Court Opinion

ID: 9483086
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:10:27.327484+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:24.673307
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Senior Circuit Judge,
with whom LAY, Senior Circuit Judge, joins, concurring.
I concur in the court’s opinion, but only because I am bound by our prior decisions that hold there is no merit in Willis’ equal protection argument. Neither this record nor the ones on prior occasions support the view that Congress had a sound basis to make the harsh distinction between powder and crack cocaine. Although the 1986 Congressional hearing with respect to crack cocaine cited by our court in Buckner was filled with general statements about the dangers of crack and the economics of crack distribution, Congress had no hard evidence before it to support the contention that crack is 100 times more potent or dangerous than powder cocaine. More recently, drug researchers have concluded that the short-term and long-term effects of crack and powder cocaine are identical. See David Peterson, Powder, Crack Effects Called Same, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Oct. 18, 1991, at IB (remarks of Dr. Dorothy Hatsukami, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota).
Still, the widespread belief that crack is more dangerous than powder cocaine persists. The majority of those arrested for crack cocaine are black, a fact noted not only by the defendant but by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. Crack raids focus on black homes; suburban and greater Minnesota police have not engaged in as many drug raids against white suspects. This makes the war on drugs “look[ ] like a war on minorities.” See Minnesota Department of Public Safety, Office of Drug Policy, Report to the 1991 Minnesota Legislature 11 (1990). There may be many reasons for this, some defensible, others not. For example, the use and sale of crack is more visible than the use and sale of powder cocaine, so those next to crack houses will ask the police to raid the operations, leaving the more private powder cocaine operations unscathed. Id. On the other hand, parts of our society view the young black male as a figure of social disruption, and will seek to punish him more harshly than his white suburban counterpart. Cf. Martha Myers, Symbolic Policy and the Sentencing of Drug Offenders, 23 Law & Society Rev. 295, 310, 312 (1989) (in study of Georgia drug sentencing from 1977 to 1985, black drug traffickers more likely to be imprisoned than whites).
For whatever reason, offenders convicted of trafficking in crack cocaine face far more severe penalties than those who have sold powder cocaine. As the court points out, the “100 to 1” ratio effectively quintupled Willis’ sentence; he faced a guidelines range of 188 to 235 months rather than 41 to 51 months. See ante at 1225 n. 2. The district court sentenced Willis at the bottom of the guidelines range, but made it clear that he felt the guidelines sentence was excessive and a “tragedy.”
I’m going to give you the least I can possibly give you, and I will go one step further, and the one step isn’t going to be worth a whit until maybe sometime in the future. But the one step is I’m going to beg the Congress to reconsider what they’ve done here. This is not right. You’ve done wrong, you’ve done a wrong thing, but if there’s any good in you, it’s going to take a long time for you to be able to show it, and I wish it could be less time.
Willis, age 21 when sentenced, will be in prison for about 17 years. During this time he is unlikely to receive drug treatment or helpful job training. Unless the executive branch grants Willis clemency or brings a Rule 35 motion, Willis will be a middle-aged man when he emerges from the prison system with little prospects for meaningful employment.
*1227If there were any evidence that our current policies with respect to crack were deterring drug use or distribution the extreme sentence might be justified. Unfortunately, there is none. As one small time crack dealer is confined another takes his place. Until our society begins to provide effective drug treatment and education programs, and until young black men have equal opportunities for a decent education and jobs, a bad situation will only get worse. All of us and our children will suffer.