THE BIG CITY

SEVERITY OF DRUG LAWS TROUBLES A JURY FOREMAN

A jury was being selected for a drug case, and as soon as I confessed my
occupation the prosecutor raised a question: did I have opinions on drugs
that would prevent me from being a fair juror? "Well, I have opinions," I
said, but I assured him I could set them aside. What else could I say
without professional embarrassment? "No, I'm such a biased journalist that
my judgment is hopelessly impaired."

But then I was not only picked for the jury but also appointed foreman, and
doubts set in. This case, which was tried last week in State Supreme Court
in Manhattan, involved an alleged $20 sale of angel dust, as the drug PCP
is called. It was our legal duty, Justice Richard D. Carruthers told us, to
decide guilt or innocence without considering the sentence for the crime.
But I wasn't sure that was our moral duty.

Because of New York's notoriously strict laws, small-time drug dealers and
even casual users can end up with longer prison sentences than violent
criminals. Politicians from both parties have long acknowledged that the
mandatory sentences are too severe, but the proposed reforms keep
languishing in the State Legislature. Drug dealers and addicts, after all,
do not have a political action committee dispensing campaign contributions.

Was it fair for us to condemn someone to prison for years for selling a
little PCP? A few legal scholars have argued that in nonviolent drug cases
it's justifiable for jurors to protest unjust laws by refusing to convict.

This form of protest, called jury nullification, was practiced last century
by Northern juries that refused to send back runaway slaves, and by
Prohibition-era juries that acquitted bootleggers. Some, perhaps most, of
the senators who acquitted President Clinton of perjury believed him guilty
but refused to convict because the punishment struck them as unfair -- very
similar to the situation we might be in.

Still, we had sworn to uphold the law, and we also had to consider the
people living near the scene of the alleged crime, a housing project at
West 112th Street and Lenox Avenue. The defendant, Steven Williams, 39, was
accused of selling drugs late one night last August near a playground. Was
it fair to impose my vision of justice on the neighbors who wanted to keep
drugs away from their playground?

The only sure moral course was to pray for a weak case, which was granted.
There were serious discrepancies in the story of the sole eyewitness, the
undercover police officer who said he had bought the drugs from Williams
and a female accomplice. Moreover, the officers who later arrested
Williams, relying on the undercover officer's description, found no drugs
or money, and they didn't nab any female accomplice.

The defense, arguing that the police had arrested the wrong man, provided
an innocent explanation for Williams's presence near the playground that
night: he was taking a meal break from a construction job in the subway
tunnel nearby. "Does your average drug dealer do hard manual labor?" asked
the defense lawyer, Samuel R. Rosen, in his closing argument.

We began deliberations with a straw poll, which was 11 to 1 in favor of
acquittal, and the sole holdout was quickly converted by the rest of us.
Within an hour we returned to the courtroom, and it was with a clear
conscience that I stood up and said, "Not guilty." We had followed the
judge's instruction not to discuss the severity of the prison sentence.

But afterward, I discovered that my concern at the drug laws was shared by
a third of the jury. That ratio might provide a lesson to drug warriors in
the State Legislature: if you want juries to convict dealers, make the
punishment fit the crime.

Afterward I also spoke with Williams, whose version of events that night
continued to seem more convincing than the police version. "When they
arrested me I had no idea why," he said. "I'm not an angel -- I did a year
for welfare fraud once -- but I never sold drugs that night or any night.
They got the wrong man."

Even though only $20 of PCP was involved, Williams faced a minimum sentence
of two to four years in prison, and possibly three and a half to seven years.

"It's been been a nightmare for me and my family," said Williams, who lives
with his wife and two children in Harlem. "There are guys beating up old
ladies getting less time than I was facing. The drug laws aren't right.
They're too cruel."