St. Louis Dispatch just published a story about poor crack defendants, who have an opportunity to reduce their sentences, being denied counsel.

After the Sentencing Commission's unanimous vote to retroactively lessen the disparity between crack and cocaine for sentencing purposes, Acting Attorney General Mukasey warned of the "flood" or "crime wave" of "violent" and "gang-related" crack defendants hitting the streets in March. This hasn't happened.

Instead, it seems that some judges have decided to thwart the "crimewave" in a rather novel way. Some judges have decided to determine the complexity of cases before them, and deny appointed counsel to crack defendants seeking resentencing without the money necessary to hire a lawyer.

Just as our drug laws discriminate, evidently even some judges see fit to do so as well - the average crack defendant does not resemble the average crack user - the former is generally a person of color, the latter is generally white. I can't imagine that the system would so casually dismiss the right to counsel if the primary beneficiaries were white, but this is not the case. Now, those crack defendants with access to resources necessary to hire lawyers will find themselves on a better footing than those without money.

Sentencing is perhaps one of the most important phases of the criminal justice process. In most instances, it is considered so complex and important that no one is permitted to waive their appearance. Should a change in law happen, like what has happened for crack defendants, in a majority of cases, re-sentencing is necessary.
To re-sentence someone in the federal criminal courts is virtually identical to an initial sentencing. To re-sentence without counsel is like an initial sentencing without counsel, no matter how simple some judges would like to paint the picture.

Law is not simple - even experts can't all agree on what laws mean, how to implement them without offending the basic framework and foundation of our laws (the Constitution), and which laws violate the Constitution and must be discarded.

Yet somehow, some appellate courts and district judges are of the opinion that crack defendants, most of which are not versed in even the basic tenets of law, who can't explain the difference between civil and criminal law, statute or administrative code, are nonetheless still capable of representing themselves.

If this is not an utter embarrassment, a contemptible action by certain judges that further disenfranchises crack defendants, I don't know what is. To force crack defendants to argue for their reductions without counsel upsets a fundamental fairness that the entire judiciary should back 100%. As U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn correctly stated, "The government is represented by counsel, I'm making sure the defendant has counsel, too." If our laws are supposedly fair, isn't this the bare minimum required?