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He petitioned for a reduced sentence in 2019 under the First Step Actwhich Congress had passed a year earlier in an attempt to redress racially discriminatory sentencing laws of the 1980sbut was denied by the Atlanta-based 11th.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals.On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed with that denial.Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor partially dissenting.The circuit court had ruled that the First Step Act only covered high and mid-level crack offendersnot low-level ones like Terry.Judges in the Third, Sixth and Tenth Circuits have ruled the same in similar cases, but judges in the First and Fourth Circuits have disagreed.This circuit split is untenable, Terrys legal team had argued in his petition, pointing out geography alone now determines whether countless people serving low-level crack cocaine convictions could apply for sentence reduction.
Portions of the First Step Act of 2018 took aim at the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986, which established the infamous 100-to-1 powder to crack cocaine ratiomeaning possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine brought a comparable sentence.(Crack and powder cocaine are derived from the same chemicals, but crack cocaine is processed with additives that make it a solid rock shape.).The laws furthered mass incarceration and disproportionately impacted impoverished people and people of colorcommunity groups often overpoliced to begin withas crack cocaine has historically been more accessible to poorer Americans.Asbury Park Press and, uSA Today Network study of nationwide arrest records and federal drug convictions found that a majority of crack users in the.S.Have historically been white, yet Black Americans were sent to federal prison nearly seven times more often for crack offenses from 1991 to 2016.
Read more: Want to Win the War on Drugs?Portugal Might Have the Answer.
