You Have The Right To An Attorney, But You'll Just Have To Pay For One Yourself, You Crackhead.

MayorBob.

Posted to Legal on Thu Apr 24, 2008 at 06:48:18 AM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.

Anyone who's seen any crime dramas knows that criminal suspects have the right to an attorney and if you can't afford one, the government has to provide you with one.  But those rights end once you've been convicted and sentenced for a crime, unless you can find a lenient judge.  This is the dilemma facing a number of federal prisoners, largely poor and uneducated people in jail for crack offenses, who are finding it almost impossible to get the legal help they need to deal with their appeals.

This occurs in the wake of a decision made last year by the US Sentencing Commission (USCS).  The USCS ruled that all those sentenced under tough crack drug laws, enacted in the 1980s, could move to have their prison sentences substantially reduced.  The USCS's move was seen as a move toward more autonomy in the hands of judges in passing sentencing for drug offenses.  Critics of the old "War on Drugs" sentences charged that they unfairly penalized users of crack cocaine (nice graphic showing the disparity between crack and powder sentences).

The new sentencing guidelines took effect last month and, with over 3,400 sentences corrected in the first month, it looked like the USCS decision would pick up steam.  However, the process has begun to bog down.  Many of the prisoners have said they are too poor to afford a lawyer to help them build a case for correction.  Some federal judges have been sympathetic to them and appointed lawyers to help them.  Some judges aren't that sympathetic and don't wish to waste the taxpayers' money on legal help for an inmate in what some call a "straightforward sentencing matter."

Eyvonne Garrett, serving an eight year sentence, had been through rehab and was taking college courses.  She thought her judge would honor her request for an attorney to help cut her sentence in half.  The judge decided she wouldn't be getting a lawyer.  Thrown up against a skilled prosecutor armed with a 24 page brief, Garrett failed to make her case for a reduced sentence.  Not every inmate serving time for crack cocaine will be refused counsel; it's just that it seems like a total case of luck depending on if you catch a sympathetic judge or not.  The major complaint of many law enforcement types is that the USCS decision is as ill-advised as the original drug laws.  Prosecutors like Bob Parks from Franklin County, Missouri think the new guidelines are just going to cause problems in the future for society:

"I hate to see people who were doing these things back on the street early because most of them weren't simply possession, they were sales or intent to sell. They're just going to be back out there doing what they were doing."