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DRUG REFORM HOPE

A move by Senate Majority Leader Bruno offers an opportunity for consensus

Although chances for reforming the harsh Rockefeller drug laws appeared to
evaporate this year, state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno,
R-Brunswick, has presented a last-minute opportunity for change. His fellow
lawmakers should seize it, as should Governor Pataki.

Mr. Bruno is now saying what many reformers have been urging all along --
namely, that judges should have more discretion in sentencing offenders.
The Rockefeller drug laws, enacted during a get-tough era of the early
1970s, mandate long sentences even for first-time nonviolent offenses.
Senator Bruno is now appealing for clemency on behalf of four women who fit
this profile and who are serving terms from 15 to 20 years behind bars.

Both Governor Pataki and Chief Judge Judith Kaye also have proposed reforms
that would allow offenders convicted under the Rockefeller laws to have
their sentences reduced by the appellate courts. But that reform has been
criticized in many circles as too modest in scope. Instead, most reform
groups are advocating greater leeway for judges at the time of sentencing.

One such advocate is John Dunne, who was a state senator in 1973, when he
voted for the Rockefeller drug laws. But in the years since, Mr. Dunne,
like many others, has come to see the injustices that can result when
mandated sentences take precedence over a judge's ability to make
punishment fit the crime.

Mr. Dunne, who went on to serve as assistant attorney general under
President Bush, today heads a coalition of liberals and conservatives
seeking to lower the sentences imposed under the Rockefeller statutes,
while giving judges the discretion to order treatment for offenders instead
of prison, even if the prosecutor objects.

Ideally, the Rockefeller laws would be scrapped and replaced with new
sentencing guidelines, as suggested by Assemblyman Jeffrion L. Aubrey,
D-Queens. But with lawmakers so frightened of being tagged as soft on
crime, such a broad overhaul seems politically unlikely. That leaves Mr.
Dunne with the most practical solution. And now, with Senator Bruno
preparing his own legislation, the proposals advocated by Mr. Dunne might
be within reach. At the least, there will be new grounds for compromise.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, who backed away from drug-law
reform to avoid the soft-on-crime label, has one less reason to stand on
the sidelines. If the Republican leader of the Senate can urge reform
without fear of voter reprisal, then the Legislature's top Democrat should
do so as well.