Statement of Diana E. Murphy before the Senate Subcommittee

Chairman Biden, members of the Subcommittee, I am Diana Murphy, Chair of the United States Sentencing Commission (the " Commission ") and a judge on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. I appreciate the opportunity to testify today about federal cocaine sentencing policy, and the Subcommittee should be commended for holding this important hearing. Although Congress and the Commission have been considering cocaine sentencing issues for a number of years, federal sentencing policy for cocaine traffickers has remained essentially unchanged since the current penalty structure was established by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 (the " 1986 Act "). 1 This year the Commission placed this difficult issue on our agenda, in part because federal cocaine sentencing policy continues to be criticized by many, and in part because we sensed a renewed interest by members of Congress in exploring possible changes to the penalty structure. We received a letter from Senator Leahy and Senator Hatch specifically requesting the Commission to study the issues presented and to report back on its findings and recommendations. The Commission is also familiar with legislation introduced by Senator would change the penalties for both powder cocaine and crack cocaine offenses. 4 That amendment, among other things, would have equalized the quantity-based sentencing guideline penalties for crack cocaine offenses with the sentencing guideline penalties for powder cocaine offenses.-2-In the course of our work this year, the Commission (i) reviewed findings from recent literature on specific issues such as the addictiveness of cocaine and the consequences of prenatal cocaine exposure; (ii) conducted an extensive empirical study of federal cocaine offenders sentenced in fiscal year 2000 and compared those results with the findings in the Commission's 1995 special report to Congress on federal cocaine sentencing policy; 2 (iii) surveyed state sentencing policies; (iv) considered public comment on the appropriateness of current federal cocaine sentencing policy; and (v) heard testimony at three separate public hearings from the medical and scientific communities, federal and local law enforcement officials, including the Department of Justice, criminal justice practitioners, academics, and civil rights organizations. After carefully considering all of the information available, the Commission unanimously concluded that the cocaine penalty structure can be improved significantly to achieve more effectively the various congressional objectives outlined in the Sentencing Commission's guideline amendment addressing cocaine sentencing. 4 Having reached that substantive conclusion, we faced the difficult threshold decision of determining how best to proceed. We considered …