THE RUINOUS DRUG LAWS MUST CHANGE

NEW YORK -- If you want to see the true craziness of the Rockefeller drug
laws just compare the cases of Andre Neverson, a violent felon currently
being hunted for the murder of two women, and Kenia Tatis, a 32-year-old
mother of three who is serving a mandatory sentence of 15 years to life in
state prison.

Ten years ago Neverson got into a fight with his girlfriend outside a
medical school in Brooklyn, where she worked. The woman's uncle came by and
saw them fighting. When he tried to intervene, Neverson became enraged,
pulled a gun and shot the uncle five times.

The uncle survived. Neverson served five years in prison for attempted
murder and was released.

Last week he shot his own sister to death, police said, and then kidnapped
and murdered another former girlfriend. He was still on the loose on Wednesday.

Kenia Tatis was arrested a few years ago on a charge of possessing 20
ounces of cocaine. She had never before been in trouble with the law and
insisted she was innocent. There were no drugs found in her possession when
she was arrested, but she was convicted at a trial in which a woman
testified against her in return for a lighter sentence for herself.

There is plenty that is wrong with this picture. Andre Neverson, a mortal
threat to anyone he encounters, does just five years for shooting a man
five times, while Kenia Tatis, a nonviolent narcotics offender with no
prior criminal record, does a staggering 15 years to life.

How about a dose of sanity? After 29 futile and tragic years, it is time to
bring the curtain down on the institutionalized cruelty of the Rockefeller
drug laws. There is no way to justify sentencing nonviolent low-level drug
offenders to prison terms that are longer than those served by some killers
and rapists.

Two packages of legislative reforms are floating around, one from Gov.
George Pataki and one from the State Assembly. Neither goes far enough. But
with more than 19,000 drug offenders jamming the prisons and draining the
state's resources, it's important to at least get a start on remedying the
worst abuses.

The essential problem with the Rockefeller laws is that the punishments are
both draconian and mandatory. As the Correctional Association of New York
has pointed out, "The penalties apply without regard to the circumstances
of the offense or the individual's character or background."

Major drug dealers are seldom snared in the vast net of these laws. But
tens of thousands of addicts and low-level peddlers -- the vast majority of
them black or Hispanic -- have been sent away for long stretches. Judges do
not have the discretion to impose lighter sentences in cases that warrant
them, or to refer offenders to drug treatment programs as an alternative to
incarceration when that is appropriate.

Both of the current reform proposals would make some changes in sentencing
procedures, with the Assembly package giving judges substantially more
discretion. But neither package would actually repeal the Rockefeller laws.

The ethnic differentials in the enforcement of the drug laws are
extraordinary. While there is wide use of illegal drugs across the ethnic
spectrum, including among whites, 94 percent of the people doing time for
drug offenses in the state of New York are black or Hispanic.

There is now broad acknowledgment that enactment of such rigid laws by Gov.
Nelson Rockefeller and the State Legislature in 1973 was a wrongheaded
approach to the twin scourges of crime and drug addiction. One of the
original sponsors of the laws, former State Sen. John R. Dunne, who served
as chairman of the Senate Committee on Crime and Corrections in 1973, said
on this page a couple of months ago that he regretted his role in the
passage of the Rockefeller laws, which he described as both ineffective and
wasteful.

"New York," he said, "now sends more African-American and Latino men to
prison each year than it graduates from its state colleges and universities."

Pataki and the leaders of the Assembly do not appear to be closing in on an
agreement that would begin to reform these destructive laws. Another
opportunity is slipping away. Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of
Nelson Rockefeller's big mistake.