-Caveat Lector- Media Awareness Project US NY: OPED: City Power URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n326/a05.html Newshawk: DrugSense http://www.drugsense.org/ Pubdate: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 Source: Newsday (NY) Section: Viewpoints, Pg A47 Copyright: 2001 Newsday Inc Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Address: 235 Pinelawn Rd., Melville NY 11747 Fax: (516)843-2986 Website: http://www.newsday.com/homepage.htm Forum: http://www.newsday.com/forums/forums.htm Author: Deborah Small Note: Deborah Small is director of public policy and community outreach at the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Manhattan CITY POWER Tell D.A.s to Uncuff Drug-Law Reform FROM Gov. George Pataki and Chief Judge Judith Kaye to the New York State Catholic Conference, there is near unanimity on the need to reform the state's draconian drug-sentencing laws. But there's one influential group of New Yorkers who oppose meaningful change: the county prosecutors. The state District Attorneys Association has launched an aggressive campaign to prevent any reform of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. Every year they bring out the same old arguments: These people are not nonviolent. If you change the laws, crime will rise. We'll lose the best tool we have for fighting drug trafficking. Judges can't be trusted to protect public safety. Hey, our conviction rates are high, why would you want to mess that up? It's time to debunk these arguments on their merits and expose the district attorneys' position for what it truly is-a strategy of using the public's fear of violent crime to keep sentencing control in their own hands. Statistics compiled by the state about our prison population belie the prosecutors' assertion that the majority of drug offenders are violent people who need to be incarcerated to protect the public. Moreover, after 28 years of harsh mandatory drug sentencing, resulting in the incarceration of almost 100,000 drug offenders in state prison during the last decade, drugs are still readily available on the streets of New York and the number of drug users shows little sign of diminishing. Under the current scheme, prosecutors set sentences by deciding charges and accepting plea bargains. Unlike sentences set by judges, however, prosecutors' decisions are unreviewable, and the criminal- justice system lacks mechanisms to hold prosecutors accountable for their choices. In a regime of harsh mandatory sentences, prosecutors have even greater leverage in plea bargaining than in most criminal cases. Defendants have little choice but to give up their right to trial and to plead guilty. According to Robert M. Carney, president of the New York State District Attorneys Association, his group simply wants to have a say in what happens to the people they prosecute. They are concerned, he said, about losing " prosecutorial discretion on deciding who ought to go to prison and who ought not." Queens District Attorney Richard Brown opposed the Rockefeller drug laws when first enacted. "But as I look back," he said recently, "I wonder where we'd be today if we didn't have the Rockefeller drug laws." He added that "the horror stories" -people serving long prison sentences for minor, first-time drug possession or dealing charges -"are now few and far between." Tell that to the elderly mother of former Marine Miguel Arenas, prosecuted by the Queens district attorney's office and sentenced to 15 years to life as a first-time drug offender. Or the 76- year-old mother of Veronica Flournoy, a crack-addict and mother of three, who after numerous run-ins with the law for drug-related offenses was sentenced to 8 years to life as a repeat offender for selling a small quantity of drugs. So Veronica's mother joins the legions of grandparents compelled to care for their grandchildren while their children are in prison. And the list goes on. A pernicious consequence of district attorneys' insistence on retaining prosecutorial discretion in drug cases is unequal enforcement of the laws. Studies and experience have shown that the majority of people who use and sell drugs in the state and the nation are white. Nonetheless, African-Americans and Hispanics comprise more than 94 percent of the drug offenders in New York prisons. Nowhere do the state prosecutors offer any explanation for this dramatic racial disparity. Even if the prosecutors could demonstrate that aggressive drug-law enforcement reduced crime ( an issue which is the subject of much debate ), one would still have to seriously question whether any appropriate use of prosecutorial discretion could justify the gross inequality in incarceration rates between white drug offenders and drug offenders of color. One has to assume racial bias. Many people in the communities from where the majority of incarcerated drug offenders come want drug dealers off their streets. At the same time, these residents do not support the long imprisonment of their nonviolent drug-offending neighbors. As elected officials, prosecutors are clearly ignoring the will of the people they purport to represent, particularly those most affected by drug-law enforcement. Finally, after years of avoiding the issue, it seems like the Legislature and governor are poised to agree on a reform package. The district attorneys have placed themselves in the unenviable role of modern day Bull Connors, determined to preserve what has become a Jim Crow system of justice for drug offenders in New York. MAP posted-by: Beth -- Best Wishes I am convinced that we can do to guns what we've done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control. ~~George L. 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