Inequity's end means new start for 31

Crack offenders from Mass. see US sentences trimmed
By Jonathan Saltzman
Globe Staff / July 18, 2008

Jean Janvier spent 17 months locked up for selling about 2 grams of crack cocaine in Dorchester.

To show what 2 grams looks like, his lawyer shook out a half-dozen orange Tic Tacs into his palm as Janvier watched. "That much," George F. Gormley said in his South Boston law office.

If the Haitian-born Janvier had been caught with that much powdered cocaine, he probably would never have been prosecuted in federal court or been incarcerated if convicted in state court.

For two decades, the criminal justice system treated crack cocaine offenses much more harshly than crimes involving the powder form of the drug. But Janvier got a break not long after he was sentenced in July.

In December, the US Sentencing Commission voted to retroactively lighten punishments for some crack-related crimes in a landmark move to narrow the disparity between the penalties, a disparity that has taken a particular toll on blacks, who account for most crack offenders.

Soon afterward, a federal district court judge cut Janvier's two-year sentence by five months, plus two months for good behavior. He was released in May from a federal prison in upstate New York and is among at least 31 inmates convicted of crack cocaine offenses in Massachusetts who have been freed since March, said Miriam Conrad, a federal public defender.....continue