UNSHACKLING DRUG JUSTICE

When he retired from the State Supreme Court bench in 1992, Justice Jerome
Marks thought he would become irrelevant - "chopped liver" as he put it -
and busied himself planning vacations to Florida and Europe.

But Marks was soon back in the mix, crusading against the harsh Rockefeller
drug laws enacted in 1973. Marks, 86, wrote clemency petitions for men and
women jailed under the laws, lectured at places like Rikers Island and
drove to jails upstate and around the city to comfort the afflicted.

Only a few years earlier, Marks, who lives with his wife, Julie, in a
10th-floor condominium on Fifth Avenue with a dazzling Woody Allen view of
Central Park, had been sending some of those same people to jail for
violating those same drug laws, which shackle a judge's discretion in
meting out sentences.

Marks is one of several judges quoted in a new report by the nonprofit
Correctional Association of New York. The report borrows its title, "Stupid
and Irrational and Barbarous," from State Supreme Court Justice Frank
Torres of the Bronx, who uttered those words in 1996 after sentencing a man
to 15 years for possession of a controlled substance.

Torres had no choice.

It's the law, he said, noting that the sentence was essentially the same
imposed on a murderer.

"That to me is an absolute, barbarous atrocity on the part of the State of
New York," Torres fumed.

Up to a few years ago judges and legislators shied away from criticizing
the laws.

But in recent years judges like Marks, Torres and Joseph Bellacosa, now
dean at St. John's University School of Law, are launching cannonades at
the laws.

More significantly, they have been joined by state legislators, such as
former Sen. John Dunne from Nassau County, who helped write the laws, and
Senate Majority Leader Joseph R. Bruno, who are now calling for changes to
the laws.

Even Gov. George Pataki - who like his predecessors has granted clemencies
the way Dickens-era orphanages grudgingly ladled out gruel - is talking
change, although Robert Gangi, head of the Correctional Association, calls
Pataki's ideas a "cruel joke."

Still, the movement to alter or shut down the Rockefeller drug laws is in
full swing. Assemb. Jeffrion Aubry, a Queens Democrat and the chairman of
the Corrections Committee, said there is hope of reaching a compromise that
would return sentencing power to the judges.

But Sept. 11 "put it on a back burner along with a lot of other issues we
were considering," Aubry said.

He noted that the State Legislature won't reconvene until Jan. 9 and "that
this is still a major issue for us."

Aubry said he thinks the emphasis on the state's devastated economy, and
the need to shrink some programs, may work to the advantage of those
seeking change.

The report says that as of the end of last year more than 21,000 drug
offenders were locked up, forcing the state to spend nearly $2 billion to
build prisons over several years and $700 million to operate them over a year.

"It isn't just the old crowd of bleeding hearts who are urging reform,"
Aubry said. "It's people like John Dunne and Judge Marks."

During his 22 years on the bench, Marks was a popular judge with both
lawyers and court guards. He was known for handing out a few dollars here
and there to defendants who had no money to enable them to eat a meal and
get home.

His generosity is well known to his "new pals," the activists for change,
the prisoners like Angela Thompson, Jan Warren and Terrence Stevens, whom
he has helped get out of jail.

In June he conducted a marriage ceremony in Central Park for Jan Warren,
who now works for City University of New York in a program that offers
advice to newly released prisoners.

Marks also presided over the marriage of ex-convict Tony Papa. He hosted
and helped pay for a post-jail party for Terrence Stevens, whose sentencing
judge was forced against his better judgment to give Stevens a 15-year
sentence.

Marks says his own daughter, Lorna, died of drug-and-alcohol abuse at 43.

"It can happen to anybody," he said.

Marks is a singular man in a singular city.

"He can recite 50 poems by heart," his wife, Julie, told me as we pored
over scrapbooks going back to when he was in the Army Air Forces in World
War II.

Marks invited me to step onto a small terrace to take in the view.

"There's New York," he said.

"There's a New Yorker," I said to myself.