CITY POWER

Tell D.A.s to Uncuff Drug-Law Reform

FROM Gov. George Pataki and Chief Judge Judith Kaye to the New York State
Catholic Conference, there is near unanimity on the need to reform the
state's draconian drug-sentencing laws. But there's one influential group
of New Yorkers who oppose meaningful change: the county prosecutors.

The state District Attorneys Association has launched an aggressive
campaign to prevent any reform of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. Every year
they bring out the same old arguments: These people are not nonviolent. If
you change the laws, crime will rise. We'll lose the best tool we have for
fighting drug trafficking. Judges can't be trusted to protect public
safety. Hey, our conviction rates are high, why would you want to mess that up?

It's time to debunk these arguments on their merits and expose the district
attorneys' position for what it truly is-a strategy of using the public's
fear of violent crime to keep sentencing control in their own hands.

Statistics compiled by the state about our prison population belie the
prosecutors' assertion that the majority of drug offenders are violent
people who need to be incarcerated to protect the public. Moreover, after
28 years of harsh mandatory drug sentencing, resulting in the incarceration
of almost 100,000 drug offenders in state prison during the last decade,
drugs are still readily available on the streets of New York and the number
of drug users shows little sign of diminishing.

Under the current scheme, prosecutors set sentences by deciding charges and
accepting plea bargains. Unlike sentences set by judges, however,
prosecutors' decisions are unreviewable, and the criminal-justice system
lacks mechanisms to hold prosecutors accountable for their choices. In a
regime of harsh mandatory sentences, prosecutors have even greater leverage
in plea bargaining than in most criminal cases. Defendants have little
choice but to give up their right to trial and to plead guilty.

According to Robert M. Carney, president of the New York State District
Attorneys Association, his group simply wants to have a say in what happens
to the people they prosecute. They are concerned, he said, about losing "
prosecutorial discretion on deciding who ought to go to prison and who
ought not."

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown opposed the Rockefeller drug laws
when first enacted. "But as I look back," he said recently, "I wonder where
we'd be today if we didn't have the Rockefeller drug laws." He added that
"the horror stories" -people serving long prison sentences for minor,
first-time drug possession or dealingcharges -"are now few and far
between." Tell that to the elderly mother of former Marine Miguel Arenas,
prosecuted by the Queens district attorney's office and sentenced to 15
years to life as a first-time drug offender. Or the 76-year-old mother of
Veronica Flournoy, a crack-addict and mother of three, who after numerous
run-ins with the law for drug-related offenses was sentenced to 8 years to
life as a repeat offender for selling a small quantity of drugs. So
Veronica's mother joins the legions of grandparents compelled to care for
their grandchildren while their children are in prison. And the list goes on.

A pernicious consequence of district attorneys' insistence on retaining
prosecutorial discretion in drug cases is unequal enforcement of the laws.
Studies and experience have shown that the majority of people who use and
sell drugs in the state and the nation are white. Nonetheless,
African-Americans and Hispanics comprise more than 94 percent of the drug
offenders in New York prisons. Nowhere do the state prosecutors offer any
explanation for this dramatic racial disparity. Even if the prosecutors
could demonstrate that aggressive drug-law enforcement reduced crime (an
issue which is the subject of much debate), one would still have to
seriously question whether any appropriate use of prosecutorial discretion
could justify the gross inequality in incarceration rates between white
drug offenders and drug offenders of color. One has to assume racial bias.

Many people in the communities from where the majority of incarcerated drug
offenders come want drug dealers off their streets. At the same time, these
residents do not support the long imprisonment of their nonviolent
drug-offending neighbors. As elected officials, prosecutors are clearly
ignoring the will of the people they purport to represent, particularly
those most affected by drug-law enforcement.

Finally, after years of avoiding the issue, it seems like the Legislature
and governor are poised to agree on a reform package. The district
attorneys have placed themselves in the unenviable role of modern day Bull
Connors, determined to preserve what has become a Jim Crow system of
justice for drug offenders in New York.