PROPOSAL TO EASE DRUG LAWS MEANS HOPE TO SOME IN JAIL

BEDFORD HILLS, N.Y., Jan. 18 - The TV news anchor said "Rockefeller."
He did not even have to go on. As soon as the word was uttered, it
was just like the old E. F. Hutton commercial. Suddenly, everyone
listened.

It was Wednesday evening, and Brenda Prather, 45, was killing time in
the recreation room of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. She
was not even paying close attention when the news came on at 5
o'clock. After seven years in prison, what was the evening news to
her? But then that word, Rockefeller, punched through the usual
newscaster drone. She ran to the television set.

There on the screen was Gov. George E. Pataki, proposing changes to
the state's harsh Rockefeller-era drug laws, promising shorter prison
terms for some offenders and saying that sentences might be reduced
for others already behind bars.

Ms. Prather's could not believe her ears. A half-dozen other inmates
were already crowded around her. Did he really just say that?

"I screamed, `Yes! Oh, yes!' " Ms. Prather recalled in a two-hour
jailhouse interview this morning. "I just went crazy. All of us were
shaking in our boots."

Although Mr. Pataki had hinted at his plans during his annual address
to the Legislature earlier this month, his specific proposals came as
something of a shock to the many women at Bedford Hills who were
sentenced under the Rockefeller laws. Under his proposal, the
governor would lessen the minimum sentence for some defendants
convicted of nonviolent drug crimes. He would also make about 500
state prisoners eligible for sentence cuts.

Ms. Prather's earliest possible release date is in 2014. If the plan
is approved, she could, with good behavior, get out in as little as a
year.

Bedford Hills is a maximum-security women's prison in the woods of
Westchester County. It is a bright but forbidding place of metal and
glass. Twenty-foot-high chain-link fences are topped with concertina
wire. Beyond the fencing lies an expanse of ankle-breaking rocks;
beyond the rocks, more chain-link fence.

Ms. Prather was sent here on Nov. 1, 1994, after she was convicted
with her husband, Walter, of selling four ounces of cocaine. She said
that he was the drug dealer; that although she knew what he was
doing, she did not participate or even approve. Mr. Prather pleaded
guilty to the charges and was sent to prison for a minimum of 15
years. Ms. Prather maintained her innocence and went to trial. She
had no criminal record, but because she refused to plead guilty, her
sentence was steeper. She received 20 years to life.

(The Monroe County district attorney's office stands by its
prosecution of Ms. Prather. David Foster, the assistant district
attorney who tried the case, said, "She's definitely guilty.")

Ms. Prather's problems started with some aluminum foil.

It was June 5, 1992. Ms. Prather was barbecuing in her backyard in
Rochester. Her five children were playing in the sticky summer heat.

"It was hot that day," she said, "and Walter buzzed me on the
intercom. He was like, `Hey, baby. Will you bring me some tin foil up
front in the house?' He was always cooking something - he's a good
cook. So I brought him the tin foil. I figured he was cooking
something on his own."

She took the baby with her, and when she got to the front, saw her
husband standing with a man. She recognized the man, she said. She
had seen him just two days earlier.

That day, she said, the man had climbed into the back seat of the
family car when she, Walter and the children had stopped at a gas
station. There was nothing unusual about the man, she said, except
that he was a stranger talking to her husband in their car. The two
men talked of small things for 10 or 15 minutes, she recalled. She
said she did not see her husband slip the man cocaine or the man slip
her husband a wad of cash. All she knew, she said, was that the
conversation ended and the man went off. That had been two days
earlier. Now, he was back.

Ms. Prather said she nodded at the man and gave the tin foil to her
husband. Then the man pulled a package from his pants.

"It was already wrapped up in foil, about the size of this," Ms.
Prather said, picking up the bag of potato chips she had been eating
in the prison's visitation room. She said she could not see what was
in the package, though she could guess what it contained. Drugs,
probably.

When the man left, she let her husband have it. "You know damn well
I'm not going to let you sell no drugs in my house!" she said she
yelled. The argument went on for several days. Her husband, she said,
was on the verge of moving out.

Within two weeks, it no longer mattered. The Rochester police
arrested the couple at their home. The man who had been in the foyer
was an undercover officer. Both she and her husband were soon behind
bars.

Two of the Prather children - Tosha, 29, and Laquesha, 27 - are old
enough to care for themselves. Donald, 19, has a four-year
scholarship at the State University at Albany. Dominique, 16, lives
with Tosha and her husband. Walter Jr. lives with his grandmother.

"If this bill gets passed, I'll be back with my family, and that's
all I really care about," Ms. Prather said. "They've already got the
Champagne picked out. Dom Perignon."

She is optimistic, but not foolhardy. "There's nothing in the air now
but hope," she went on. "All I say is, `Please let it happen.' "