4. “Locking Up Thugs Is Not Vindictive”

0.        Ms. Willis’s case was more than two years old and had been transferred to me from a senior lawyer who had left the office. So it was even worse: she had been downgraded.

0.        Ms. Willis had two previous convictions for selling small amounts of drugs. Even one previous conviction would have qualified her for the sixty-year maximum. D.C. Code Ann. § 48-904.08 (West 1981).

0.        National Institute on Drug Abuse, Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment: A Research-Based Guide, National Institutes of Health, 3rd ed., U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (October 1999, revised December 2012), 9, 12–13.

0.        The maximum penalty for first-time offenders was a $1,000 fine and one year’s imprisonment. For second/subsequent offenders, the maximum penalty was a $10,000 fine and ten years’ imprisonment. Judiciary Committee Report on Bill 4-123, the District of Columbia Controlled Substances Act of 1981, April 8, 1981, Legislative Services Office, D.C. City Council, 2, 5. Keith Richburg, “Referendum Sought on Mandatory Sentences for Drug Dealers,” Washington Post, June 29, 1981.

0.        14th Street Coalition to Mayor Marion S. Barry, Jr., June 19, 1979, in John A. Wilson Papers, Box 53, Folder 21, Special Collections Research Center, George Washington University Library.

0.        John A. Wilson, statement on Bill 4-184 and PR 4-38, undated, Wilson Papers, Box 25, Folder 11.

0.        Loretta Tofani, “Pitching Dope,” Washington Post, August 19, 1979.

0.        Ibid.

0.        Ron Shaffer, “Man Tries to Drive Out Anacostia Drug Sellers,” Washington Post, July 23, 1978.

0.      Jim Mantell, “Crime Protest Rally Set for Shaw Area,” Washington Afro-American, June 6, 1981.

0.      Capitol View Civic Association Newsletter 4, no. 6, May 1979. Washingtoniana Collection, CA Box 11, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C.

0.      Loretta Tofani, “D.C. Residents Patrol ‘Turf,’ Hunt Thieves,” Washington Post, November 25, 1979.

0.      A different neighborhood association, along the upper reaches of Sixteenth Street, home to many of the city’s black professionals, reported that a rash of rapes and burglaries had “left us shivering in apprehension.” Neighbors, Inc., to Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, December 30, 1977, CA Box 2, Crime Watch Proposal folder, Washingtoniana Collection, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C.

0.      Tofani, “D.C. Residents Patrol ‘Turf,’ Hunt Thieves.”

0.      Ibid.

0.      Vincent Taylor, “Residents ‘Fed-Up’ with Drug Traffic,” Washington Afro-American, October 17, 1981.

0.      A concerned citizen to city council members, June 12, 1979, Wilson Papers, Box 53, Folder 21.

0.      Editorial, “Drug Epidemic Raises Questions,” Washington Afro-American, April 4, 1981. Echoing the concerns raised by Doug Moore, Stokely Carmichael, and other black nationalists a decade earlier, the Afro editors worried “if the ready and easy availability of marijuana, heroin and synthetic drugs on the streets, and in some instances in our prisons, is part of a larger plan to keep blacks and other minorities ‘in their place.’”

0.      Everett W. Scott, D.C. Federation of Civic Associations, to David A. Clarke, February 14, 1979, Clarke Papers, Box 42, Folder 1. (“[W]e recognize that a person is presumed innocent, but we also recognize statistics showing many of these people while out on bail commit a second offense.”) Crime was a constant issue at the D.C. Federation of Civic Associations Executive Committee meetings in 1979. Minutes of Civic Associations, CA Box 16, Washingtoniana Collection, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C.

0.      Editorial, “Crime Statistics and D.C.,” Washington Afro-American, January 8, 1977.

0.      Special Report, “‘Revolving Door’ Justice: Why Criminals Go Free,” U.S. News & World Report, May 10, 1976, p. 39. (The magazine conceded that “D.C.’s record of sending 6 out of 10 convicted felons to jail or prison indicates its judges may be sterner than those in many other cities.”)

