Spitzer's Fall Sparks Hope for Overhaul of New York's Rockefeller Drug Laws

In 2002, then-state Senator David Paterson was arrested at a sit-in at Gov. George Pataki's Manhattan office calling for the repeal of the New York's harsh Rockefeller drug laws. In 2006, during his successful campaign for lieutenant governor, he continued to speak out. Now, with Paterson's unexpected ascent to the governor's mansion in the wake of Eliot Spitzer's downfall, drug policy advocates sense a historic opportunity, even as they wonder about the prospects for now-governor Paterson following through on the reforms he has previously championed.

"He's ten times better on this issue than Spitzer," says Randy Credico, director of the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice. "He's got more vision than anyone who's [vision] is 20-20. He's a brilliant man [and] the most progressive governor we've had with his feelings on criminal justice since [the great 19th Century abolitionist] William Seward."

"But," he adds, "we all know people can fold under pressure."

Robert Gangi, executive director of the watchdog group the Correctional Association of New York, says, "It gives us hope given that Paterson was an outspoken proponent of changing the Rockefeller drug laws in the past. But we are realists and we will continue to organize to hold him to his record."

Passed in 1973 at the urging of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, New York's Rockefeller drug laws established harsh mandatory sentences for people convicted of selling or possessing relatively small amounts of narcotics, including sentences of 15 years-to-life for anyone convicted of selling two ounces or more of cocaine or heroin or possessing more than four ounces. As a result, over the decades that followed, thousands of non-violent, low-level offenders were swept up and incarcerated. By 1998, more than 20,000 New Yorkers were doing time under the Rockefeller drug laws, the overwhelming majority of whom were blacks and Latinos from poor neighborhoods like the one Paterson represented as a state senator for 23 years. In fact, Paterson -- the scion of a Harlem political dynasty -- recently admitted that he himself used marijuana and cocaine as a young man during the late 1970s.

As the casualties of the Rockefeller laws piled up, in the late 1990s, a broad-based protest movement began to take shape. Propelled by prisoners' family members and backed by some high-profile hip-hop artists, entertainment mogul Russell Simmons, and a slew of liberal politicians -- including Paterson and current New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo -- the "Drop the Rock" campaign drew extensive media coverage and by June 2003 was able to bring upwards of 50,000 people into the streets of New York. Despite all this, the campaign struggled to translate its energy into meaningful policy reform.

After years of dashed hopes, the Drop the Rock movement won an important victory when the harshest features of New York's drug laws were modified in a pair of reforms enacted in 2004 and 2005. The automatic sentence for A-1 offenders -- someone convicted of selling two or more ounces of cocaine or heroin or possessing four or more ounces -- was reduced, from 15-to-life to eight-to-20 years. The threshold for being charged with an A-1 offense for possession of cocaine or heroin was also doubled, from four to eight ounces. The automatic sentences for lesser A-2 offenses were also reduced.

The changes made more than 400 of the longest-serving A-1 offenders eligible to apply to be released, as well as some 500 A-2 offenders. As of May 31, 2007, 214 A-1 offenders and 115 A-2 offenders had been released, according to the Drug Policy Alliance. However, the central features of the Rockefeller Drug Laws -- lengthy sentences for non-violent drug offenses and lack of discretionary sentencing -- were kept intact. In the scheme of things, says Credico, who helped organize scores of protests by family members from 1998 to 2005, "The changes were so minimal."