THE DA DUEL

To the Editor:
I'd like to explain an important point overlooked in your otherwise
excellent editorial (Failed Policy, 10.25.'00) on the Rockefeller Drug
Laws. You correctly point out that a very small number of non-violent drug
offenders are actually serving time under these laws and ask, "But if the
justice system in effect is already evading the statutes, what purpose do
they serve other than undermining respect for the law?" The purpose they
serve is a major one.

Critical to the continuation of our failed drug policy is the idea that
very few drug cases actually go to trial. If all the drug offenders
arrested demanded a jury trial ( their constitutional right), our legal
system would grind to a halt in a week. Plea-bargaining is therefore
essential to maintaining drug prohibition. When a non-violent drug offender
is arrested, he is offered a chance to forego a jury trial and plead guilty
to a lesser charge and go directly to prison. Should he choose to go to
trial, the District Attorney would retract the offer of, say, three years
for the lesser felony charge and charge him with a Rockefeller Drug Law
felony carrying perhaps a 15 year to life sentence. Unless one has a
reasonable chance at proving innocence, as well as money to buy good
counsel, most suspects take what they see as the "easy way out," and plead
guilty. Thus, the Rockefeller drug laws serve as a club held over the head
of the suspect.

This use of these harsh laws is what makes prosecutors so un-willing to
support their repeal and promulgate the impression that they are hardly
used. They are indeed used, and in the worst possible way: to deny the
right of a jury trial to thousands of citizens a year, to artificially
boost the "success rates" of prosecutors' anti-drug activities, and to make
possible the continuation of a failed policy. This policy guarantees New
Yorkers more years of increased drug availability and use at lower prices
than ever before, while stripping them of their constitutional right to a
trial.

Nicolas Eyle, executive director
ReconsiDer: forum on drug policy
205 Onondaga Ave.
Syracuse, NY 13207-1439
Tel: (315)422.6231
Fax: (315)476.1773
email: eyle@reconsider.org
web: www.reconsider.org