Time to Repeal Rockefeller Drug Laws

By TChris, Section Legislation
Posted on Fri Nov 21, 2008 at 04:06:57 PM EST
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The trumpeted 2004-05 "reforms" of New York's notoriously harsh Rockefeller drug laws did little to help the state's inmates who had been unfairly sentenced. Anthony Williams, for instance, is 17 years into a 25-to-life sentence. He can't get relief because his offense was too insignificant.

Ironically, he was too small a fish in the ocean of the illicit drug trade to benefit from what have since proven to be anemic legislative charades. Most of the drug offenders who were re-sentenced and released under those incremental "reforms" had convictions for the possession or the sale of large quantities of illegal narcotics. But treacherous, counterintuitive twists in the "reform legislation" actually made it impossible for many low-level offenders to get retroactive relief.

Low level offenders serving potential life sentences are exactly the population that sentencing reform measures should target. It's time for real reform, not window dressing. [more ...]

The conveyor-belt of criminal justice continues to transfer scores of helpless addicts and dime-bag desperadoes - almost exclusively poor people of color -- from their communities into the madness of the state prison system. Enough is enough.
It is beyond overdue for the Legislature and Governor to truly repeal the 36-year failed experiment in racism, injustice and government waste that the Rockefeller Drug Laws have foisted upon the people and taxpayers of New York. It is also time for these lawmakers to reconcile the chaotic discrepancies made in the specious photo-op revisions represented by the 2004-05 legislative "reforms."

New York's citizens favor repeal, even if the state's politicians have been too gutless to act. It's time to end the madness. Anthony Williams, and countless others like him, deserve to go home.

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Time to Repeal Rockefeller Drug Laws | 13 comments (13 topical)

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There's actually a real chance at this (none / 0) (#1)
by andgarden on Fri Nov 21, 2008 at 04:11:08 PM EST

depending on how the State Senate shakes out next month. There are a few potentially rebellious Democrats.

These are the kinds (none / 0) (#2)
by NYShooter on Fri Nov 21, 2008 at 04:47:36 PM EST

of stories that just break your heart. Do our "lawmakers" understand there's a real person suffering immeasurable pain 24/7 because of political sloganeering and idiotic "lock'm up and throw the key away" barstool blather?

How virtually every major political candidate can admit to having done drugs, in one form or another, and then not take immediate steps to undo these draconian inhumane laws is incomprehensible.

: Well said ... (none / 0) (#3)
by Edgeleader on Fri Nov 21, 2008 at 05:16:45 PM EST

Rockefeller (none / 0) (#4)
by Jacob Freeze on Fri Nov 21, 2008 at 06:08:28 PM EST

I surfed and googled around the net for a while with the intention of posting a comment about why Nelson Rockefeller sponsored those draconian drug laws, and came up blank. What I found instead was a fairly good story about who he was in his own natural context as a creature of infinite wealth and privilege.

From a Harvard University blog (who knew?) by Christopher Lydon:

"A great ex-Times reporter, Richard Reeves, tells of a time in the late 1960s when New York was ablaze with race riots and Governor Rockefeller was missing for weeks. Reeves finally located him on World Bank president Eugene Black's island estate in the Mediterranean, whereupon Black, a member of the Times board, called the Times publisher to say: Governor Rockefeller was not to be disturbed! For the Times I covered Rockefeller's elevation to the vice presidency in 1974. Dick Reeves' joke at the time was: "Chris, don't worry about `confict of interest' issues-Rocky's putting Venezuela into a blind trust."

I don't think his motive is any great mystery (none / 0) (#6)
by fuzzyone on Fri Nov 21, 2008 at 06:50:27 PM EST

At the time, 1973, drugs were seen as a growing menace. Rockefeller was a liberal republican thinking about running for president and needed to kiss up to the right of the party (sound familiar). It did not work. Though Ford picked him as his veep when he ascended to the presidency after Nixon resigned Ford, facing pressure from the ascendant Reagan wing of the party, dropped him in favor of the more conservative Bob Dole when he ran for reelection in 1976.


: Don't forget.. (none / 0) (#9)
by NYShooter on Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 12:40:32 AM EST

Who was Governor, and who gave the "thumbs up" for the Attica slaughter.

It is high time we repeal... (none / 0) (#5)
by MileHi Hawkeye on Fri Nov 21, 2008 at 06:41:54 PM EST

...all the drug laws and start from scratch.

Not everyone that is arrested is prosecuted. (none / 0) (#7)
by JSN on Fri Nov 21, 2008 at 07:56:03 PM EST

Most cases prosecuted result in a conviction frequently the result of a plea bargain.

The Rockefeller drug laws put enormous pressure on the accused to plea bargain. They were modified in 1979 and in 2004/5 and the most recent revision has reduced the NY prison population.

Of those arrested on a drug charge what fraction are prosecuted?
My guess it is a small fraction.

What is the relation between the most serious original charge and the most serious convicted charge? My guess it the trend is away from drug offenses and toward non violent property and public order offenses.

If there new changes in the will they be made retroactive?

Legalize Freedom (none / 0) (#8)
by Yes2Truth on Fri Nov 21, 2008 at 09:42:17 PM EST

It's time to stop ARRESTING people for what they eat, drink, smoke, inject, or swallow.

No more arrests, convictions, probation, or other interference with basic liberties.

my dad was (none / 0) (#10)
by NYShooter on Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 12:58:47 AM EST

a psychiatrist for the NYS Dept. of Mental Hygiene. He testified countless times, in court, and before deliberative bodies, that addiction is a mental health problem. His famous line was, "if there was no cocaine or heroin, they would be addicted to chocolate milk." He claimed that addiction was a "condition," not a crime, and should be handled by the dept. of health, not the criminal agencies.

Rockefeller was also the genius that closed all the mental state institutions so the patients, the worst of the worst (indigent, psychotic, schizophrenic, mostly inherited) could be welcomed (mainstreamed) into the community.

Voila, instant homeless epidemic.


I think there is a strong case (none / 0) (#11)
by JSN on Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 10:06:50 AM EST

that some of the mentally ill migrated from the mental hospitals to the prisons.


: Titicut Follies (none / 0) (#12)
by squeaky on Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 12:03:13 PM EST

Time certainly changes the viewing experience of any film, but especially so in the case of Frederick Wiseman's first documentary, which editorially chronicles the facilities and the patients at a state-run treatment center. In the mid-1960s, MCI-Bridgewater held a wide range of detainees and patients, some deemed "criminally insane" and others "sexually dangerous". Despite the sensitive treatment these inmates required, the center was nevertheless run - at the time - by the Department of Corrections, not the Department of Mental Health.
Amazing film. In MA the dept of corrections ran the hospital. The perverse solution, just stick the mentally ill in prisons.

Just ask Alex Jones (none / 0) (#13)
by Sumner on Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 02:02:39 PM EST

why the Rockefellers manufacture moral panics.