U.S. Supreme Court weighs sentencing case focused on crack cocaine

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday weighs whether low-level crack cocaine offenders should benefit under a 2018 federal law that reduced certain prison sentences in part to address racial disparities detrimental to Black defendants.

The nine justices are set to hear their final arguments of their nine-month term that began last October in a case involving a Florida man named Tarahrick Terry that tests the scope of the First Step Act signed into law by former President Donald Trump.

The disparity was created by Congress in 1986 during that decade's crack epidemic, creating a 100-to-one quantity ratio under which a person arrested with just a small amount of crack cocaine would receive a much larger sentence than someone charged with possessing the same amount of powder cocaine. The 2010 law reduced the ratio to 18-to-one, but did not apply to those already convicted.

The 2018 law was passed with bipartisan support in Congress. Although Trump signed it, his administration subsequently concluded that possession of a small amount of crack cocaine was not a "covered offense" under the statute, which included various other criminal justice reforms. The Supreme Court's eventual ruling will affect other defendants in the same position as Terry, though the Justice Department declined to specify how many there were.

 

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