Pubdate: Fri, 19 Jan 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
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Author: Alan Feuer

PROPOSAL TO EASE DRUG LAWS MEANS HOPE TO SOME IN JAIL

BEDFORD HILLS, N.Y., Jan. 18 - The TV news anchor said "Rockefeller." 
He did not even have to go on. As soon as the word was uttered, it 
was just like the old E. F. Hutton commercial. Suddenly, everyone 
listened.

It was Wednesday evening, and Brenda Prather, 45, was killing time in 
the recreation room of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. She 
was not even paying close attention when the news came on at 5 
o'clock. After seven years in prison, what was the evening news to 
her? But then that word, Rockefeller, punched through the usual 
newscaster drone. She ran to the television set.

There on the screen was Gov. George E. Pataki, proposing changes to 
the state's harsh Rockefeller-era drug laws, promising shorter prison 
terms for some offenders and saying that sentences might be reduced 
for others already behind bars.

Ms. Prather's could not believe her ears. A half-dozen other inmates 
were already crowded around her. Did he really just say that?

"I screamed, `Yes! Oh, yes!' " Ms. Prather recalled in a two-hour 
jailhouse interview this morning. "I just went crazy. All of us were 
shaking in our boots."

Although Mr. Pataki had hinted at his plans during his annual address 
to the Legislature earlier this month, his specific proposals came as 
something of a shock to the many women at Bedford Hills who were 
sentenced under the Rockefeller laws. Under his proposal, the 
governor would lessen the minimum sentence for some defendants 
convicted of nonviolent drug crimes. He would also make about 500 
state prisoners eligible for sentence cuts.

Ms. Prather's earliest possible release date is in 2014. If the plan 
is approved, she could, with good behavior, get out in as little as a 
year.

Bedford Hills is a maximum-security women's prison in the woods of 
Westchester County. It is a bright but forbidding place of metal and 
glass. Twenty-foot-high chain-link fences are topped with concertina 
wire. Beyond the fencing lies an expanse of ankle-breaking rocks; 
beyond the rocks, more chain-link fence.

Ms. Prather was sent here on Nov. 1, 1994, after she was convicted 
with her husband, Walter, of selling four ounces of cocaine. She said 
that he was the drug dealer; that although she knew what he was 
doing, she did not participate or even approve. Mr. Prather pleaded 
guilty to the charges and was sent to prison for a minimum of 15 
years. Ms. Prather maintained her innocence and went to trial. She 
had no criminal record, but because she refused to plead guilty, her 
sentence was steeper. She received 20 years to life.

(The Monroe County district attorney's office stands by its 
prosecution of Ms. Prather. David Foster, the assistant district 
attorney who tried the case, said, "She's definitely guilty.")

Ms. Prather's problems started with some aluminum foil.

It was June 5, 1992. Ms. Prather was barbecuing in her backyard in 
Rochester. Her five children were playing in the sticky summer heat.

"It was hot that day," she said, "and Walter buzzed me on the 
intercom. He was like, `Hey, baby. Will you bring me some tin foil up 
front in the house?' He was always cooking something - he's a good 
cook. So I brought him the tin foil. I figured he was cooking 
something on his own."

She took the baby with her, and when she got to the front, saw her 
husband standing with a man. She recognized the man, she said. She 
had seen him just two days earlier.

That day, she said, the man had climbed into the back seat of the 
family car when she, Walter and the children had stopped at a gas 
station. There was nothing unusual about the man, she said, except 
that he was a stranger talking to her husband in their car. The two 
men talked of small things for 10 or 15 minutes, she recalled. She 
said she did not see her husband slip the man cocaine or the man slip 
her husband a wad of cash. All she knew, she said, was that the 
conversation ended and the man went off. That had been two days 
earlier. Now, he was back.

Ms. Prather said she nodded at the man and gave the tin foil to her 
husband. Then the man pulled a package from his pants.

"It was already wrapped up in foil, about the size of this," Ms. 
Prather said, picking up the bag of potato chips she had been eating 
in the prison's visitation room. She said she could not see what was 
in the package, though she could guess what it contained. Drugs, 
probably.

When the man left, she let her husband have it. "You know damn well 
I'm not going to let you sell no drugs in my house!" she said she 
yelled. The argument went on for several days. Her husband, she said, 
was on the verge of moving out.

Within two weeks, it no longer mattered. The Rochester police 
arrested the couple at their home. The man who had been in the foyer 
was an undercover officer. Both she and her husband were soon behind 
bars.

Two of the Prather children - Tosha, 29, and Laquesha, 27 - are old 
enough to care for themselves. Donald, 19, has a four-year 
scholarship at the State University at Albany. Dominique, 16, lives 
with Tosha and her husband. Walter Jr. lives with his grandmother.

"If this bill gets passed, I'll be back with my family, and that's 
all I really care about," Ms. Prather said. "They've already got the 
Champagne picked out. Dom Perignon."

She is optimistic, but not foolhardy. "There's nothing in the air now 
but hope," she went on. "All I say is, `Please let it happen.' "
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