Albany Takes Step to Repeal Rockefeller Drug Laws

By JEREMY W. PETERS

ALBANY — The state legislature took pivotal steps on Wednesday toward repealing much of what remains of the state’s 1970s-era drug laws, which have tied judges hands and imposed mandatory prison terms for many nonviolent drug offenses.

The Assembly approved by a 96-46 vote legislation that would restore judges’ discretion in sentencing lower level drug offenders by removing laws that require a prosecutor’s consent before judges can send someone to a drug treatment program. Debate on the bill got underway late Wednesday afternoon.

The same bill was introduced on Wednesday in the Senate, where Democratic leaders vowed to quickly take it up. But the task now confronting legislative leaders and Gov. David A. Paterson is to reconcile the Assembly bill — which is considered the most far-reaching of the proposals on the table now — with the governor’s plan and the bill that Senate Democrats write.

Drug law reform has for years been one of the most divisive social issues debated in Albany. Bills aimed at broadly overhauling the statutes, known as the Rockefeller drug laws because former Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller championed their approval, have routinely passed the Democratic-controlled Assembly over the years, only to die in the Senate, which until this year was run by Republicans.

With Democrats now in the majority in the Senate and Mr. Paterson an avowed Rockefeller reform advocate, supporters of rewriting the drug laws see this year as their best chance to pass a plan that essentially does away with mandatory sentences for drug crimes.

“I think the stars are aligned,” Sheldon Silver, the speaker of the Assembly, said at a news conference on Wednesday morning. “It’s time has come.”

Senate Democrats were debating the issue in a closed-door conference on Wednesday night.

But before any three-way compromise is reached, several sticking points need to be resolved. Those issues include whether drug offenders who do not complete treatment would be sent to prison and whether offenders would first need to be certified as addicted before they could enter a treatment program.

The State Legislature has already eliminated the stiffest provisions of the Rockefeller laws, doing away in 2004 with life sentences for drug crimes and reducing other penalties for the most serious offenses. But supporters of the Assembly plan believe that plan is an opportunity to finish what began in 2004.

“It should not have taken this state 36 years to realize that mandatory sentences are a one-size-fits-all approach,” Mr. Silver said. “We cannot wait another year.”Drug law reform activists said that the legislation would be an opportunity for New York to catch up after falling behind other states that have greatly expanded their drug treatment programs as alternatives to prison.

“The general theme is states are making greater effort to divert people into treatment programs, and they’re start to use prison not as a first resort but a secondary or last resort,” said Gabriel Sayegh, the director of organizing and policy for the Drug Policy Alliance Network, a national drug law reform group.

“If the legislature follows through with moving toward a public health approach, New York could potentially go from having some of the worst laws in the country to having some of the best.”

But district attorneys have expressed concern that the proposals currently being considered in Albany strip them of their important function as a check against judges.

“We’ve achieved a balance where we’ve preserved public safety and reduced our prison population,” said Michael C. Green, the district attorney for Monroe County. “I look at that and say why do we want to take this system and make a seismic shift? My fear is that you’re going to disturb one of those trends.”