Pubdate: Sun, 25 Mar 2007
Source: Baltimore Examiner (MD)
Copyright: 2007 Baltimore Examiner
Contact:  http://www.examiner.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4211
Author: Len Lazarick
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)

STATE JUST SAYS 'NO' TO DRUG OFFENDERS

BALTIMORE  Law-and-order members of the House of Delegates put their 
feet down Friday, and rejected a bill that would have allowed parole 
for nonviolent drug offenses that now carry mandatory minimum sentences.

Constituents "are not knocking on our door to give more lenient 
treatment"  to drug dealers, said House Republican leader Anthony 
O'Donnell, Calvert. The bill "makes it easier to destroy our 
society,"  he said.

The legislation (H.B. 992) failed 69-68, three votes shy of the 
constitutional majority of 71 it needed. It was the second time this 
week that the House rejected a proposal from the Judiciary Committee 
that was sponsored by Del. Curt Anderson, D-Baltimore City.

The vote was close enough that Anderson said he would try to get the 
House to reconsider, perhaps with the help of House Speaker Michael 
Busch. Several members of the House leadership voted against the 
bill, but Busch said he would not try to round up votes for reconsideration.

"Our citizens are asking us to come up with more creative 
responses"  to the drug problem, Anderson said, and "make a small 
effort to get them into treatment,"  rather than into prison.

Del. Patrick McDonough, R-Baltimore-Harford, said the bill would just 
add more people to the 120,000 Marylanders he said were on parole, 
one of the highest ratios in the nation. "We are marching to the edge 
of the cliff, and we're marching faster and faster,"  McDonough said. 
"I think our folks back home will be really offended"  if the 
delegates passed the bill.

Del. Doyle Niemann, a Prince George's County prosecutor, said he 
would vote for the legislation because current law "does not make 
sense."  Many of the people sentenced to mandatory sentences are drug 
addicts selling $10 bags of crack cocaine to support their own habit. 
"These are not drug lords,"  Niemann said.

Del. Emmett Burns, a minister from Baltimore County, said he "could 
empathize with the intent of this law,"  but there was no way he 
could explain a vote for it to a member of his congregation whose 
relative was killed by a drug addict.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman