ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, January 12, 1997               TAG: 9701130087
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: A-7  EDITION: METRO 

IN ROANOKE FEDERAL COURT

Stiff Sentences

Seven out of 10 crack defendants sentenced under the guidelines received the minimum sentences the judge was allowed to give them. A senior DEA agent, whose agency arrested many of them, says he thinks that's fair, since the penalties for crack are "extremely stiff."

The Cost

In 1994 and '95, 149 defendants were sentenced to prison for a total of 1,192 years. At the current cost of incarceration of $21,352 a year, keeping those Roanoke prisoners locked up will cost taxpayers more than $25 million.

IS Justice Color Blind?

When defendants cooperate with prosecutors and help them catch someone else, they are rewarded by being exempted from the sentencing guidelines; judges are free to sentence below the guidelines if they choose. In those cases - the only ones in which judges may exercise complete discretion - there was no statistical difference in the sentence reduction blacks and whites received. (It was not possible, however, to quantify how much cooperation each defendant gave the government and how much consideration the judges gave that cooperation.)

LENGTH: Short :   34 lines
ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC:  Chart. color.