Court Opinion

ID: 9799528
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 07:15:24.05974+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:54.287119
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the Court’s opinion in this case only because I can find no alternative after the refusals of our court and the Supreme Court to alter old crack sentences. For this nonviolent crack cocaine offense, Jackson must serve out his original 12-1/2 year sentence because the Congress, the Department of Justice, the Sentencing Commission and the courts have not seen fit to reduce the widely acknowledged unfair crack cocaine sentences imposed mainly on black defendants based on a 100-to-l ratio with powdered cocaine. The district court and the original panel in this case tried to bring a little more enlightenment to sentences imposed for crack before 2011, but to no avail. It looks like no one with authority to correct the injustice is willing to do anything, and thousands of mainly black defendants will remain in prison unjustly for many more years.