TIME TO REFORM DRUG LAWS

Wanda Best is catching the early bus to Albany this morning, not that she's
complaining about that.

"I'd stay up all night if I had to," she said. "My husband is my world.
Whatever it takes to get him home."

Wanda was inside her apartment yesterday at the LaGuardia Houses near South
Street Seaport. She is the mother of five good-looking and well-mannered
kids. She has bad arthritis. At this time in her life, which is 50, she
certainly never expected to be a single mom.

But here she is, with one daughter at Hunter College, another in Catholic
high school - all the kids trying to get adjusted to life without their dad.

He is the kind of man who would never miss a parent-teacher conference, who
would take his wife shopping and make her laugh, who for 22 years would come
home to his family every, single night. Now Darryl Best is at the Downstate
Correctional Facility, just getting started on 15 years to life.

It was a drug thing, of course. That's what they always are, these absurdly
long prison terms for nonviolent people. And this particular drug conviction
was flimsier than most. Darryl was at his uncle's apartment in the Bronx
when the doorbell rang. A man in a FedEx uniform had a package. Without his
reading glasses, Darryl signed.

All of sudden, he was under arrest. The FedEx man turned out to be an
undercover cop. The package held cocaine.

Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson could obviously see his case was
wobbly. Why else would he offer such a sweet plea deal? Darryl should tell
the judge he was guilty and take a minimum sentence of 1 year.

Darryl Best had taught his kids never to lie. He didn't want to swear he'd
done something he hadn't, like knowingly possess illegal drugs. So with no
prior criminal record, he went to trial and lost.

Who knows what these juries think?

State Supreme Court Justice Michael Gross sounded genuinely pained when he
explained that the Rockefeller-era drug laws had tied his hands. He gave
Darryl the mandatory minimum, that staggering 15 years to life.

Hardly anybody supports these Rockefeller laws anymore. They've been
denounced by a long list of state and federal judges. John Dunne, the former
Republican senator who wrote the law, is fighting to overturn it. To most
people, it just seems wrong, treating nonviolent drug criminals more harshly
than killers, rapists and arsonists.

And what good has all this harshness done? Drugs are stronger, cheaper and
more plentiful than ever.

Even the Republican governor, George Pataki, says he wants reform. But so
far, he has offered two watered-down versions, and he has failed to throw
real weight behind even those.

Helping to block progress are the state's 62 district attorneys and three
Republican state senators whose districts depend heavily on prison jobs:
Finance Chairman Ronald Stafford of Plattsburgh, Corrections Chairman
Michael Nozzolio of Seneca Falls and Codes Chairman Dale Volker of Depew.

Together, they have 25 state prisons. Who are they to chase off jobs?

Anyway, Pataki is delivering his annual State of the State speech in Albany
today.

A group called the Mothers of the New York Disappeared doesn't want him to
forget about them. With support from the William Moses Kunstler Fund,
Teamsters Local 817 and a few other generous souls, they are meeting the
Albany bus at Columbus Circle at 8 a.m.

Actually, they aren't just mothers. They are wives like Wanda Best and
sisters and a few fathers and brothers, too. What all of them share is a
loved one with a Rockefeller drug conviction, locked away for a ridiculously
long time.

"This is the first Christmas we've been without him," Wanda Best said of her
Darryl, as she pulled her things together for the trip. "We've never been
without him. He was in the delivery room every time. He held them before I
did. They didn't even want to have a tree this Christmas. We have so many
family traditions. I don't know what will happen to them. Now the girls are
saying, 'Mommy, I'm gonna be grown and married before Daddy comes home.'"