FOR MANY JUDGES, DRUG SENTENCES MEAN HAVING TO SAY YOU'RE SORRY

On the day Abraham Arroyo was sent to prison for 15 years to life for
possession of a kilogram of cocaine, one angry man in the courtroom
protested, "Even the minimum sentence on this defendant in this case, the
15 to life, is not a fair sentence." The dissident declared: "I'm not
condoning narcotic trafficking. I'm in total support of the enforcement of
those laws. My mere position is sometimes we have to have some compassion
in life." He ended by saying, "It's a very unfair situation." The man
attacking the sentence was also the man imposing it, Judge Jeffrey G. Berry
of Orange County Court. He said he had recently finished a case involving a
drug cartel and 75 kilograms of cocaine, in which defendants received
lighter sentences than Mr. Arroyo by pleading guilty. But state law gave
him no choice in the Arroyo case, and he said from the bench, "I welcome
the Appellate Division to make a new law or the Court of Appeals to reverse
me and make a more lenient sentence if they wish."

Mr. Arroyo's wife, Carmen, remembers the judge's words six years later.
"It's weird," she said. "He's a judge. He's not supposed to say that. But
he had to do his duty, I guess."

Judge Berry was hardly the only judge chafing under New York State's
Rockefeller-era drug laws, which mandate a 15-year-to-life minimum sentence
for selling two ounces or more of drugs or possessing at least four ounces.
That's stiffer than the minimum sentence for manslaughter or rape and it
applies to first-time drug felons like Mr. Arroyo, who is in Attica prison.
Albany's Big Three -- the governor, the Senate majority leader and the
Assembly speaker -- have each called at different times for loosening the
laws, but that rough consensus has been frozen in place by conflicting
political agendas.

Perhaps the most damning indictment of the status quo emerges from
sentencing transcripts from around the state in which judges have
periodically deplored the sentences the laws force them to impose.

Judge Martin E. Smith, of Broome County Court, told Lance A. Marrow last
year: "When I say the law is draconian, in your case it is. I am required
by law to impose a sentence that in my view you don't deserve."

The drugs found in Mr. Marrow's apartment were not his but belonged to a
guest, Judge Smith observed in court. Mr. Marrow, 52, had refused to plead
guilty and accept minimal jail time, preferring to plead his innocence at
trial. When he was convicted, Judge Smith had to sentence him to 15 years
to life.

"You impose the sentence that the case calls for, that the evidence calls
for, that the defendant's prior record calls for," Judge Smith said in an
interview. "Usually that works out. Every once in a while, you run into
Lance Marrow. There's no way in the world that man deserved to get a
15-to-life sentence."

In 1994, Steven W. Fisher, now the administrative judge of State Supreme
Court in Queens, had such a case. "The wisdom of the drug laws is, of
course, not for me to decide," he lamented in court before sentencing
Miguel Arenas to 15 to life for his first felony conviction for selling
barely enough cocaine to get him a stiff sentence. The judge cited a man
who received the same sentence after pleading guilty to possessing 800
pounds of cocaine.

Judge Fisher said last week that he didn't doubt Mr. Arenas's guilt, but
had qualms about his getting a murderer's sentence. "When the amount is
just slightly over the threshold and you're sentencing someone to the same
sentence they would get if they had been convicted of intentionally taking
someone's life," he said, "sometimes you feel compelled just to comment."

Judge Leslie Crocker Snyder, of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, felt so
compelled in March 1991 while sentencing a 60-year-old man with heart
disease to 15 years to life for drug possession. Known as a tough judge,
she told Jose Garcia she regretted he hadn't pleaded guilty and gotten a
lighter sentence. "Sorry we both find ourselves in this situation," she
said, adding, "I can only hope your health won't suffer too much." Mr.
Garcia died in prison last August.

The sentencing laws make judges say the bluntest things. Consider the
observation of George F. X. McInerney, then a justice on State Supreme
Court in Suffolk County, while sentencing a drug defendant 10 years ago:
"It's probably a better gamble to kill somebody perhaps in an
understandable situation than sell cocaine." His advice to a lawyer
complaining about the sentences was more civil: "Write to your state
legislator."