FINNERAN VOWS TO PASS SENTENCE GUIDELINES

Faced with protests over everything from harsh mandatory prison terms for
drug offenders to a state judge's jail-free sentence for a child molester,
House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran yesterday vowed to push comprehensive
sentencing guidelines through the Legislature this session.

Finneran's effort faces resistance from district attorneys, who say the
proposed guidelines are not tough enough, as well as from defense lawyers,
who say judges should retain broad discretion to determine punishment.

''I don't want to look back someday and say what if,'' Finneran said at a
forum held at Suffolk Law School in Boston.

Sentencing guidelines, he said, ''are now poised not just for debate, but
for disposition in the Legislature.

''Finneran expressed frustration with long wrangling over the creation of
statewide guidelines for sentencing convicted criminals.

A special commission proposed guidelines five years ago to replace the
existing hodgepodge of criminal penalties and broad judicial discretion
that often results in wildly different sentences for defendants convicted
of similar crimes.

Under the proposed system, judges would plot the offense and the
defendant's criminal history on a guideline grid to determine an
appropriate range for the sentence.

The judge would still have the discretion to give a harsher or more lenient
sentence, but would be required to issue written findings justifying the
decision.

Finneran said he is motivated in part by the public furor that erupted last
year after Superior Court Judge Maria I. Lopez sentenced a convicted
kidnapper and child molester to probation.

''The public has a need for some uniformity and some predictability,''
Finneran said. ''The Judge Lopez case illuminates that public worry.''

But on the other end of the spectrum, Finneran also said the state's tough
mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders need to be reexamined. Those
minimums call for 15 years in prison for drug dealers caught with 200 grams
of cocaine - about enough to fill a large coffee cup.

While the long sentences have made streets safer, the speaker said,
prosecutors have used them as a ''bludgeon-like'' tool.

''You can choose to kill a fly with a sledgehammer,'' he said. ''It may be
effective, but it's not efficient.''

Despite Finneran's vow, comments from other panelists showed that liberals
and law-and-order types are still far apart.

William Leahy, head of the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Boston,
ripped the proposed guidelines for a ''wide open'' loophole that allows
judges to give stiff consecutive sentences.

Leahy wants the guidelines to include an overall maximum for defendants
convicted of more than one crime.

Meanwhile, Essex District Attorney Kevin Burke, who, like most of the
state's district attorneys, has opposed the guidelines, argued that the
mandatory sentences for drug dealers must be retained.

He also called the proposed sentencing structure too lenient, saying that
on average, the penalties in the guidelines need to be ''25 to 35 percent''
tougher.

But state Superior Court Chief Judge Robert Mulligan, cochairman of the
commission that came up with the guidelines, said yesterday that in some
places the proposed guidelines are three times harsher than tough federal
guidelines. Sentiment in the state for a reexamination of drug laws appears
to be growing.

Senator James Jajuga, the Methuen Democrat who chairs the Legislature's
Public Safety Committee, said last week he will unveil a bill that
emphasizes treatment, rather than incarceration. A ballot initiative that
would have used seized drug assets for treatment failed by just 4
percentage points.

This story ran on page B01 of the Boston Globe on 3/14/2001. A) 2001 Globe
Newspaper Company.