lawyer

In 1973, as drug use and crime rates around the country were on the rise, New York State passed a set of narcotics laws that became known by the name of their primary champion, Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller. The laws mandated that a conviction for possessing four ounces or more of heroin or cocaine be punished by at least 15 years to life in prison.

The laws were praised by prosecutors, who said they made it easier to make cases against drug kingpins when lower-level dealers or users faced tough penalties. Other criticized the laws for their harshness, noting that many first-time offenders caught with small amounts of narcotics ended up with lengthy sentences.

In 2007, Clyde Haberman described the long-running debate in the About New York column of The New York Times:

"For true endurance, the statutes known as the Rockefeller-era drug laws are hard to beat. The same may be said about attempts to scrap those laws, which came into being in 1973, so long ago that disco was just beginning to be hot.

"Nelson A. Rockefeller was governor then. Drug criminals had New York by the throat in one of the city's periodic heart-of-darkness phases. Rockefeller wanted to show he could be tough as nails with dope dealers. The result was statutes that eternally bear his name in common idiom. "Their essence was to send drug felons to prison for very long stretches, with sentences made mandatory and leniency rendered unacceptable even for first-time offenders.

"The laws were amended in 2004 and 2005, to ease some of the most severe sentences. By then, they had been deemed overly harsh by most New Yorkers, save perhaps those with portraits of Torquemada on their walls. Occasional polls, like one for this newspaper in 2002, show that New Yorkers overwhelmingly would grant judges more of a free hand in sentencing. That includes a chance to send drug-addicted small fry into treatment rather than to prison."

The main roadblock to more extensive change was opposition among the Republicans who controlled the state Senate. In , control shifted to the Democrats, and in March, a deal was announced by legislative leaders and Gov. David A. Paterson. A version of the bill taken up by the state Assembly would restore judges' discretion in sentencing in many lower-level drug possession crimes. Judges would be able to send many offenders to treatment programs instead of prison without receiving consent from prosecutors. It was not clear how many current prisoners would be eligible to apply. Mr. Paterson has pushed to have fewer prisoners than legislative leaders would prefer.