PATAKI TRIES AGAIN TO EASE TOUGH DRUG LAWS

Governor Wants To Amend One Of The Harshest State Drug Laws In Nation

ALBANY -- The Pataki administration has revved up its efforts to negotiate
a rewrite of New York's drug laws, floating a new proposal and putting on a
full-court press by its criminal justice chief.

Talks have intensified over the last three weeks as Gov. George Pataki has
made a push to get changes during this election year, lawmakers said. The
Republican offered a new plan giving judges more leeway in sentencing and
more power to order drug treatment.

This is the third proposal Pataki has made since he made rewriting the drug
laws a cornerstone of his 2001 State of the State address.

Chauncey Parker, who became Pataki's criminal justice chief earlier this
year, said he's been working full time on the issue. "This is the No. 1
priority the governor has set for me," Parker said.

Enacted under Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in 1973, New York's drug laws are
considered among the nation's harshest. Offenders can receive life terms
for possessing or selling even small amounts of narcotics. The laws grant
judges little discretion on sentencing people convicted of certain felonies.

Since their enactment, the laws have contributed to the growth in the
number of state prisoners. The prison population mushroomed from 12,500 in
1973 to 71,472 in 1999, but has now dropped off slightly. About 21,000
inmates are serving time for drug convictions. There were 20 state prisons
in 1973 compared to 71 today.

Pataki's new proposal has three planks:

- - Giving a judge the opportunity to overrule when a district attorney
denies a nonviolent drug offender to the opportunity to go into treatment
rather than prison. This would apply to first- and second-time offenders
convicted of lower-level crimes.

- - Decreasing sentences and eliminating Parole Board discretion over some
sentences. For example, someone convicted of an A-1 felony, the most
serious kind, faces a minimum 15-years-to-life sentence and a maximum
25-years-to-life, with the Parole Board determining when to release him.
Pataki would change the sentence to 10 to 20 years.

- - Boosting penalties when a gun is involved. An offender would face an
additional five-year sentence on top of whatever other charges he was
convicted of.