Federal Judiciary

DRUG RESENTENCING REPORT CARD
By Mark Thompson
markthomp@yahoo.com
Posted 1-16-08

More than a thousand incarcerated drug offenders were eligible to apply for more lenient sentences under the Drug Law Reform Acts of 2004 and 2005. Through the end of last year, 115 appeals from resentencing decisions by New York City trial judges had made it through the two local departments of the Appellate Division. By the appellate panels’ reckoning, the city’s judges have done a pretty good job. Just 18 resentencing decisions have been reversed, most over the initially unsettled issue of retroactivity.

The First Department issued most of the city’s DLRA rulings – 98 of the 115, including 12 of the 18 reversals -- through the end of last year. But it was the Second Department that was first out of the gate this year, reversing two Queens County judges in a pair of rulings issued January 8. While most of the city judges who have been reversed were deemed too generous in extending the benefits of the law to ineligible inmates, these two were too stringent, unanimous appellate panels said.

Full post as published by Judicial Reports on January 16, 2008 (boomark / email).