JUDGES NEED MORE DISCRETION IN SETTING DRUG CASE SENTENCES

As a retired judge of the district courts, I feel that I must add my
10-years experience into the discussion of how to solve the drug crisis.

Instead of spending money on the treatment of the addicts in our midst, we
currently jail the addicts and wage war in Colombia in order to solve the
drug problem. What nonsense.

Colombia is not the place to wage the war. The war should be fought in the
real battleground, which is right here in the United States of America.
Addiction is the enemy and we are dealing with it in the courts by sending
the addicts to jail for long periods of time. Instead of helping them with
their addictions, we are taking away all hope of recovery and affording
only minimum treatment. For this we can blame our legislatures both state
and federal as the statutes allow judges no discretion save long prison
sentences for sale or possession of a certain quality of drugs or within
certain distances from schools, as well as for volume itself in other
situations.

For example, if a sale is made in an apartment within 1,000 feet of a
school to an adult the state statute requires a minimum two-year sentence.
It matters not that the defendant may be making the sale to support his or
her habit. It also does not matter if the defendant has no criminal record,
or that he or she may be an addict being used by others to support a
personal habit. Sentencing should be based on more than mathematics and
scales. The criminal justice system should do justice.

The scales of justice are not functioning properly if they are used to
weigh drugs and measure distances, especially if the result is that jails
are full of poor minorities. That is the case. Some of them are in jail for
15 years for possessing a certain weight, as mere couriers. These so-called
"mules" are often working for their "fix." Mr. Big they are not.

Minimum-mandatory sentences take discretion from judges and place it is the
hands of the prosecution. That is why all the Commonwealth's district
attorneys have asked the Supreme Judicial Court to not allow the voters to
decide this fall on a referendum giving judges discretion in sentencing. In
chronic illnesses affecting older Americans, it becomes very apparent that
addicted individuals do not have an effective lobby. However, it is an
enormous health care problem that effects our criminal justice system. If
we truly wish to deal with it, we must mobilize our biomedical scientists
through available research dollars. Just as the Nixon administration
undertook a "War Against Cancer," we must embark on a "War Against
Addition." Only by understanding the scientific basis for addiction, can
our pharmaceutical industry begin to develop chemical compounds for use in
treating addiction.

On still another note, Janet Reno recently came to Boston with a grant for
the Dorchester District Court to set up a Domestic Violence Session. I
suggest if the federal government has money for Dorchester it should be
spent on the drug problem in the area, not on the current hot button,
politically correct issue. Treatment on demand for the addicts should be
the first concern for the Dorchester District Court, which trails in the
Commonwealth only the courts in Roxbury, Springfield, Lawrence and
Worcester in the number of narcotics cases filed in fiscal year 1999.

The public must be educated on these issues. This is my contribution toward
that end.