[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 144 (Thursday, October 6, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 6, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
            ``15 YEARS FOR A 17-YEAR-OLD'S FIRST DRUG SALE''

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, my colleagues are, perhaps, tired 
and clearly unmoved by my repeated admonitions against mandatory 
minimums. The political advantage of supporting mandatory minimums, I 
do not question. The wisdom of supporting mandatory minimums, I 
seriously question.
  Recently, Nat Hentoff had a column in the Washington Post that deals 
with the question of mandatory minimums and one 17-year-old girl. I 
urge Members and their staffs, who have any questions in this area at 
all, to read the Nat Hentoff column.
  I ask to insert it into the Record at this point.
  The article follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Sept. 10, 1994]

              15 Years for a 17-Year-Old's First Drug Sale

                            (By Nat Hentoff)

       New York.--Nelson Rockefeller, the late governor of New 
     York, is remembered by many in the art world as an 
     enthusiastic, sophisticated collector. For many New Yorkers 
     in prison, however, he is remembered as the author of the 
     1973 Rockefeller Drug Sentencing Laws whose harsh mandatory 
     minimums helped lead the way nationally to reducing judges' 
     discretion in sentencing.
       Some years ago, I ask Gov. Mario M. Cuomo if he might try 
     to move the legislature to make those laws more humane. He 
     said he didn't think the legislature could be budged. But, as 
     a political leader, shouldn't he try? No comment. Nor, 
     certainly, is there a chance now to make the Rockefeller drug 
     laws more flexible when fear of crime is chronic.
       Recently, several lower court judges in New York did take 
     the risk of softening a young woman's long prison term 
     because they were appalled at the damage the Rockefeller law 
     would have done to the rest of her life. Their attempt failed 
     when they were reversed by the Court of Appeals, the state's 
     highest court.
       What has happened to Angela Thompson is hardly unique. In 
     1988, when she was 17, she was arrested after making a single 
     sale of crack cocaine to an undercover police officer. (There 
     was no other criminal activity on her record.) The sale took 
     place at the residence of her uncle, Norman Little, who, 
     according to the dissenting opinion in the Court of Appeals, 
     was ``running a major drug-selling operation in Harlem.''
       The 17-year-old ``had grown up in a variety of places and 
     under several different custodial arrangements'' until she 
     was employed by her uncle. Her drug sale to the police agent 
     qualified as an A-1 felony because it weighed 2.3 grams--less 
     than one-tenth of an ounce over the next lower level crime.
       On a plea bargain, she was offered four years to life, but 
     she insisted on her right to trial. She was convicted. The 
     penalty for an A-1 felony is a mandatory indeterminate 
     sentence, with a minimum of not less than 15 years. The 
     maximum is life imprisonment.
       The trial judge, Juanita Bing-Newton, rebelled. The minimum 
     mandatory sentence, she ruled, would be cruel and unusual 
     punishment under the Eighth Amendment. Instead, she sentenced 
     Angela Thompson to eight years to life. The judge 
     acknowledged that the legislature had decreed a tougher 
     minimum, but she added: ``I think it is still the law of this 
     country that the punishment must fit the crime.'' After all, 
     this was ``a single transgression of the law.''
       The case went up one level to the Appellate Division. A 
     majority on that bench also refused to go rigidly by the book 
     and upheld the lower sentence of the trial judge. Said 
     Appellate Justice Sidney Asch:
       ``A system of justice which mandates a 15-year prison 
     sentence, as a minimum, on a 17-year-old girl, who was not 
     cared for by her parents and [was] under the domination of 
     her uncle also mandates a lifetime of crime. And [it] imposes 
     on the community, upon release, a women who may be incapable 
     of anything but criminal activity. If we do not attempt to 
     rehabilitate such young people, we condemn ourselves as 
     well.''
       Again, the prosecution appealed this lower sentence in the 
     name of the people. The New York State Court of appeals 
     agreed with the prosecution. The chief judge, Judith Kaye, is 
     an often compassionate jurist who has written some notable 
     First Amendment opinions, among others. In this case, she was 
     part of the majority that overturned the lower courts and 
     resentenced Angela Thompson to a mandatory minimum of 15 
     years to life imprisonment.
       Writing for the two dissenters, Judge Joseph Bellacosa said 
     of his majority colleagues--who have locked up Angela 
     Thompson for at least 15 years--that they have tied 
     themselves to ``the will of the legislature. A will expressed 
     more than 20 years ago as part of the frustratingly decried, 
     yet intractably operative, Rockefeller Drug Sentencing 
     Laws.''
       But, Bellacosa added, ``It is judges who bear the singular 
     awesome duty of facing defendants in open court on the day of 
     reckoning to declare the law's sentencing judgment.''
       Joseph Bellacosa is often described as a conservative; 
     Chief Judge Kaye is decidedly regarded as a liberal. It was 
     Bellacosa, however, who tried unsuccessfully to remind his 
     colleagues that ``constitutional adjudication is a dynamic, 
     evolving process--not a static set of revered relics.''
       And Angela Thompson will become an unrevered relic.

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