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Crack Cases Clog Federal Courts
A new report from the U.S. Sentencing Commission says that federal courts handled more than 17,000 cases this year brought by crack cocaine offenders seeking shorter prison sentences. The cases came in the wake of retroactive amendments to the federal sentencing guidelines that reduced prison terms for crack cocaine offenses.
Nationwide, 17,168 cases were filed seeking sentence reductions and 12,119 were granted. The jurisdictions that saw the greatest number of these cases were Virginia's Eastern District with 1,113 and Florida's Middle District with 1,065. The federal circuits with the most filings were the 4th with 3,899 and the 11th with 3,314. The cases that were successful resulted in an average decrease in sentence of two years, from 137 months to 114 months. Of the cases that failed, the most common reason was that they were deemed ineligible for the reduction under the revised guidelines.
Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on December 17, 2008 at 11:53 AM | Permalink
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