Changes in Federal Drug Prosecutions -- Spillover in State Court?

Earlier this week, United States Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking to American Bar Association, announced a policy change in how drug cases will be charged in federal court. This post summarizes Mr. Holder’s speech, the policy change it announced, and its likely impact in federal court. It then considers whether the new policy will have spillover effects in state court. The Speech. Mr. Holder’s speech is available in full here. He said that it is “past time . . . to address . . . unwarranted disparities” in the criminal justice system. He declared the system “broken” and not “sustainable,” with an “unnecessarily large prison population,” citing relevant statistics. He stated that “too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long . . . for no truly good law enforcement reason.” He observed that “young black and Latino men are disproportionately likely to become involved in our criminal justice system – as victims as well as perpetrators,” and referred to a study that concluded that “people of color often face harsher punishments than their peers.” Turning to solutions to the problems he perceived, he indicated that it was time for “rethinking the notion of mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes” because they “generate unfairly long sentences.” Specifically, he “mandated a modification of the Justice Department’s charging policies so that certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who have no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs, or cartels will no longer be charged with offenses that impose draconian mandatory minimum sentences.” In [...]