COURT RULES AGAINST DEALER IN SCHOOL DRUG CASE

ALBANY - The state's highest court Tuesday rejected a convicted drug
dealer' s argument that he should get a lighter sentence because, by
his calculation, he was a bit more than 1,000 feet from a school.

Defendant James Robbins said he was more than 1,000 feet walking
distance from a Manhattan school when he was arrested, but the Court
of Appeals says the distance is calculated in a straight line, or "as
the crow flies".

At issue is a criminal charge with harsher penalties for selling drugs
within 1,000 feet of a school.

The decision was one of several rulings by the Court of Appeals on
Tuesday including the case of a drug defendant snared by a telephone
line and an alum's donation after death.

Robbins, 40, was arrested in March 2002 after selling crack cocaine to
an undercover officer in Manhattan about three blocks from a grade
school on West 43rd Street. He's now serving a six-to 12-year prison
sentence.

Robbins' lawyer, Martin Lucente, argued lower courts erred when they
ruled the distance from the school should be determined by the "'as
the crow flies ' method," according to court documents.

He said the distance in his client's case should have been determined
by how far one would have to walk from the school to get to the site
of the drug sale. Detectives measured two walking routes and found the
distance to be 1,294 feet and 1,091 feet. By using the Pythagorean
theorem, the judge hearing the case determined the straight-line
distance from the school was 908 feet and said the law applied to
Robbins' case.

In a 7-0 decision, the Court of Appeals upheld the lower court
decision, citing a similar federal law that uses the straight-line
method to determine distance.

"Plainly guilty under the statute cannot depend whether a particular
building in a persons path to a school happens to be open to the
public or locked at the time of a drug sale," Chief Justice Judith
Kaye wrote in her opinion.

She said the intent of the law would be circumvented if dealers were
simply allowed to escape prosecution by setting up obstructions to
make the walking distance to a school more than 1,000 feet.

Also Tuesday:

The court ruled that the police in New York can charge suspects
located in another state with drug possession even if the only
connection they have to crime in New York is through telephone
communications.

Alvaro Carvajal, 52, is serving 35 years to life in prison for his
role in a Colombian drug trafficking operation that delivered cocaine
from San Francisco to New York in 1993 and 1994. Carvajal was
convicted in Manhattan of conspiracy and criminal possession of a
controlled substance.

He argued New York had no right to try him on the possession charge,
since he was in California when he was arrested and 74 kilograms of
cocaine were seized from two vehicles and a stash house he helped keep
in the San Francisco area.

The court in a 6-1 decision, said since Carvajal exercised "dominion
and control" over the cocaine that was headed to New York while still
in California, he could be prosecuted for possession.