The action came as no surprise. It marks at least the third time in the last three years that the justices have turned away a race-bias challenge to the crack cocaine laws.
Nonetheless, prominent blacks have continued to raise the issue. The latest appeal was signed by Los Angeles attorney Johnnie Cochran and Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree Jr.
"There is a perception among African Americans that there is no more unequal treatment by the criminal justice system than in the crack vs. powder cocaine racially biased sentencing provision," they said.
In 1986, after the sudden cocaine overdose death of University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias, Congress passed a new drug law that imposed a 10-year mandatory federal prison term on people caught with at least 50 grams - roughly one-tenth of a pound - of crack cocaine. A seller of powder cocaine would have to get caught with 5,000 grams or more to get the same 10-year sentence.
In a Manhattan news conference that the Army said is without precedent for a woman attending West Point, Su Jin Collier, a 19-year-old from El Paso, Texas, said that she had ended a four-month "friendship" with a second-year classmate in May when he became abusive with her. The unnamed classmate, she said, subsequently lured her in November to his dormitory room, where she said she was "sexually attacked."
"I am confident that after all the facts are properly developed, I will be permitted to remain at the institution I truly love," said Collier, who could be expelled from the academy if officers there rule that she violated rules against having sexual intercourse with a classmate on the military reservation. A hearing at West Point is scheduled for Thursday.
The cadet's lawyer said Collier has twice been sexually assaulted.
Dorris died here Thursday or early Friday, said Rep. Peter Burling of Cornish, the New Hampshire House minority leader.
Dorris won a National Book Critics Circle award in 1989 in the non-fiction category for "The Broken Cord," an account of how fetal alcohol syndrome affected his oldest son, Abel, who died.