PUSH IS ON TO REFORM ROCKEFELLER DRUG LAWS

Sliver Of Hope Offered For Drug Convicts

New York's prisons are filled with inmates who say they didn't do the
crime. Cherie Gallipoli is not one of them. But, she says, she shouldn't be
doing the time. And a lot of people agree.

Thanks to the so-called Rockefeller drug laws, Gallipoli, caught up in a
sweep when her drug-dealer husband was arrested in 1991, is serving 15
years to life at Taconic Correctional Facility in Westchester County.

Only the most horrific killers get a similar sentence — and many get far
less. "Harsh" and "Draconian" are the adjectives most frequently used to
describe the Rockefeller statutes, which were signed into law 30 years ago
this month and are the subject of a major legislative battle in Albany.

Gallipoli does not deny her guilt, but she does dispute the fairness of her
sentence. Why, she asks, did she get slapped with more time behind bars
than Robert Chambers, who got five to 15 years for strangling Jennifer
Levin in the notorious Preppie Murder Case?

Skewed Sentences

Gallipoli, like hundreds of other relatively low-level drug offenders, is
being punished more severely than Joel Steinberg, who got eight to 25 years
in the child-abuse killing of his 8-year-old daughter, Lisa; more than
Wilfred Letlow, who fatally stabbed his wife 92 times in Queens (82/3 to 25
years); more than Ann Perry, who killed her boyfriend by poisoning his milk
shakes (6 1/2 years).

That's because, under the Rockefeller laws, sentences are meted out without
the judicial discretion allowed in other felony convictions. Judges are
barred from considering the defendant's personal history or mitigating
circumstances. It doesn't make a difference whether they are first-time
offenders or hard-core dealers.

Only the weight of the drugs involved matters, and the harshest penalty —
15 years to life — involves relatively small amounts: possession of 4 1/2
ounces or sale of 2 ounces.

Pols Can't Reach Reform

Every year since he was elected in 1995, Gov. Pataki has urged reform of
the statutes. And every year, the Democratic Assembly and the Republican
state Senate have failed to reach agreement.

Large-scale reform has long been opposed by the state's politically
powerful district attorneys (with judges' hands tied, prosecutors
effectively control sentencing) and by interest groups upstate, where
prisons employ almost 30,000 people and receive more than $1.1 billion in
funding.

With drug offenders accounting for 40% of the state's inmates — and 93% of
them in upstate prisons — the Rockefeller laws are a powerful economic
engine. The chairmen of the state Senate Finance, Codes and Corrections
committees all have prisons in their districts.

Downstate, Assembly Democrats, although vocal about reform, haven't helped
much. They consistently push a one-house bill laden with provisions they
know will never get past the Senate.

But now, many reform advocates and Albany watchers agree, the chances for
change are better than ever — reversing the conventional wisdom that
politicians won't tackle the issue in an election year for fear of being
branded soft on crime.

The reason is basic: In his bid for reelection, Pataki is venturing into
downstate territory to court minority voters. And, with New York City
blacks and Latinos accounting for about 94% of the state's imprisoned drug
offenders, reforming the Rockefeller laws has become a potent political issue.

"The question used to be, 'What will I lose if I support reform?'" said Bob
Gangi of the Correctional Association of New York, an advocacy group. "Now
it's about, 'How can I gain the most from it?'"

Gov Straddling the Line

Pataki is trying to craft legislation acceptable to conservative GOP
senators that also includes enough of the Assembly's provisions to make
Democratic opposition difficult.

This puts Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) in a ticklish bind:
how to avoid letting Pataki get credit for passing reforms important to so
many Democratic constituents.

"I believe the governor wants to do this," said Jeffrion Aubrey (D-Queens),
the Assembly's most ardent drug law reform advocate. "But the devil will be
in the details."

Both sides agree, for example, that the penalties are too harsh and that
more offenders belong in drug treatment than behind bars. But they disagree
about the magnitude of maximum sentences, how much power judges should have
in setting them and about what role the district attorneys should play in
determining eligibility for treatment.

"There is a lot of agreement here," said one man involved in
behind-the-scenes negotiations. "The only thing that stands in the way is
election-year politics." And, he added, "This will only get done if both
sides find a way to share the glory."

Gov's Mercy Last Hope for Many Inmates

For inmates serving 15 years to life under the harshest provisions of the
Rockefeller drug laws — many of them nonviolent, first-time offenders — the
governor's mercy is their only hope.

Since he was elected in 1995, Gov. Pataki has granted executive clemency 31
times. All but four were inmates serving time for drug offenses.

Since Nelson Rockefeller left office in 1973, governors have given clemency
almost exclusively to drug offenders. And the competition is stiff.

Roughly 19,000 New York inmates have been convicted of drug offenses under
the Rockefeller laws, and they do not become eligible for clemency until
they have served half their sentences.

Only Three Freed

Last year, after reviewing the cases of hundreds of convicted felons, the
state clemency bureau nominated 173 candidates.

The governor freed only three.

"It's a very political process," says Jan Warren, associate director of
City University's Center for the Study of Women in Society.

She ought to know. She was granted clemency in 1999 after serving 12 years
under the Rockefeller drug laws.

A first-time offender, Warren was arrested for selling 8 ounces of cocaine
in a desperate bid for $2,000 to get herself and her 16-year-old daughter
away from an abusive, drug-dealing boyfriend.

"I was stupid. I know I did wrong and should have been punished," Warren
said. "But 15 to life? That is indefensible."

While she was behind bars, her ex-husband was kicked to death in a bar
brawl in Idaho, where he was living with their daughter. His killer was
slapped with 15 years — the same sentence Warren, a one-time Sunday school
teacher and PTA president, received for her first criminal act.

Warren was turned down twice for clemency, in 1996 and 1998. "It was very
hard to try to figure why others made it and I didn't," she said. And
because clemency proceedings are secret, there was no way for her to know.

But by 1999, she had become a cause celebre.

She was president of the National Organization for Women's chapter at the
Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County, the group's only
prison chapter, and the subject of television interviews by Walter Cronkite
and Charles Grodin.

"I had learned to work the angles," Warren said, "to make myself stand out
above all the others who might be just as deserving."

For Anthony Papa, granted clemency in 1996, working the angles meant
becoming a media wizard.

In 1985, Papa, owner of a struggling Bronx auto repair business, was
approached by a police informant and agreed to deliver 41/2 ounces of
cocaine for a quick $500. It was his first foray into crime. It cost him 12
years in Sing Sing.

Art as a Way Out

To combat boredom, he took up painting "Hudson River views I glimpsed from
my tiny cell window," he says. After winning prizes in several prison art
shows, Papa's self-portrait — "15 Years to Life," which shows him with a
paintbrush, clutching his head in desperation — was exhibited at the
Whitney Museum of American Art.

"I like to say I painted my way out of prison," Papa said jokingly.

The show generated a burst of publicity. Papa — who also earned two
undergraduate degrees behind bars and began work on a master's — made his
own press kit and went after journalists he hoped could help his cause.

Eventually, as Papa's celebrity grew, Pataki noticed.

"The prisons are full of rehabilitated drug offenders," Papa said. "It is a
travesty that clemency is their only hope of freedom."

Original Publication Date