NEW YORK DRUG LAWS TOO STRICT

'Pot Princess' Case Highlights Weaknesses Of Rockefeller Drug
Laws

On Sept. 9 "NYU pot princess" Julia Diaco pleaded guilty to felony
possession and sale of narcotics. Under the plea bargain worked out by
the district attorney, Diaco was sentenced to a 10-month stay at a
rehab facility in rural Idaho and five years probation.

Diaco, who was a freshman at NYU last year, was arrested last spring
on the way to a pre-arranged sale of $1,000 worth of marijuana to an
undercover police officer. According to police, Diaco was running a
supermarket of pot, cocaine, LSD and other hallucinogenics out of her
Hayden dorm room, and had sold drugs to undercover officers eight
times in a six-month span.

Given the gravity of the sentences usually attached to crimes like
Diaco's, the leniency of the deal prosecutors offered her raised more
than a few eyebrows. Diaco comes from a very wealthy family. Her
father owns a construction company that does business in the range of
$165 million annually. Her family lives in a $2 million mansion in New
Jersey and reportedly once hired rocker Jon Bon Jovi to give a private
concert in its backyard.

Upon hearing of Diaco's agreement, Steven Golden, director of the
Manhattan office of the Legal Aid Society, which provides pro bono
representation for defendants who can't afford lawyers, told the New
York Post, "I would love for our clients to get the same deal... But
Legal Aid wouldn't be representing a princess."

Now, it would be easy to hate on daddy's little girl and wish that she
got her just deserts over on Riker's Island, especially considering
how arrogantly she went about her dope dealing. (Residents at Hayden
reported she made little attempt to conceal her activities, and police
say she once intentionally shorted a narc - charging him for a
half-ounce of pot while giving him only an eighth of an ounce.)

But that's not me. I'm into forgiveness, not retribution. I don't
enjoy seeing anyone's life ruined, regardless of who they are and what
they have done. I am glad Diaco was granted leniency by the court. I
only wish leniency was granted more often to other people facing
similar charges.

What Diaco's deal illustrates is how race and economic class have led
to a great discrepancy in the severity of the penalties handed down in
criminal sentencing, especially drug crimes.

This double standard has a truly profound effect in a state like New
York, where laws stipulate mandatory minimum sentences for a series of
drug crimes. Known as the Rockefeller drug laws, after Nelson
Rockefeller, the governor who instituted them in 1973, these laws
established harsh minimum sentences, including a minimum of 15 years
for possession of four grams of cocaine. Critics of the Rockefeller
laws have long argued that people of color have disproportionately
been subjected to these harsh minimum sentences.

Consider the case of Martha Weatherspoon, a 75-year-old grandmother of
35 who was released from prison about three weeks before Julia Diaco
entered her plea. Like Diaco, Weatherspoon was arrested for selling
drugs to an undercover cop in 1988. Unlike Diaco, Weatherspoon was
poor and black.

Weatherspoon had eked out a living for herself and her daughters as a
farm worker upstate. One day on the job she fell off a ladder,
disabling herself permanently. No longer able to work, Weatherspoon
entered the drug trade that ran rampant through the housing projects
she and many other poor families were warehoused in. When she was
arrested, Weatherspoon was not granted a lenient plea bargain. No,
Weatherspoon was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. She
served 15 of those, and was released early because of good behavior.
She may now be subject to resentencing of up to 25 years in prison if
she doesn't complete a drug rehabilitation program.

Yet there are reasons for optimism that the near future might bring
enough support to repeal the Rockefeller laws. Just last week,
political newcomer P. David Soares won the Democratic nomination for
Albany district attorney over the longtime incumbent in a primary
laregely viewed as a referendum on the Rockefeller laws.

Likewise, the editorial page of the Post - hardly a bastion of
liberalism - called for an end to the Rockefeller laws. "A main
argument for repealing the Rockefeller laws was that - in practice -
they created a double standard, with sentences sometimes driven by
race, class and other subjective factors," the Post wrote. "Well,
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Charles Solomon gave that argument a
big boost with the plea deal he signed off on ... for Diaco."

Thus, I join the Post in calling on Albany to "Scrap the Rockefeller
laws."

As the Post contended, less politely than I would, "Little Miss
Tokehead's slap on the wrist is a little too much to bear, if equal
justice before the law is to mean anything in New York."