NEW YORK MOVING TOWARD EASING ITS HARSH DRUG LAWS

Even tough-on-crime governor thinks that revisions are needed

There are 21,000 inmates in prison under New York's uncompromising
Rockefeller drug statutes.

ALBION, N.Y. -- Denise Smith's children ask her the hardest questions. What
is crack? Why are you in prison? And toughest of all: When are you coming
home?

``You know, at 8 or 9 they really don't have a concept of time, so I tell
them soon,'' she says, tears falling on her prison greens. ``They say, `You
said that last time.'=A0''

Smith, 40, is five years into a 10- to 20-year sentence for possession and
sale of drugs.

She is among 21,000 inmates in prison under New York's Rockefeller drug laws
- -- a set of statutes so uncompromising that even tough-on-crime Gov. George
Pataki, who brought back the death penalty, wants to soften them.

The laws were enacted in 1973 under Gov. Nelson Rockefeller at a time of
fear over rising crime and heroin use. Among other things, the laws
establish a mandatory sentence of 15 years to life for people dealing more
than two ounces of drugs or possessing more than four ounces.

The state District Attorneys Association has urged the governor and
lawmakers to go slow as they consider undoing the Rockefeller laws. Some
prosecutors contend that the links between the drug trade and violence are
strong and that putting away drug criminals makes the streets safer.

But critics say the Rockefeller sentences are too harsh, that they penalize
addicts who would benefit more from drug treatment, and that they punish
minorities disproportionately and break up black families.

Smith, who is black, lives behind the high fences and coiled barbed wire of
Albion state prison in western New York's farm country. A former
crack-cocaine addict who used to prostitute herself for drug money, she has
three children, now 8, 9 and 20.

NOW PRODUCTIVE

She has been productive behind bars, learning computer skills, working
toward an associate's degree and helping coordinate a prison infant day care
center.

``Most people don't understand, but I've learned in the five years I've been
down this time that the addiction is so cunning,'' she says. ``It will tell
you you're all right, but you're not.''

Smith says she was in the midst of a sleepless, two-day drug binge when she
took part in two sales to an undercover officer in 1996.

Smith says she made no money on the deals and merely passed along two bags
of crack worth $30 each as the drugs were transferred from the seller to the
undercover buyer. That way she could grab some of the crack for herself.

NO PLEA BARGAIN

Turning down a plea bargain, Smith went to trial and lost. The case was her
second felony drug offense. The minimum sentence for repeat offenders such
as Smith was 4 1/2-to-9 years.

The judge who sentenced her said it appeared that the only time Smith was
not selling drugs was when she was behind bars. ``You have no excuse not to
realize the criminal nature of your conduct,'' Judge Paul Czajka said.

Peg Wright, her former drug counselor, believes Smith was wrongly treated as
a drug dealer when in reality she was an addled crack addict. ``She had no
real grasp, like so many others, that crack cocaine couldn't be mastered,''
Wright says.

GOVERNOR'S PLAN

Pataki's plan would give judges the discretion to send nonviolent convicts
to rehab centers and would soften the stiffest mandatory sentences.

The plan would not apply retroactively for lower-level offenders like Smith,
who could get out as early as 2004.

The proposal's future is uncertain. Law-and-order legislators are loath to
soften punishments for serious drug offenses. And some Democratic lawmakers
say the reforms need to go further.