Obama signs bill to narrow sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine convictions
By APTuesday, August 3, 2010
Obama signs bill reducing gap in cocaine sentences
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has signed a bill to reduce the disparity between federal mandatory sentences for convictions for crack cocaine and the powder form of the drug.
Obama’s signing of the bill in the Oval Office was open only to news photographers but not the rest of the media. He made no remarks.
But as a longtime thorn for the black community, the matter is important to a key Obama constituency. The quarter-century-old law that Congress changed with the new bill has subjected tens of thousands of blacks to long prison terms for crack cocaine convictions while giving far more lenient sentences to those, mainly whites, caught with powder.
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