
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 30, 1993                   TAG: 9304300102
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A11   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

JUDGE RULES SENTENCING GUIDELINES UNCONSTITUTIONAL

Federal sentencing guidelines mandated by Congress nearly a decade ago are unconstitutional, a judge ruled Thursday in refusing to sentence a 25-year-old repeat drug offender to 30 years in prison.

Reflecting a mushrooming resentment of the guidelines among federal judges around the country, U.S. District Judge Harold Greene said they are producing "unjust sentences" in violation of Fifth Amendment and Eighth Amendment protections of due process and against cruel and unusual punishment.

Greene, a longtime opponent of the guidelines, issued the 21-page ruling in sentencing Cordell Spencer to 10 years in prison on a conviction of possessing less than one-fourth of an ounce of heroin and cocaine.

Spencer was arrested last July outside his apartment in northwest Washington by police executing a search warrant of the apartment. They found 6.87 grams of cocaine and 0.87 grams of heroin in the apartment.

Also in the apartment at the time was co-defendant Ronald Coleman. Coleman was allowed to plead guilty later to one misdemeanor count of heroin possession and was sentenced to six months in prison.

But because Spencer had three prior convictions on minor drug charges when he was 19 and 20 years old, the sentencing guidelines required that he be sentenced as a career offender to a minimum of 30 years in prison with no chance of parole.

by CNB