It’s not every day a local judge gets a shout-out from the Supreme Court of the United States.

Of course, it wasn’t a shout-out, per se. But in its Jan. 21 ruling in Spears v. United States, the Supreme Court did say U.S. District Judge William E. Smith had issued a “well reasoned” decision in sentencing a Pawtucket man on a crack cocaine charge.

The divided high court said that federal judges may depart from sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine simply because they disagree with a sentencing policy that, until recently, treated 1 gram of crack as the equivalent of 100 grams of powder cocaine.

The decision is significant because it clarifies that federal judges now enjoy greater freedom to decide how to make a punishment fit a crime. And it addresses the 100-to-1 ratio, which many people, including judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, have found unreasonable.

It’s a policy that has put many black Americans behind bars for many years. For example, 82.7 percent of those convicted of crack offenses in 2007 were black, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. And it’s a policy that lacks logic. Although the two forms of the drug are chemically identical, they are punished differently, and while drug kingpins bring cocaine into the country in powder form, harsher penalties apply to often smaller-time crack dealers.

So there’s some wisdom in allowing judges to vary from the 100-to-1 powder-to-crack ratio. The Supreme Court began giving them that freedom in a 2005 ruling that made sentencing guidelines advisory rather than mandatory.

In the Spears ruling, the Supreme Court said judges are even freer than many legal observers thought they were. While it was clear judges could vary from guidelines based on “an individualized assessment based upon the particular circumstances of a defendant’s case,” the high court said, “We now clarify that district courts are entitled to reject and vary categorically from the crack-cocaine guidelines based on a policy disagreement with those guidelines.”

The ruling upheld a federal judge who had relied in part on the “well reasoned decisions” by Smith and a Wisconsin judge. In 2005, Smith wrote a 71-page sentencing memo saying he would not “blindly apply” the 100-to-1 ratio in sentencing Joshua J. Perry. Citing a Sentencing Commission report, Smith said a 20-to-1 ratio “makes the most sense.”

In an interview yesterday, Smith said, “I’m very gratified by the Supreme Court’s decision because I’ve felt from the beginning that sentencing is properly a function for the District Courts, and particularly with regard to crack cocaine, we should have a free hand to craft a sentence that appropriately fits the crime.”

U.S. Attorney’s office spokesman Thomas Connell said, “The state of the law is still evolving and we have to wait and see how the 1st Circuit interprets the law as future cases come before it.”

In the Spears case, Justice Antonin Scalia joined the more liberal judges in the majority while Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. dissented, saying recent Supreme Court rulings “have given the lower courts a good deal to digest over a relatively short period.” The unsigned majority opinion, which some think Scalia wrote, responded: “True enough — and we should therefore promptly remove from the menu the 8th Circuit’s offering, a smuggled-in dish that is indigestible.”

In a recent ruling involving highway billboards, Smith included links to YouTube music videos such as the Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road.” In that spirit, I’d like to suggest the Supreme Court link its Spears ruling to Eric Clapton’s 1977 hit, “Cocaine.”

efitzpat@projo.com