PROPOSAL WOULD RELIEVE CROWDED PRISONS BY EASING SENTENCING RULES

Confronted with a rising prison population and a reluctance to continue
building costly prisons, state legislators are considering ways to relieve
the space crunch.

The chief - and most controversial - proposal would relax sentencing rules
for habitual felons, repeat offenders who under the law can get lengthy
prison terms for sometimes minor felonies.

Proponents, including the N.C. Sentencing Commission, say that the state is
clogging prisons with offenders whose punishments often outweigh their
crimes. Habitual felons - those convicted of at least four felonies - make
up about 11 percent of the prison population. From 2001 to 2002, 75 percent
of those convicted under the law committed low-level felonies that include
credit-card theft, forgery and possession of cocaine.

Prosecutors, the N.C. Sheriff's Association and victim-rights groups
strongly oppose most efforts to revise the habitual-felon law. They say
that it is a handy crime-fighting tool that criminals fear and prosecutors
use sparingly.

"They tell us in jail, 'Don't put (that law) on us,'" said Tom Keith, the
district attorney for Forsyth County. "They're scared to death of it."

Keith's office leads the state in prosecuting offenders under the law,
though he said that his office prosecutes only one-third of the eligible
habitual felons. Currently, 441 people are serving prison terms after being
convicted under the law in Forsyth County. With 307, Guilford County ranks
second in the number of convicted habitual felons.

"These are the worst of the worst," said David Hall, an assistant district
attorney in Forsyth County.

Under the law, repeat offenders can be prosecuted as habitual felons. If
convicted, they're automatically sentenced as Class C felons regardless of
the underlying crime. That means that an offender found guilty multiple
times of breaking into cars - a Class I felony - could be sentenced to as
long as 14 years as a habitual felon rather than a maximum of 10 months for
breaking into a car.

Felonies are graded from A - first-degree murder - to I.

A proposal debated in a House judiciary committee yesterday would give
judges discretion to increase the punishment three steps instead, say, from
a Class I to a Class F felony.

Officials say that unless legislators overhaul the law, the state could
face prison crowding similar to the crisis in the 1980s when convicted
felons served fractions of their sentences before winning parole.

North Carolina's inmate population was 33,353 Sunday, more than 5,050 above
the standard occupancy rate.

Locke Clifford, a member of the N.C. Sentencing Commission, told
legislators recently that the state is taking in about 21,000 new inmates a
year and releasing 20,000 a year.

North Carolina will have to build a new $90 million, 1,000-bed prison each
year if no changes are made.

"Prison beds are money," said Sherwood Lapping, a criminal defense lawyer
in Moore County. "This bill deals with prison beds. We are sending a lot of
people to prison for relatively minor offenses, and it makes little
difference what their prior offenses were."

Keith said that if state officials want to relieve the squeeze on prisons,
they should first consider operating them more efficiently. North Carolina
operates 78 prisons, many of them small, and has more corrections officials
per inmate than the national average. The state should build larger,
centralized prisons, he said.

"If you take this (habitual felon law) away from us, we will have almost no
ability to fight crime anymore," Keith said. "I think this class of
criminal is who you want in jail."

Mindful of the controversy, Tom Ross, a former Superior Court judge,
suggested that legislators consider a compromise. It would give judges
discretion to relax sentences except for habitual felons convicted of a
violent felony or drug trafficking.

Legislators agreed, and created a subcommittee to draft a new proposal.

"This is a ticklish situation," said Rep. Bill Culpepper, D-Chowan. "If we
can come up with something that satisfies everybody, I think that's the
best thing to do."