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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
John Dunne is not given to melodrama. But his involvement with the anti-Rockefeller movement is clearly a mission of redemption. "I've got certainly a sense of guilt here. I'm trying to correct it," he says.
Dunne became aware of the disastrous effects of mandatory minimums while working for the first President George Bush. As assistant attorney general for civil rights, he was responsible for investigating rights violations in federal prisons. He saw those prisons filling up with nonviolent offenders because of the same sort of mandatory sentencing rules he'd pushed through in New York. That was never his intention, he says; he'd meant the Rockefeller laws to be used against kingpins.
On returning to Albany, he started working to undo his own legislation, organizing the Campaign for Effective Criminal Justice, a group of judges, politicians, lawyers, business leaders and clergy. The campaign's mission statement says New York's drug laws "deprive children of their parents, waste enormous human and financial resources, and fail to address effectively the addiction that underlies most drug offenses."
Dunne's presence lends credibility to the movement to undo Rockefeller. But the mothers, wives and sisters of inmates are its heart and soul. Beginning on Mother's Day 1998, small groups started gathering for weekly vigils in front of Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan, carrying pictures of the men they'd lost. They took the name Mothers of the Disappeared from the Argentinian organization that protested state terror in the 1970s.
Slowly, their stories made it into the local media, and politicians took notice. Regina Stevens, whose son Terrence Stevens was serving 15 years to life for cocaine possession and is almost wholly paralyzed by muscular dystrophy, went to the rallies faithfully. In December 2000, after the New York Times ran a story about Terrence, Pataki pardoned him.
Lately, the Mothers of the Disappeared have been taking meetings with everyone who matters in New York -- Gov. Pataki, Assembly Speaker Silver, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. "The thing I most want to see happen is to see you reunited with your families," Pataki told them at an Albany meeting on June 12.
Perhaps, but the situation is still tentative. After all, Pataki said he wanted to reform the drug laws in his State of the State address in January 2001, yet since then nothing has changed. The last legislative session ended without an agreement between the Assembly and the governor. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver says that while the two sides have moved closer together, there's a chance they'll fail to reach a compromise.
Given how high the stakes are, the mothers have taken an amazing gamble. At the Albany meeting in June, Pataki told them that if they supported his bill, he could have their loved ones out "in a matter of days." Pataki's carefully crafted bill would have shortened mandatory minimums for A-1 felons. Their sentences are so unjust they -- and their relatives -- have become the poster children for the reform movement. Darryl Best, for example, is said to be a devoted father who never missed his daughters' parent-teacher conferences or basketball games, but his youngest, now 13, will be 28 before he has a chance of getting out. But of all the people doing time in New York on drug charges, only about 590 of them are A-1s, so Pataki's bill wouldn't have remedied the plight of thousands of other prisoners.
Almost all of the women at the meeting were relatives of A-1 felons. Parker told them they'd have their relatives back by the Fourth of July if only they'd pressure the Assembly to pass it.
They said no.
Instead, the group told Pataki, they wanted to see thousands of prisoners freed, to get rid of mandatory minimums, to streamline the process for resentencing, and to expand drug-treatment options. They didn't want to divide what's become the most vital civil rights movement in decades.
At a July 25 press conference in Albany, the mothers joined with Dunne in announcing their position on the governor's bill and unveiling the new TV commercial. Dunne says he's awed by "the courage of these women" in turning the deal down. Turning to Wanda Best and Elaine Bartlett, he said, "It gives me great pride to be identified with you."