0.      Edward M. Kennedy, “Punishing the Offenders,” New York Times, December 6, 1975.

0.      Carl T. Rowan, “Locking Up Thugs Is Not Vindictive,” Washington Star, April 23, 1976.

0.      Nicholas C. McBride, “Drive Against Drug Trade Draws Critics,” Washington Afro-American, July 16, 1983.

0.      Courtland Milloy, “Campaign Trail Tougher Than Toms Creek Fields of John Ray’s Boyhood,” Washington Post, September 10, 1982.

0.      Report on the Committee of the Judiciary on Bill 4-123, 5, John Ray to Members of D.C. City Council re: Bill 4-123, May 18, 1981; Burtell Jefferson to John Ray, May 14, 1981, Legislative Services Office, D.C. City Council.

0.      Joanne Ostrow, “Ray Asks Citizen Support for City Anticrime Bills,” Washington Post, March 26, 1981; John Ray to Members of D.C. City Council re: Bill 4-123.

0.      Keith B. Richburg and Eugene Robinson, “Witnesses Decry D.C. Crime, Differ on Ways to Combat It,” Washington Post, March 14, 1981.

0.      Testimony of Jerome Page on Criminal Code Reform Bills to the Committee on the Judiciary, D.C. City Council, March 13, 1981, Legislative Services Office, D.C. City Council.

0.      The U.S. Attorney for D.C. occupies a unique position, serving as both the District’s chief local prosecutor and a federal prosecutor.

0.      Keith B. Richburg, “D.C. Officials Split on Crime Penalties,” Washington Post, March 13, 1981.

0.      Ibid.

0.      United States Sentencing Commission, Special Report to Congress: Mandatory Minimum Penalties in the Federal Criminal Justice System (August 1991). D.C. would be a leader among states as well. In 1980, only five states had mandatory minimums for selling drugs, and about twenty had them for possessing or using a gun during a crime. Richard S. Morelli, Craig Edelman, and Roy Willoughby, A Survey of Mandatory Sentencing in the U.S., Criminal Justice Statistics Division, Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (Washington, D.C.: National Criminal Justice Reference Service, 1981).

0.      Keith B. Richburg, “City Council Adopts Drug Code Without Mandatory Sentences,” Washington Post, May 20, 1981. The vote totals are ambiguous. It appears that Ray had one ally for mandatory minimums on the city council, Nadine Winter.

0.      Michael Javen Fortner, Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment (Harvard University Press, 2015); Vanessa Barker, The Politics of Imprisonment: How the Democratic Process Shapes the Way America Punishes Offenders (Oxford University Press, 2015), 146–49.

0.      James H. Cleaver, “PCP Growth Goes ‘Crazy,’” Los Angeles Sentinel, May 15, 1980.

0.      “WGG Founder’s Celebration to Salute Top Leaders,” Los Angeles Sentinel, June 9, 1997.

0.      Inventory of the Maxine Waters Papers, 1976–1990, Online Archives of California, Collection No. LP411.

0.      “Waters Attacks PCP,” Los Angeles Sentinel, March 30, 1978. In 1990 Waters would be elected to Congress, where she served—and continues to serve—as a reliable opponent of tough-on-crime measures.

0.      Editorial, “The Ultimate Low,” Los Angeles Times, July 10, 1978; “The Lawmakers,” Los Angeles Sentinel, May 4, 1978.

0.      Ed Davis, “L.A. Becomes PCP Capital of World,” Los Angeles Sentinel, October 25, 1979.

0.      Editorial, “An Open Letter to PCP Dealers & Other Dogs!,” Los Angeles Sentinel, September 25, 1980.

0.      Ed Davis, “Pushers: The Grandfathers of PCP Crimes,” Los Angeles Sentinel, September 11, 1980.

0.      Jim Cleaver, “Sentinel Declares World War III on PCP,” Los Angeles Sentinel, August 28, 1980.

0.      Ed Davis, “Cochran Seeks New PCP Law,” Los Angeles Sentinel, November 25, 1979. Cochran never abandoned his antidrug stance; in his 2003 memoir he explained that he would not represent people in major drug cases, because he “didn’t want to have anything to do with the drugs that were poisoning our community.” Johnnie Cochran, Jr., and David Fisher, A Lawyer’s Life (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 207.

