Federal Sentencing Guidelines

Supplementing previous post.

The United States Sentencing Commission’s publication its 2007 “Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy” report to Congress late last month, gave a great deal of special attention to comparing and contrasting federal sentencing policies with respect to cocaine offenses to those of the individual states.

The basic framework of statutory minimum penalties applicable to federal drug trafficking laws was set forth in 1986 with the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. In establishing mandatory minimum penalties respective of cocaine offenses, Congress differentiated between the two principle forms of the drug found on the street – “powder” and “crack”—providing significantly higher punishments for the latter. The overwhelming majority of the states, however – including Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania—do not distinguish between “powder” and “crack” in their basic statutes, according to the Commission’s report. Ohio, at this point does, but currently has a bill in its senate which would remove those distinctions. (See Bill Analysis for detailed information)

Thirteen states, on the other hand—Indiana and Ohio included—have guideline systems with “determinate,” mandatory sentencing. “Determinate sentences” are those in which the sentence imposed approximates time served, as opposed to early releases before serving the full sentence.

Only a small minority of all drug offenses are tried on the federal level, the Commission admitted, but with the states “generally not having adopted the federal penalty structure for cocaine offenders, the decision whether to prosecute at the state or federal level can have an especially significant effect on the ultimate sentence imposed on an individual offender.”



ORC on possession ( § 2925.11)
ORC on trafficking ( § 2925.03)

Ind. Code on possession ( § 35-48-4-6)
Ind. Code on trafficking ( § 35-48-4-1)