IRRATIONAL 'JUSTICE'

Mandatory Minimums for Drug Convictions in a School Zone Must Be Changed

Suppose you are one of the many Harvard students who illicitly uses
marijuana on a regular basis. And now imagine the worst case
scenario: you are enjoying a post-exam spliff in the company of
friends in a private bedroom. Then, from the door, an ominous voice
intones, "Open up. It's HUPD." You are arrested and prosecuted to the
full extent of the law.

But that extent, Harvard students should be well aware, varies wildly.

Massachusett's Controlled Substances Act imposes a harsh mandatory
sentence of two to 15 years of jail time on top of a normal sentence
if one is convicted of a drug crime within a 1,000-foot radius of a
"school property." Most students at Harvard, however, are scarcely
aware of the existence of nearby schools, let alone their proximity
to them. For instance, the Radcliffe Child Care Center below the
DeWolfe apartments affects students in Lowell House. All in all, 10
of the 12 houses fall fully or partially within school zones.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with the law's underlying logic,
which considers giving minors access to controlled substances a
higher crime than simply possessing drugs. The law was sold to the
public and the legislature in 1989 by then-Governor Michael Dukakis
on the idea that it would punish those who would put drugs into
children's hands. Similar laws have ameliorated the influence of
drugs at high schools across the country.

Since it's hard to prove in a court of law that someone is selling
drugs to minor, however, the law uses 1,000-foot rule as a kind of
approximation. This would be fine if it allowed prosecutorial or
judicial discretion for cases that defy reason. As written, however,
the law provides no such exception, a fact that peeves prosecutors
and judges--who focus on its racially disparate impact--as much as
Harvard students.

The state court's chief justice for administration and management,
Robert A. Mullignan, has criticized such laws vociferously. He
pointed out that, for instance, in the city of Boston "unless you're
on the tarmac of Logan Airport, you're within 1,000 feet of a school."

Similarly, state Representative William Brownsberger, who worked on
drug cases as an assistant attorney general," made the "moderation of
mandatory sentencing policies" an integral part of his legislative
platform. According to a study he conducted, a full 80 percent of
drug cases occur within these zones but only one percent of these
cases concern drug sales to minors.

Indeed, in cases at Harvard there has been no indication
undergraduates charged under the school-zone law intended to
distribute the drugs to minors--and certainly not to the minors
occupying the buildings whose vicinity suddenly renders drug
offenders eligible for a much stiffer sentence. The undergrad with a
dozen psychedelic mushrooms living high in Mather Tower, for
instance, is not interested in padding his clientele with the young
learners of Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary far below.

In these instances, the judiciary's function of meting out
well-contemplated, proportional justice to offenders has been
completely overridden by a mandatory sentence out of all proportion
to the crime committed. What logic, for instance, explains why a
joint smoked in Winthrop H entry earns a sentence of at least two
additional years in jail compared to the same joint smoked in
Winthrop's C entry?

We hope that the legislature will take Brownsberger's suggestion to
overhaul the law. Keeping drugs out of the hands of children is a
laudable goal, but unfortunately, this law has very little to do with that end.