While Pataki's bill would lower minimum sentences, it would be up to inmates to apply for resentencing, and judges could deny it. It applies to far fewer inmates than the Assembly bill does, and gives judges less authority to refer new defendants into treatment.

At the June meeting, Pataki tried to convince the Mothers to accept partial change now and more reform later, telling them to prod the Assembly to "pass the A-1 law and have hundreds of people out in a matter of days." But they were persuaded otherwise by Silver, who insists, "If [Pataki] was successful in just doing the limited A-1 bill, he would have the sound bite he was looking for to say he reformed the Rockefeller law, and there would never be further reform."

Both sides are playing politics with the Mothers. Pataki told them, "I really wonder if the Assembly wants reform. They'd rather have this as an issue where you're out there picketing instead of being home with your families."

Besides, says Pataki, "We are running out of the ability to go much further." After all, the New York District Attorneys Association and some conservative state senators oppose all but the most minimum sentencing reform. Craig Miller, spokesman for state Sen. Dale Volker, accuses anti-Rockefeller activists of "advocating a true jail break from New York state prisons."

"Any time you put a drug dealer back on the streets of New York state, the possibly of that person committing another crime is there," he says.

The district attorneys, meanwhile, admit they like the Rockefeller laws because the threat of long sentences helps them extract plea bargains and recruit informants. "It would be disingenuous to say otherwise," says James Vargason, president of the District Attorneys Association. But there's also a sharp ideological divide -- D.A.s simply don't see drug dealers and drug couriers, petty or not, as victims.

"Drug dealing is a violent business, and anybody who has been arrested, prosecuted and convicted for drug dealing is there of their own volition," Vargason says. "I'm feeling pretty good as a prosecutor when I remove somebody from the streets who is threat to you or your loved ones. Drug dealing poses that threat."

That's why Vargason's group, which already believes the governor's bill goes too far, is going to fight further concessions.

They're helped by the fact that Credico, in his sympathy for the imprisoned, occasionally overlooks the fact that some of the people he champions are not exactly innocents. As Chauncey Parker points out, the son Mary Mortimore talks about in the commercial might be imprisoned for a low-level offense, but he's been arrested over 30 times -- once with four loaded guns -- and convicted four times for drugs and assault.

Credico appears irritated when Parker brings this up, saying, "He was an addict most of his life. These were low-level things. It's not unusual for black people to get arrested 40 or 50 times. The cops routinely lie and routinely target people."

Papa laughs at Credico's attempt at damage control, saying that Credico was stunned and furious when Parker confronted him with Hilts' rap sheet. "You should have seen the look on his face," Papa says.

But while they laugh at the debacle, Papa believes the revelation was part of a Republican campaign to block reform. The politics, he says, are getting uglier by the day. "I blame all the politicians. The two sides hate each other," he says. "It's amazing to come so close and see them just spinning their wheels while another year goes by."

In another year, it may be too late. Deborah Small, director of public policy for the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit drug-law reform group funded by George Soros, fears that if reform doesn't come before November, it won't come at all. Pataki's pledge to reform the drug laws has become a major campaign issue, especially in the minority neighborhoods that most drug inmates come from. The issue is especially critical in the Latino community, where the Drug Policy Alliance has been running Spanish language ads. Right now, Pataki has an interest in appealing to that growing constituency; he seems to have written off blacks.

After the election, the issue, activists fear, will be moot, and Pataki will be more concerned with wooing the law-and-order types in the upper Republican echelons who might advance his career.

"George [Pataki] is a decent guy and I think he wants to see something happen, but some of the advisors around him are stonewalling," Dunne says. "The D.A.s put the fear of God into legislators that if they support reform they'll be viewed as soft on drugs and soft on crime, and nobody wants to get hit with that tag line."

He's still optimistic about the "good faith negotiating" going on right now, but others are bracing for disappointment.

"It's like 'Ishtar.' You spend three years making it and it comes out to be a shitty movie," says Credico. "It's the same feeling here." Aviles adds that while people keeping saying that change is nearly here, "That's what they've been saying since I met Randy in 1998. Seeing is believing."

"My son got a death sentence and I got life in prison," she continues. "I pray that in my lifetime change comes, but I won't be surprised if it doesn't."

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