “destructive to our whole penal system, our justice system, and to our respect for the rule of law” and pledged to work with Senators from both sides of the aisle to quickly move legislation that would resolve the disparity. Noting the racial overtones of the disparity, Senator Leahy concluded by saying, “I don’t want what appears to many people to be one rule for white America, [and] a different rule for black America.”
The hearing, entitled “Oversight of the U.S. Department of Justice,” can be viewed in its entirety at: http://www.senate.gov/fplayers/CommPlayer/commFlashPlayer.cfm?fn=judiciary061709&st=xxx.