Noelle Bush gets rehab, the poor and black get hard time

Fed up with draconian drug penalties, a coalition led by angry mothers is threatening to overturn some of the country's harshest laws.

By Michelle Goldberg

Aug 5, 2002 | White-haired, patrician, well-dressed, John Dunne is a former Republican state senator who sponsored New York's draconian drug laws almost 30 years ago. So it's a bit of a shock to see him starring in a television commercial with Mary Mortimore, an ailing African-American grandmother from upstate New York whose son is in jail for selling cocaine. But these days, the two are on the same mission: to convince New York to reform its so-called Rockefeller drug laws, named after the governor who presided over their passage in 1973, laws that have destroyed the family of one and weighed on the conscience of the other.

"I haven't seen my son in 10 years," Mortimore tells the camera. She's a lovely, fine-boned woman with desolate eyes and a choked voice. She recently had a stroke. "In 1992 he was convicted of a low-level drug offense and sent to prison. 15 to 30 years on a low-level drug offense. That's more time than they give convicted murderers and sex offenders."

Then Dunne appears. "In 1973, I sponsored the Rockefeller drug laws, which have been a well-documented failure," he says solemnly. Dunne goes on to urge Gov. George Pataki to ease the laws and redirect resources from prison to rehabilitation.

No one is sure exactly what Pataki will do, but it's clear he's having to listen to Dunne and Mortimer. They're part of a growing grass-roots movement to reform New York's drug laws, which are among the nation's harshest. In New York state, first-time, nonviolent drug offenders routinely receive higher sentences than rapists and murderers. Robert Chambers, the so-called preppie murderer, was given five to 15 years for killing Jennifer Levin in 1988. Joel Steinberg, who beat his 6-year-old daughter Lisa to death in 1987, was sentenced to eight to 25 years. Yet last year Darryl Best, a 46-year-old father of four with no criminal history, was locked up in maximum security for 15 years to life after he signed for a Fed-Ex package delivered to his uncle's house that turned out to contain cocaine.

That's not because the judge was a monster. At Best's sentencing hearing, Judge Michael Gross said the punishment was "clearly out of line for the offense that Mr. Best committed."

But he had no choice. Under the Rockefeller drug laws, passed at the height of public panic over drugs and street crime, anyone convicted of selling 2 ounces or possessing 4 ounces of cocaine or heroin, an A-1 felony, has to serve at least 15 years in prison before being eligible for parole. People convicted of possessing half an ounce of narcotics, or of any sale at all -- B felonies -- can get up to 25 years in prison.

There are roughly 21,000 people now serving drug sentences in New York state prisons, constituting about a third of the state's inmate population. Though studies show that most drug users and drug sellers are white, 94 percent of New York's drug inmates are black and Latino.

"Noelle Bush forges a prescription and goes to rehab," says Teresa Aviles, a 54-year-old Bronx police clerk whose son, Isidro, died of an untreated, undiagnosed illness after serving eight years of a 27-year federal prison term. "If that was my daughter, she would have gotten a mandatory five-year sentence."

Federal mandatory minimums are separate from the Rockefeller laws, but Aviles has joined the crusade against New York's statutes out of a need to give some meaning to her eldest's death. "Everybody knows there's a double standard of justice," she says. "It's not black-and-white, it's dollars and cents."

Now, for the first time in three decades, almost everyone involved in New York politics -- except, crucially, the powerful District Attorneys Association and a few upstate senators -- seems to be coming around to Aviles' view. Even Pataki calls 15-to-life sentences "egregious." He's in negotiations with the Democrat-controlled State Assembly, which supports broader reform than Pataki does, and the two sides claim to be moving closer to an agreement. "It is something everybody thinks ought to be done," says Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Chauncey Parker, Pataki's director of criminal justice, says that drug-law reform is the governor's "No. 1 priority for criminal justice."

And, of course, there's Dunne, who is now working for repeal side by side with the relatives of people his legislation has put away.

Those relatives are getting more numerous, more powerful and more savvy. Perhaps the most important grass-roots reform group is the Mothers of the Disappeared, a coalition of drug inmates' family members. The core of the group is about 25 women, including Wanda Best, Darryl Best's wife of 22 years; Regina Stevens, whose wheelchair-bound son was granted clemency partly through the Mothers' lobbying; and Elaine Bartlett, a former inmate who was sentenced under the Rockefeller laws and whose husband, Nathan Brooks, is 19 years into a 25-to-life sentence. Bartlett and Brooks have never spent a night together as man and wife; they had their judge marry them right before they were sentenced so they could stay connected.

Working with them are Anthony Papa, an intense 46-year-old paralegal who earned three degrees and became a noted painter while serving a sentence of 15 years to life for making a drug delivery, and Randy Credico, an abrasive 47-year-old former stand-up comic whose manic energy has given the movement much of its momentum.

Thanks largely to the Mothers of the Disappeared group, New York is closer to reform than it's ever been, but advocates for change aren't celebrating yet. There's some optimism in the air, but the sad possibility remains that despite the near-unanimous sentiment that it's futile to keep thousands of nonviolent people imprisoned, they might remain hostage to politics.

Activists say that if change doesn't come before November, it might not come at all. Right now, Pataki is searching for black and Latino support in the upcoming election, and Rockefeller reform is a hot-button issue in those communities. After the fall, the Mothers group fears, it will be easy for politicians to forget all about their families.

Next Page: Dunne's mission of redemption

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