By MARK SHERMAN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal judges have broad leeway to impose shorter prison terms for crimes involving crack cocaine, the Supreme Court said Monday in a pair of cases that bolster arguments for reducing differences in sentences between crack and powder cocaine.

The court, by 7-2 votes in both cases, upheld more lenient sentences imposed by judges who rejected federal sentencing guidelines as too harsh.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to allow some 19,500 federal prison inmates to seek reductions in their crack-cocaine sentences.

Hon. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority in the crack case, said a 15-year sentence given to Derrick Kimbrough by a judge in Norfolk, Va., was acceptable, even though federal sentencing guidelines called for Kimbrough to receive 19 to 22 years.

"In making that determination, the judge may consider the disparity between the guidelines' treatment of crack and powder cocaine offenses," Ginsburg said.

The issue has a strong racial component. Kimbrough, a veteran of the first Gulf War, is black, as are more than 80 percent of federal defendants sentenced in crack cases. Just over a quarter of those convicted of powder cocaine crimes last year were black.

The Sentencing Commission recently changed the guidelines to reduce the disparity in prison time for the two crimes. New guidelines took effect Nov. 1 after Congress took no action to overturn the change.

Monday's ruling grew out of a decision three years ago in which the justices ruled that judges need not strictly follow the sentencing guidelines. Instead, appellate courts would review sentences for reasonableness, although the court has since struggled to define what it meant by that term.

The guidelines were established by the Sentencing Commission, at Congress' direction, in the mid-1980s to help produce uniform punishments for similar crimes.

Hon. Samuel Alito, who with Hon. Clarence Thomas dissented in both cases, said that after Monday's decisions, "Sentencing disparities will gradually increase."

The second case did not involve cocaine. The justices upheld a sentence of probation for Brian Gall for his role in a conspiracy to sell 10,000 ecstasy pills.

U.S. District Judge Hon. Robert Pratt of Des Moines, Iowa, determined that Gall had voluntarily quit selling drugs years before he was implicated, stopped drinking, graduated from college and built a successful business. The guidelines said Gall should have been sent to prison for 30 to 37 months.

"The sentence imposed by the experienced district judge in this case was reasonable," Hon. John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion. Stevens cautioned federal appeals courts to step in only when judges abuse their discretion.

Appeals courts in both cases tossed out lesser sentences. The Bush administration urged the Supreme Court to follow suit and order tougher sentences.

Monday's rulings could embolden trial judges to vary sentences from the guidelines more frequently, said Douglas Berman, a sentencing expert at the Ohio State University law school.

Kimbrough's case did not present the justices with the question of the fairness of the disparity in crack and powder cocaine sentences. Congress wrote the harsher treatment for crack into a law that sets a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence for trafficking in 5 grams of crack cocaine or 100 times as much cocaine powder. The law also sets maximum terms.

Seventy percent of crack defendants are given the mandatory prison terms.

Kimbrough is among the remaining 30 percent who, under the guidelines, are supposed to receive even more time in prison because they are convicted of trafficking in more than the amount of crack that triggers the minimum sentences.

The cases are Kimbrough v. U.S., 06-6330, and Gall v. U.S., 06-7949.