Pubdate: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2004 The New York Times Company Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298 Author: Joseph P. Fried Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?140 (Rockefeller Drug Laws) DRUG LAWS AND LIVES REVISITED YOU can call them three graduates of a New York State institution called the Rockefeller drug laws, a system of punishment for drug crimes that is considered among the most severe in the nation. After years of bitter controversy over the laws, the State Legislature voted last week to ease the sanctions, and Gov. George E. Pataki said he would approve the changes. The three were convicted in the late 1980's and early 90's of selling or possessing four to eight ounces of heroin or cocaine, and they were sentenced to minimum terms of 15 or 20 years in prison with the possibility of incarceration for life. They are among the many drug users and low-level dealers given penalties that the Rockefeller laws' critics say are appropriate for major traffickers but not for those they call the minnows in the drug world's waters. As it turned out, the three were luckier than most low-level offenders serving long sentences under the Rockefeller laws: their exemplary behavior in prison made them among the relatively few deemed worthy of release before reaching their minimum terms, and they were freed, under clemency or other provisions, after serving 11 to 14 years. In interviews last week, the three -- Jan Warren, below, and Ronald Gantt of Manhattan and Kevin Muscoreil of Buffalo -- said that despite their early releases, their punishments had still been far too harsh for their crimes. "If I killed someone, I could have gotten the same sentence," Mr. Gantt, 55, said of his term, 20 years to life. He had been a longtime heroin user, he said, when he was arrested in Harlem in 1987 and charged with possessing four ounces of the drug. As enacted in the 1970's, during the administration of Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, the laws mandated that a conviction for possessing four ounces or more of heroin or cocaine be punished by at least 15 years to life in prison. Convicted of possessing the four ounces, Mr. Gantt got 20 to life. Despite his conviction, Mr. Gantt said he had had much less than four ounces when the police arrested him in Harlem -- just "a $10 bag" that he said he had bought for his personal use. But even if he had had four ounces, he said, 20 to life was "not a fair sentence for someone using drugs but not profiting from drugs." MR. GANTT was released in October 2003, after serving 14 years of his 20-year minimum, under a provision called merit time credit. Enacted last year, it allows an inmate sentenced to at least 15 to life for a nonviolent drug crime to have the minimum reduced up to one-third by completing education, job training, drug treatment and other programs. "I completed almost every program the state had to offer," he said. He helped administer programs as well, he said. Mr. Gantt said he was attending community college and planned to go on to a four-year college. And, he said, "I'm trying to mend my relations with my daughter." She was 9 when he began his long prison term and is now 25, he said, adding: "She's still bitter. She says I destroyed our lives." Jan Warren said she had indeed taken part in a sale of 7.8 ounces of cocaine in 1986, the deal for which she was given 15 years to life. She was 35 and a New Jersey resident when she was arrested in Rochester, where she had gone with the cocaine so that a cousin could sell it in a deal that turned out to have been set up by an undercover police officer. "It was the first time I ever did this," Ms. Warren said last week, adding that she had regarded the $2,000 she expected to make from the deal as "the answer to my problems." Then the mother of a 15-year-old daughter from a marriage that had ended, she was pregnant by a man she was living with in an unhappy relationship, she said, and she thought the money would allow her to go to California and "change my life." She had not had the slightest idea, she said, of the extent of the punishment she was risking -- a typical reaction by the low-level drug criminals caught up in the Rockefeller laws' provisions, said Randy Credico, an organizer of Mothers of the New York Disappeared, a group of families of prisoners serving long sentences under the laws. The pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. Ms. Warren served 121/2 years, her term reduced when Governor Pataki granted clemency in 1999. Her prison activities had included completing all the programs needed to show determination to be rehabilitated, and working as a job counselor to women about to be released. There was another regular activity. "For years I cried," she said. "I take responsibility for what I did, but the time in prison was absolutely too long." Under one of the changes approved by the Legislature, the crime Ms. Warren committed would be punishable by 8 to 20 years in prison rather than 15 to life. "Something is better than nothing," she said of the pending changes, but she called them insufficient because judges will still not have the discretion to give less than the eight years or less than other mandatory minimums. Since her release, Ms. Warren, 53, who lives on the Upper West Side, has gotten her bachelor's degree and married. She has worked as a legal assistant in a law firm and currently is with a program that helps former prison inmates complete their college educations. "I've found personal happiness," she said. Kevin Muscoreil, above, also speaks of bright days at last. Now 35 and living in Buffalo, Mr. Muscoreil was 22 when he was arrested in a Buffalo suburb in 1991 and charged with possession of 4.8 ounces of cocaine that police officers had found in his car. A heavy cocaine user for several years, he had also sold small amounts of cocaine to support his habit, he said. He had been arrested several times and charged with possessing cocaine or marijuana, but those cases had involved cocaine quantities well under the Rockefeller laws' standard for serious penalties, and no convictions had resulted, he said. But his arrest on the 4.8 ounces of cocaine led to Mr. Muscoreil's conviction and a sentence of 15 years to life. "There were times I thought I'd die in prison," he said. But he began making the best of it, going through drug and alcohol treatment programs, taking college courses and, as Mr. Gantt had done, mastering legal research, teaching the subject to other inmates and helping them with their legal matters. He was released in October 2003 under the merit time credit provision, having served just under 11 years. He works days as a law clerk to a Buffalo lawyer and attends college at night. At last, Mr. Muscoreil said, "things are going very well for me personally." - --- MAP posted-by: Derek