Eight reasons NY’s Rockefeller laws are still with us
The Rockefeller laws, signed into law in 1973 by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, set the modern standard for what have now become known as mandatory minimums—strict prison sentences for drug crimes no matter the defendant’s background. Specifically, the laws would give dealers and addicts 15 years to life, equating the sentence for possession of four ounces of narcotics to second-degree murder, for instance.
Rockefeller, who originally took a far more permissive stance on drug laws, decided that harsher sentences were the only way to cut down on the rampant drug abuse in 1970s New York City. The Rockefeller laws set a harsh precedent that was adopted by the federal government and state legislations, quickly spreading across the nation. Ultimately, the laws stripped judges of much of their discretion in sentencing and clogged up the country’s criminal justice system with non-violent drug offenders.
In April 2009, Governor David Paterson signed legislation that reformed the Rockefeller laws, including eliminating mandatory minimums, reducing sentences and expanding alternative options like drug treatment courts. However, the lingering effects of Governor Rockefeller’s trend-setting laws are still apparent today.
1) Judges across the country still have their hands tied by mandatory minimums
A new report issued by Human Rights Watch finds that defendants who take their fate to a judge or a jury face prison sentences on average 11 years longer than those who plead guilty.
Author Jamie Fellner found dozens of cases in which defendants were sent to prison for nearly 50 years for first-time drug offenses. In one case, a woman refused a plea deal of 17 years in prison for dealing methamphetamines and having guns in her house. She was eventually convicted and sentenced to more than 45 years behind bars. In this case, the federal appeals court stated that mandatory minimum sentences left the trial judge with little discretion so that they could only impose “effectively a life sentence” on the 53-year-old woman who had no prior convictions.
All too often, the report concluded, judges’ hands are tied by the mandatory sentencing system.
2) Judges across the country are adjudicating drug crimes differently
After the repeal of the Rockefeller laws, some federal court judges follow federal sentencing guidelines more often than others, leading to wide disparities in the length of prisoners’ sentences. According to reports from the U.S. Sentencing Commission on the 2012 fiscal year, out of the 1,815 defendants charged in 2012 with trafficking drugs and sentenced at the federal level within the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, only 24.5 percent were sentenced within the federal sentencing guidelines. On the high end of that range, and based on the same series of reports, 64.6 percent of defendants charged with drug trafficking and processed in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (4,783 in all) were sentenced within the same federal guidelines.
A drug dealer in New York City (part of the second circuit) has approximately a 25 percent chance of being sentenced within the federal statutory boundaries—but a 75 percent chance of serving either more or less time than the federal government has agreed upon.
Some of this disparity has to do with geography. The 9th and 10th U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals (covering California, Arizona and New Mexico), for example, process significantly more immigration cases than their eastern and Midwestern counterparts, and they might have more room for drug offenders in their courts than in large cities on the East Coast.
But these figures also indicate that people are being sent to jail for different lengths of time for committing the same crimes.
Read more about disparities in drug sentencing across U.S. circuit courts with our spreadsheet here.
3) The disparity of drug sentences within states and across drug types
The Rockefeller laws created harsh sentences: even life behind bars for some felons, and their impact on the ways in which U.S. judges rule on drug crimes at the state level is still being felt.
In FY 2010, mandatory minimum penalties applied in 83.2 percent of methamphetamine cases but only in under 45 percent of marijuana cases, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Additionally, during the same time period, drug offenses accounted for more three quarters of offenses that carried a mandatory minimum.
Sentencing disparities within drug types have been well documented—the extreme differences in prison time for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine have been well documented—but one legal statute, which can trigger even harsher punishment once the government investigates a defendant’s criminal history, isn’t well known and is applied unevenly.
21 U.S.C. § 851, a federal law passed by Congress in 1970, requires the government prosecuting a crime to dig up defendant's’ prior convictions and for a current case. Although this law was initially passed in order to force the government to jump through legal hoops and make its case for prosecuting defendants, it is randomly enforced and can double a prisoner’s sentence if they have a prior conviction.
