Low-level crack cocaine defendants should benefit from a 2018 federal law that reduced prison sentences for certain offenses, the Biden administration told largely unreceptive members of the Supreme Court May 4. Although then-President Donald Trump signed the criminal justice reform measure known as the First Step Act into law, his administration held the view that possession of a small amount of crack cocaine wasn’t covered under the statute. The Biden administration reversed course and now takes the position that the defendant in the case, Tarahrick Terry, qualifies for a sentence reduction. The U.S. Department of Justice reinterpreted Section 404 of the First Step Act and concluded that Terry’s “conviction is a ‘covered offense’ under Section 404, [and] that [he] is entitled to request a reduced sentence, and that the court of appeals erred in concluding otherwise,” the department advised the court in March. As a U.S. senator, Biden supported the …