Many crack inmates still behind bars

"The playing field isn't very level," Anderson said.

Some judges have recently begun to reconsider the approach and are more readily appointing lawyers for inmates, he said.

The delays stand in sharp contrast to the experience in other regions of the country where the new rules have unleashed an outpouring of federal clemency.

The process seems to be working best in jurisdictions where prosecutors, judges and probation officers were working weeks and in some cases months in advance of the effective date to mitigate delays.

Lee T. Lawless, a federal public defender in St. Louis, said his office had a standing agreement with the U.S. attorney that unless an inmate had posed a clear public safety threat or had received an unusually lenient sentence, the government would not stand in the way of the reductions.

Parks N. Small, a federal public defender in Columbia, S.C., said his office had been engaged in "triage" for months to make sure prisoners eligible for immediate release received attention. About 80 sentence-reduction orders were signed the first week of March, including "a couple of mistakes who got out a week or two early."

Dozens of other inmates have been granted sentence reductions in West Virginia, Florida and Ohio, among other states.

Among California crack offenders gaining early releases was a Fresno woman, Stacey Candler, 34, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1996 after police caught up with her live-in boyfriend, a crack dealer. Also released was Vernon Watts, 37, of Sacramento, whose 22-year-sentence was shaved by about four years. "I have been waiting for this for a long time," Watts said in an interview after his release.

David M. Porter, a federal public defender in Sacramento, said Candler and Watts would still be behind bars if legislation the Justice Department had sought limiting the impact of the new sentences had become law. That exception was aimed at supposed violent offenders whose cases involved guns. Neither Candler nor Watts was convicted of gun offenses, but they would have been affected by the harsher rule because weapons were found by police at their residences. Nonetheless, Porter said that prosecutors in California did not object to the two inmates being released early.

At least three inmates convicted of crack offenses in Los Angeles have been released.