0.      Ebony, August 1979. Though the Ebony special issue was the most high-profile invocation of “black on black crime,” the term had long been used by black writers. In 1970, for example, Rev. Jesse Jackson accused the Chicago police of “allowing black-on-black murder to grow.” Black police officers also used the term frequently in the 1970s, explaining that blacks in law enforcement were determined to take “black on black crime” more seriously. Jesse Jackson, “Black and White Crime,” Chicago Tribune, August 19, 1970; Renault Robinson, “Black Watch,” Chicago Defender, November 27, 1971 (“The Members of the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League are against crime—especially Black-on-Black crime”); see “Black on Black Crime Rising,” New York Amsterdam News, January 29, 1978 (noting that “Black-on-Black crime account[ed] for almost 60 percent” of rising homicide rates).

0.      Ed Davis, “Cochran Denounces Black Crime Apologists,” Los Angeles Sentinel, February 14, 1980.

0.      Davis, “Cochran Seeks New PCP Law”; Davis, “Cochran Denounces Black Crime Apologists.”

0.      American Civil Liberties Union, “Memorandum to the Legislative Committee of the National Capitol Area ACLU on the Proposed Mandatory Sentencing Initiative for the District of Columbia,” Legislative Services Office, D.C. City Council.

0.      Laura A. Kiernan, “Officials Divided on Merits of Mandatory Sentencing,” Washington Post, August 25, 1982.

0.      Tom Sherwood, “Petitions Ask Fixed Terms for Some Crimes,” Washington Post, March 5, 1982.

0.      Vincent Taylor, “Groups Fight Initiative,” Washington Afro-American, September 7, 1982; Laura A. Kiernan, “Voters in D.C. Back Mandatory Sentence Plan,” Washington Post, September 3, 1982; Tom Sherwood, “Sentencing Initiative Is Opposed,” Washington Post, April 1, 1982.

0.      Charles F. Ruff, “Mandatory Minimum Sentence Initiative,” District Lawyer (September/October 1982), 28; Laura A. Kiernan, “Charles F. C. Ruff Quits as Chief Prosecutor Here,” Washington Post, October 24, 1981.

0.      Laura A. Kiernan, “Mandatory Sentence Measure Opposed,” Washington Post, September 8, 1982.

0.      Laura A. Kiernan, “District Voters Decide Tuesday on Initiative 9,” Washington Post, September 12, 1982.

0.      Juan Williams, “Jefferson Resigning as Ray’s Campaign Manager,” Washington Post, August 3, 1982.

0.      Kiernan, “Voters in D.C. Back Mandatory Sentence Plan.”

0.      Ibid.

0.      Juan Williams, “Heroin in My Neighborhood,” Washington Post, August 12, 1981.

0.      Edward D. Sargent, “Neighborhood Enjoys Day of Freedom in Drug Sweep: Dealers ‘Busy Again’ After D.C. Drug Sweep,” Washington Post, July 18, 1983; Vincent Taylor, “Ray Releases Paper on Crime-Fighting,” Washington Afro-American, May 4, 1982.

0.      Vincent Taylor, “Ray Releases Paper on Crime-Fighting”; Juan Williams, “Ray, at 14th & W, Outlines Plans to Curb Crime,” Washington Post, April 29, 1982.

0.      Juan Williams, “Ray, at 14th & W, Outlines Plans to Curb Crime.”

0.      Laura A. Kiernan and Al Kamen, “Mandatory Sentence Proposal Strongly Backed in D.C. Vote,” Washington Post, September 15, 1982.

0.      Calculated by the author based on data provided by the D.C. Board of Elections.

0.      Ibid.

0.      Kiernan and Kamen, “Mandatory Sentence Proposal Strongly Backed.”

0.      Benjamin J. Lambiotte, “Retribution or Rehabilitation? The Addict Exception and Mandatory Sentencing After Grant v. United States and the District of Columbia Controlled Substances Amendment Act of 1986,” Catholic University Law Review 37 (1988): 733, 734.

0.      “Crime and Justice Report for the District of Columbia,” November 1985, John A. Wilson Papers, Box 12, Table 8.

0.      Ibid., Box 9, Table 4.

0.      United States Sentencing Commission, Special Report to the Congress: Mandatory Minimum Penalties in the Federal Criminal Justice System (1991).