Commission recommends restoring law aimed at smalltime drug offenders

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) The Ohio Criminal Sentencing Commission wants
to restore a provision to state law making it a crime for someone to
intend to sell drugs.

A majority of the commission recommended Thursday that the provision
be added to a pending House bill. The provision was part of Ohio law
until the Legislature completed an overhaul of criminal sentencing
laws that went into effect last year.

The provision would make it easier to prosecute smalltime drug
offenders for drug trafficking.

Offenders could be prosecuted for drug trafficking if prosecutors
proved they intended to sell the drugs, no matter the amount. Officers
would not have to witness a drug sale.

Two years ago, the commission, established by the Legislature to
rewrite sentencing laws, recommended that the provision be removed
from state law to simplify Ohio's drug laws.

But the commission changed its mind after learning the penalties for
small amounts of drugs have been lowered to prevent prison crowding.

Prosecutors also complain that a person can have up to 1 kilogram, or
about $5,000 worth of marijuana, without being charged with a felony,
said Lorain County Prosecutor Gregory White, a commission member.

Police and prosecutors also told the commission they need the
provision to use as a pleabargaining tool to get offenders to plead
guilty to another crime.

But defense attorneys on the commission oppose restoring the
provision. They said it would cause crowding in Ohio's prisons and was
unnecessarily punitive to smalltime drug users.

``I have real concerns about what this will do to the prison
population. One of the things we wanted to do under the felony plan
was to get those people out of prison, now we are going to be sending
them back,'' said Rebecca Herner, a commission member who represents
the Ohio PUblic Defender's Office.