U.S. Sentencing Commission Publishes Letter from the Clemency Project Clinic on Sentencing in Female Meth Prosecutions

On February 10, 2026, the Clemency Project Clinic, directed by Professor JaneAnne Murray, submitted a letter to the U.S. Sentencing Commission addressing its proposed changes to the drug guidelines. The specific change at issue involves the elimination of the outdated purity distinction in the methamphetamine guidelines between “meth actual” and “meth mixture,” which generates extremely lengthy sentences in meth cases and significant geographic disparities. The Clinic’s letter focused on the impact this change would have on female offenders. Noting that women are largely ignored in Commission research, the letter points out that, nonetheless, women are the fastest-growing population in federal prisons, and female defendants in methamphetamine cases now account for 20% of all federal meth prosecutions each year.  

The Clinic submitted original empirical research using the Commission's own individual data files that revealed significant inter-district disparities with respect to the length of prison sentences imposed on female defendants in meth prosecutions. Mirroring patterns the Clinic sees in its own individual representations, the letter highlighted that, in the Northern District of Texas, for example, which prosecuted 377 women in its sample of female defendants convicted of trafficking “meth actual,” 61% of this group received sentences between 5 and 15 years, and 12.7% received sentences over 15 years. By contrast, in the Southern District of California, which prosecuted 2470 women in its sample, 87.7% of this group received sentences of under five years.

The Clinic welcomed the Commission’s proposal to ameliorate the methamphetamine guidelines going forward and urged the Commission to make them retroactive, adding “the Clinic has seen firsthand the devastating impact of severe methamphetamine sentencing guidelines on the lives of our clients and their families. By any measure, given our clients’ backgrounds, all the punishing aspects of incarceration and the collateral consequences of convictions on women, their sentences are simply too long.” The letter was drafted by Prof. Murray, Ellen Bart ’26, Annemarie Foy ’26, Kylie Lewis ’26, Bekah Muta ’26, and Kate Reifenberg ’25.