A 1992 drug arrest by Los Angeles police and federal agents began as a routine undercover operation. Police made eight visits to a dealer's motel room, buying a total of 133 grams of crack cocaine. In the raid they seized firearms and arrested five men, charging them with drug trafficking. Because of the amounts of the amounts of cocaine and the weapons involved, prosecutors indicted the men in federal court, where sentences are generally stiffer than in state courts.

However, with legal support from the NAACP and the ACLU, federal public defender Barbara O'Connor charged that the defendants in the case, who are all black, were targeted for prosecution in federal courts, instead of more lenient state courts, because of their race. O'Connor's client, Shelton Martin (a.k.a. "Psycho"), faces 35 years to life in federal prison; in the California state system, he would face only three to ten years.

The case has now gone on to the Supreme Court, which will decide under what circumstances prosecutors must account for the high proportion of blacks being charged with crack-cocaine trafficking in federal court. Since a previous Ninth Circuit ruling favorable to the defense, over a hundred other defendants sued, alleging discrimination.

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