By The Editors

Once the sentencing rules for an offense are changed to lesser terms, is it fair to still subject some individuals to the old, harsher rules?

That’s the issue the Supreme Court Monday said it would resolve when it agreed to rule on whether people convicted of drug offenses involving crack cocaine before a new drug-sentencing law took effect in 2010 – but not sentenced until afterward – were wrongly sentenced.

President Obama had signed the legislation Congress passed substantially reducing the sentencing disparity for drug offenses involving the crack and powder forms of cocaine in August 2010. But that law said nothing about what was to be done in the case of those convicted of but not sentenced for crack-cocaine offenses before the President affixed his signature to it. Its silence led to conflicting opinions in the appeals courts, leading the High Court to now take two cases, consolidating them into one, which starkly illuminate the issue.

Under the original draconian drug laws, conviction for crack-cocaine offenses subjected individuals to the same mandatory prison terms given to those convicted of possessing 100 times the amount of powered cocaine. The new law reduced the disparity from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1.