Newsgroups: alt.drugs
From: [catalyst remailer] at [netcom.com]
Subject: Supreme Court say druggies not so bad?
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 1994 19:48:42 -0800

Whaddizzzzissss? Y'all read'dit n' tell'meh whaddit saz. T'anks.

        WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court Tuesday told federal judges
to treat less harshly those convicted criminals who violate their
probation by using drugs.
        The 7-2 decision in an Atlanta case means a man who violated the
terms of his five-year probation had to serve at least two months,
rather than 20 months in prison.
        Ralph Granderson pleaded guilty in 1991 to delaying or
destroying the mail. The sentencing guidelines for that federal
offense and someone of Granderson's criminal-history category
allowed up to six months in prison.
        He was sentenced to five years probation and fined $2,000.
        A short time later, U.S. District Judge William O'Kelley ruled
that Granderson had violated the terms of his probation by
possessing and using cocaine.
        A federal law says judges who discover someone has violated
probation by possessing drugs must revoke the probation and
sentence that person to ``not less than one-third of the original
sentence.''
        Federal appeals courts have differed in interpreting what
``original sentence'' means.
        The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Granderson had
to be sentenced to at least one-third of the sentencing range
available under the guidelines -- no less than two months but no
more than six months in prison.
        Other appeals courts have read the law the same way, but still
other appeals courts have said the ``original sentence'' refers to
the probation period -- five years in this case. They would have
ruled in Granderson's case that he must serve at least 20 months --
one-third of five years -- in prison.
        Justice Department lawyers appealed the 11th Circuit court
ruling and urged the Supreme Court to resolve the conflicting
decisions.
        Writing for the court Tuesday, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said
the 11th Circuit court's interpretation is correct.
        ``We reject the government's contention that the proviso
unambiguously calls for a sentence based on the term of probation
rather than the originally applicable guidelines range of
imprisonment,'' Ginsburg said.
        ``The minimum revocation sentence, we hold, is one-third the
maximum of the originally applicable guidelines range, and the
maximum revocation sentence is the guidelines maximum,'' she said.
        Ginsburg added that the appeals court was correct in ordering
Granderson's release because he already had served 11 months in
prison by the time it ruled.
        Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, in an opinion joined by
Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented.
        ``The court ... ultimately concludes, incorrectly in my view,
that the rule of lenity should be applied,'' Rehnquist said.
        Interpreting the disputed law as government lawyers had urged
``may in some cases call for imposition of severe punishment, but
it does not produce a result so absurd or glaringly unjust as to
raise a reasonable doubt about Congress' intent,'' he said.
        The case is U.S. vs. Granderson, 92-1662.