DA DEFENDS HARSH DRUG LAWS

The Republican governor, George Pataki, wants to ease the harsh Rockefeller
drug laws.

The Assembly speaker and the Senate president do too.

Even the state's chief judge, Judith Kaye, is calling for drug-law reform,
saying today's long, mandatory sentences unnecessarily tie a trial judge's
hands.

So where is Queens District Attorney Richard Brown? Is he adding his voice
to the growing chorus for reform? Hardly.

Brown is up in his office at the Kew Gardens courthouse, leading a campaign
by the state's DA's to maintain the current lock-'em-up approach.

"The bottom line is let's not throw out the baby with the bath water," he
said in an interview last week.

Under the current New York drug laws, which were passed in 1973 and amended
in 1979, judges have very little discretion when it comes to sentencing
people convicted of selling or possessing drugs. Only two factors can be
considered-the defendant's criminal record and the weight of drugs that
were seized. Everything else the law considers irrelevant, including such
issues as whether the defendant was nonviolent or only tangentially
involved in the drug trade.

Critics-and their number is clearly growing-say this approach has packed
New York prisons with far too many nonviolent drug offenders, locked up for
far, far too long. And they offer some hard numbers to back up their case.

Of the 70,000 inmates in state prison, 21,000 are in for selling or
possessing drugs. Forty-two hundred of them are first-time offenders. And
it's hardly a cross-section of New York State. Although study after study
has shown that the majority of drug users are white, 95 percent of New
York's drug prisoners are Hispanic or black.

Until recently, drug-law reform was a lonely cause, left to groups like the
New York Civil Liberties Union, the Lindesmith Center and the William Moses
Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice. But in the past year or so, the reformers
have developed broad support in the mainstream of New York politics,
including many Republicans, who are convinced the current drug laws are too
inflexible, too expensive and largely ineffective in ridding society of drugs.

"The current laws are a proven fraud," said Randy Credico of the Kunstler
Fund. "The drugs in Queens are cheaper and better than ever. And you have
all these minor offenders, serving unconscionably long prison terms." On
Wednesday at noon, Credico is promising to lead a large protest in front of
Richard Brown's office on Queens Boulevard. The group, he said, will
include dozens of Queens residents whose loved ones are serving long prison
terms for nonviolent drug crimes.

But if Credico is hoping to sway Richard Brown, there was no indication of
movement last week.

The veteran district attorney recalled the crack epidemic of the late-1980s
and the early 1990s. "Open-air drug markets," he said. "Drive-by shootings.

Kids caught in the crossfire. These things don't stop by accident. The drug
dealers, members of the violent drug gangs, have been arrested and put in
prison for long periods of time.

"Things are working, things are going very, very well today," Brown said.

"The level of violence is down, dramatically. Quality of life clearly better.

Those things didn't happen by accident. They happened because of the drug
laws." But weren't the Rockefeller laws in place when crack swept across
the city, just as they were when crack use declined? "That's true," Brown
said. "But they weren't adequately utilized." Brown said it is ironic that
he, on behalf of the state's 62 district attorneys, should be leading this
defense of the Rockefeller laws. As the city's lobbyist in the early 1970s,
he pressed hard against the tougher laws.

"Those who talk about reform would have us believe the prisons are filed
with small-time drug offenders who are locked up for 15 years or more. That
is not the case," Brown said.

Only 600 state prisoners are serving life sentences for A-1 drug felonies,
he said. "Those individuals are there, with few exceptions, because they
belong there. Not because they possessed small amounts of drugs. Rather
because they repeatedly sold drugs to make money or possessed large
quantities of drugs.

Sixty percent of the drug felons in state prison are second-felony
offenders," he said.

Brown said he and the other prosecutors are open to the idea of a new round
of review by the appellate courts for inmates serving the longest sentences.

But they will fight ardently against scrapping the mandatory approach.

"The threat of a long prison term is what pressures so many addicts into
treatment," he said. "I don't want to lose that threat." He'll have a
chance to make his case on Wednesday to the prisoners' parents, siblings,
children and friends-if he cares to come outside.

He'll get an argument if he does.

"Every one of these so-called horror stories has another side," Brown said.