New York Attorney Lawyer

During the year 2002 was then the state Senator David Paterson was arrested at a sit-in at Gov. George Pataki’s Manhattan office call for the repeal of the New York harsh Rockefeller drug laws. During the year 2006, during his successful campaign for lieutenant governor, he continued to speak. Now, with Paterson’s unexpected rise to the Governor’s Mansion in response to Eliot Spitzer’s downfall, policy on drugs sense argues for a historic opportunity to ask himself, as the outlook for the next Paterson Governor through reforms on which he has previously declaration of love.

“It is ten times better than this theme Spitzer,” said Randy Credico, director of artist William Moses Fund for Racial Justice. “He has more than any other, the vision [vision] 20-20. He is a brilliant man, [and] the most advanced, we have the governor and his feelings about the criminal justice system since [the 19th century, the great abolitionist] William Seward.

“But,” he adds, “we all know we can bend under pressure.”

Robert Gangi, director of the monitoring group Correctional Association of New York, said: “It gives us hope that Paterson was an advocate of a significant change in other Rockefeller laws in the past. But we are realistic and we will continue to organize To him and his record. ”

Received in the year 1973 at the insistence of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, Rockefeller of New York in place of other laws harsh sanctions are mandatory for persons, sale or possession of relatively small quantities of narcotics, including rates of 15 years to life for all, are selling two ounces or more of cocaine or heroin or possessing more than four ounces. Accordingly, during the decades following, thousands of non-violent, low-level hinweggefegt guilty and were imprisoned. Until 1998, more than 20000 have done time in New York under the Rockefeller, other laws, the overwhelming majority of them were blacks and Latinos in poor neighbourhoods like the one Senator Paterson from the state for 23 years. Indeed, Paterson - Born of a political dynasty Harlem - recently admitted that he himself uses marijuana and cocaine as a young man in the late 1970’s.

Given that the victims of the law angeschichtet Rockefeller, in the late 1990’s, a huge protest movement began to take shape. Operated prisoner family members and certain high-level hip-hop artists, tracks Entertainment mogul Russell Simmons, and a number of Liberal politicians - including Paterson and current New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo - ” Drop the Rock “Zog wide campaign of media coverage and, in June 2003, has been able to top 50,000 people in the streets of New York. Despite all this, the campaign fighting for their energy to meaningful reform.

After years of dashed hopes, in the skirt, the list of the movement won a major victory in the hardest functions of the drug in New York, the laws have been changed, a pair of reforms adopted in the years 2004 and 2005. The automatic sentence for A-1 offenders - to a person convicted of selling two or more ounces of cocaine or heroin or possessing four ounces or more - has been reduced from 15 at the life of eight-20 years. The threshold for those who work with an offensive A-1 for possession of heroin, cocaine or double, from four to eight ounces. The automatic penalties for petty crime and A-2 have also been reduced.

Changes to more than 400 the longest service A-1 sponsors to submit for publication, as well as some 500 A-2 sponsors. As from May 31, 2007, 214 A and 115 offenders 1 A-2 attackers were published by the Drug Policy Alliance. However, the main features of the Rockefeller Drug Laws - long sentences for other non-violent offences and the lack of discretionary sentencing - were retained. In the nomenclature of things, “said Credico, helped organize the protest votes of the members from 1998 to 2005,” The changes were so minimal. ”

Thirteen thousand in New York (out of the State Prison population 63000) remain in detention under the Rockefeller laws against the fees of $ 500 million per year to the State, to Gangi. “The Rockefeller Drug Laws are spender, inefficient, unfair and tinged with racial prejudice,” he says. “They… impact on people on the sidelines, commerce, not the biggest culprits, not the major profiteers.”