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Will there be retroactive sentencing justice for drug defendants in New York?

By Douglas A. Berman

This New York Times article, headlined "Deal on State?s Drug Laws Means Resentencing Pleas," suggests that the plans to reform New York's Rockefeller drug laws include provisions allowing some past sentenced defendants to obtain resentencings: An agreement reached by Gov. David A. Paterson and legislative leaders this week to give judges more flexibility to determine drug sentences would also allow hundreds of people currently in prison for nonviolent drug offenses to ask a judge to resentence them, the governor said Friday. The proposal, which sweeps away much of what is left of the Rockefeller-era drug laws, would also create new categories of crimes for so-called drug kingpins and people who sell drugs to children. Mr. Paterson and legislators hailed the plan?s central elements ? which would give judges the option of sending many low-level drug offenders to treatment instead of prison even if a prosecutor objects ? as sweeping and historic changes in the state?s criminal justice policy...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on March 28, 2009 (boomark / email).