Reggie Walton: the federal judge who dropped the hammer on Lewis "Scooter" Libby explains his crusade against crack sentencing laws.(Q & A)(Interview)

In 2007, the U.S. Sentencing Commission shortened average sentences for crack offenders by two to three years and cleared almost 20,000 federal prisoners to petition for that reduction. You're known as a hard guy on the bench, particularly on drugs. And you served in the drug policy office of the first George W. Bush administration. What are you doing advocating for these sentence reductions? Our sentencing structure has to be fundamentally fair and--maybe just as important--perceived to be fundamentally fair. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in our society, especially people of color, who feel that the sentencing structure as it relates to crack cocaine and as it compares to powder cocaine is not fair. As a result, I've seen jurors who refused to serve. I've seen jurors who, despite the strength of the government's case, would not convict. I don't think it's helpful for our culture or our community if you have a sizable number of people who feel that aspects of the criminal justice system are unfair. That ends up tainting the entire process.

You talk about perceptions, but do you think in fact it is skewed racially? I do not believe there was an intent to target African Americans. Clearly, there was a desire to impact a problem that at that time, back in the mid '80s, was in fact having a severe impact on the African-American community. There also was a belief, which has proven to be untrue, that crack cocaine had different chemical qualities that made it more addictive than powder cocaine and that it had a greater impact on fetuses. It was because of that that it was felt that there should be a difference in the sentencing. [One gram of crack cocaine is treated in federal law as 100 grams of powdered cocaine.]

When did you look up and say, "Hey, there's something wrong here with the way we're working this."? I felt a concern about the disparity when I was on the local court. I had jurors express concerns about the fairness of the sentencing structure, even though they were sitting in the local court and you didn't have that disparity in play. It became a lot more pronounced to me once I came over here to the federal court in 2001, because I was now actually dealing with situations where I saw the disparity in play. I'm not suggesting that people who sell drugs don't cause harm to communities and ...