This statue is employed by different prosecutors in distinct states very differently. In Colorado, Arizona, and parts of Oklahoma, Mississippi, Ohio and Arkansas, it was never enforced in the fiscal years of 2006, 2008 and 2009, according to one report. Yet during that same time period, it was deployed 75 percent of the time or more in Iowa, and parts of Illinois, Alabama and Florida.
During the sections of time analyzed in this report, a least a quarter of defendants were subject to this law (the “Proceedings to establish prior convictions” provision), but it was enforced seemingly randomly.
4) The relationship of the Rockefeller laws to Stop-and-Frisk in NY
The New York Rockefeller laws have influenced policy nationwide, so its no surprise that New York is the US state with the most cannabis arrests. Now, in New York State, simple possession of marijuana has been decriminalized. By law, the NYPD can only make arrests if the marijuana is in public view.
The Bronx Defenders, a firm that provides free legal services to indigent clients, authored a report entitled “Marijuana Arrest Project,” which includes interviews with over 500 of their clients who were arrested and charged with marijuana possession in the Bronx. The report found that police had no legal cause for the initial detention and/or manufactured misdemeanors in over 40 percent of all the cases.
In these cases, police have been accused of falsely detaining individuals only after emptying pockets, which in effect brings the marijuana “into public view.” Stop-and-Frisk and the Rockefeller laws are joined at the hip because this policing tactic still accounts for the majority of the cases that are brought before the New York courts.
5) Re-sentencing wasn’t available for everyone
The big change came in October 2009, when drug offenders were able to apply for re-sentencing under the reformed laws. More than 1000 felons statewide were eligible for the re-sentencing – at the discretion of the court that originally sentenced them.
There had been reforms in 2004 and 2005 but this was the most significant. Retroactive sentencing was available for everyone convicted and imprisoned on a Class A drug offense – the most serious – and for most Class B offenders. However, Class B offenders with a violent felony conviction in the past ten years, or designated a “persistent felony offender” were excluded from the re-sentencing option.
Civil rights groups across the state welcomed the change, but the New York Civil Liberties Union, said that the reforms did not go far enough in some areas, barring from rehabilitation programs the prisoners perhaps most in need of treatment, and leaving in place unfairly harsh maximum sentences for low-level, non-violent drug offenders.
6) Overcrowding in prisons as a result of harsher sentencing
Concerns about the cost of prison overcrowding have become a part of the national discourse since the Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that the conditions caused by overcrowding in California’s prisons violated the Eight Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment.
California’s Three Strikes Law, which called for a life sentence after three felony offenses (including drug offenses), was fingered as the culprit.
More money was being spent on prisons than on higher education. Last year, California voters approved a change to the law that requires the so-called “third strike” to be a serious or violent offense. This change was estimated to save the state up to $90 million per year.
7) The demonization of drugs in one generation’s imagination
In June 1971, President Nixon declared a “war on drugs”, as part of a wider backlash against the more permissive culture of the 1960s. Hollywood helped. 1971 saw the release of both “The French Connection” – which features the assassination of a policeman as part of a plot to smuggle heroin into the US and lots of gang-fuelled, drug-related shootings – and “Panic in Needle Park” – the tragic love story of two heroin addicts – fuelled a negative perception of drug use.
Throughout the 1980s, dramatic media portrayals of crack addicts entrenched this further. In 1981, Nancy Reagan began an anti-drug campaign, with the famous slogan, “just say no.”
The effect of this cultural crackdown is still felt today, in the generational divide of opinion on drug use and drug policy: a 2012 Washington Post-ABC News poll found that more than half of 18-29 year olds support legalizing marijuana, while an overwhelming majority of those 65+ oppose it.
8) The US increasingly at odds with international partners on drug policy
A leaked document from the UN revealed growing disagreement in the international community with the U.S.’s stance on the war on drugs. The Guardian reported that the document, which is being prepared by the UN Commission on Narcotics, reveals “serious and entrenched divisions” over the global “war on drugs”.
South American and European countries are challenging the U.S.’s prohibitionist stance, pushing for language that addresses the issue as a public health crisis. Countries like Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico, in particular, argue that a prohibitionist stance on drugs plays into the hands of the cartels.
Photo: "Rockefeller Plaza Sign" by Erik Drost on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.
