During his very first legislative session in 1973, Assembly Member Joseph Lentol (D-Brooklyn) cast a vote against the now-infamous Rockefeller Drug Laws. Since 1992, when Lentol became chair of the Assembly’s Codes Committee, he has pushed repeatedly to reform the laws, though to little avail.
Then the deal was struck this year to include reforms as part of this year’s state budget. Speaking from the Assembly floor as the reforms were pushed through, Lentol reflected on the long-fought victory, how his experiences as an assistant district attorney shaped his outlook and an even more controversial reform he would like to see in the criminal code.
The following is an edited transcript.
City Hall: You are one of only two current members of the Assembly to vote against the original Rockefeller laws. What was the culture like back in 1973 when the laws were passed?
Joseph Lentol: I think the culture was very bad, because we had a serious drug epidemic in our city and throughout the state. At that time, I believe heroin was the drug of choice. There were a lack of treatment programs, and the treatment programs that existed really were in their infancy. And when you think about how we deal with drugs today, they knew very little about drug addiction. We came to learn about it and what treatment modalities were effective. We were in a climate where somebody needed to step up and do something, and Governor Rockefeller—to his credit—came up with a proposal that he imported from the Far East. He had just returned from Singapore and Japan. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was my first year in the Assembly.
CH: What did Rockefeller take from that trip?
JL: He saw the way that they dealt with the drug pusher in Singapore: that they got life. And so, his answer to the drug problem was to give everybody life. And I think he may have even suggested it for people who possessed large quantities of drugs. It wasn’t received too well, even though both houses were controlled by Republicans. I think for many of the criminal justice experts in Albany—even for some conservative Republicans—it was a pretty wild notion.
CH: When lawmakers cast their votes on the Rockefeller laws, did they realize the gravity?
JL: I think they did. We as a conference had long and hard discussions over this and believed that this was wrong. All of the Democrats that were in the minority in the Assembly voted against the bill, to a person.
CH: Did your two years working for the Brooklyn DA’s office influence your decision to vote no?
JL: I was a hard-nosed prosecutor. I don’t think that there was anybody who worked with me who thought that I was a bleeding heart when it came to criminal justice issues. It was very tough to oppose a tough crime measure like this. But I also realized that it was really out of whack with the other criminal statutes that were on the books that I had prosecuted people on. For example, I could give a guy who’s in possession of a quantity of drugs life, and have a term of only years for somebody who commits a violent sex offense. That seemed a little wacky, and it would really throw the criminal justice system out of proportion. The more I learned about the problem, I actually believed in my years in the DA’s office that drugs were a crime that really were epidemic, because we hadn’t figured out a way to treat them. Drug offenders, if they go to jail, when they come out, they’re just going to come out and do drugs again. Because that’s what they do.
CH: The five district attorneys from New York City recently came out against these reforms, saying they took too much power from prosecutors. What did you make of that?
JL: It’s all a question of whose ox is being gored. And the district attorneys don’t want to give up their power. For 36 years they’ve done it their own way. To some extent, they do have a gripe. The way in which the law has been applied—it probably has been a lot of people going to drug treatment in New York City, and a lot of people going to jail upstate, by virtue of tough DAs there. That’s the way this law has grown. You don’t have the law being administered even-handedly by those controlling the process. It’s been based on geography, not the facts of each individual case.
CH: You’re obviously happy these reforms were passed. But what did you think about their inclusion in the budget, instead of going through the normal legislative process?
JL: I actually would have preferred they didn’t go through the budget. I don’t like the idea of legislation going through the budget. But the precedent was started a long, long time ago, used most prevalently by Governor Pataki. We didn’t establish the precedent in the Legislature. It was done mostly by governors who wanted to get their agenda passed.
CH: Would these reforms have passed if they had not been part of the budget?
JL: It would have been difficult in the Senate to pass a stand-alone bill outside the budget. It might have been difficult because of the close number they have, Democrat versus Republican.
CH: You believe reforming these laws is good policy, but do you have any concerns about the timing, given that crime usually goes up during a recession?
JL: I think crime in general is going to be a problem in bad economic times. But I don’t think there will be a spike in drugs because of it, because I don’t think that’s necessarily related to the economy. I think the crime that’s driven by the economy is the property crimes from people that don’t have any money, that don’t think they’re going to be able to make a living.
CH: So are you done reforming the state’s drug laws, or do you have more in mind?
JL: This is a major, historic reform, and almost does do what is required—and that is putting discretion for sentencing back in the hands of a judge. Now there are other things that need to be done, like the longer sentencing for A1 and A2 felonies that may be required. There’s still longer sentences for the more severe felonies than in any state in the nation. And the weights of drugs that qualify you for a more serious crime—that is something we may want to deal with down the road. But we have time now to deal with that.
CH: Are there other parts of the criminal code beyond drug laws where you think a philosophy of prevention, rather than punishment, could be applied?
JL: You could see it working in cases of sexual offenses, once we’ve perfected a system whereby we know there’s something that could be done to treat sex offenders—I’m not going to say right now we’ve come to a point. I can see that’s the type of crime where it’s more difficult to change the law, because drug crimes are usually victimless. And sex crimes aren’t. So, politically, it would be very hard to change a system that punishes someone for sex crimes and one that puts them into treatment.
CH: After 36 years of failure, did you ever think you would still be in the Assembly when the Rockefeller laws were finally reformed?
JL: It’s very hard to change tough laws once they’re on the books. And, generally speaking, we’re the only country in the Western world that responds to political pressure from the newspaper and editorials that politicize the criminal justice system. Most other counties deal with it very intelligently and don’t do what we do—labeling somebody soft on crime if they don’t give out the harsher punishment. So I didn’t really expect it to be changed in my lifetime.
--
ABOVE: Assembly Member Joseph Lentol, one of two members of the Assembly to vote against the Rockefeller drug laws in 1973, helped lead the effort to reform them. Photo by Andrew Schwartz
Then the deal was struck this year to include reforms as part of this year’s state budget. Speaking from the Assembly floor as the reforms were pushed through, Lentol reflected on the long-fought victory, how his experiences as an assistant district attorney shaped his outlook and an even more controversial reform he would like to see in the criminal code.
The following is an edited transcript.
City Hall: You are one of only two current members of the Assembly to vote against the original Rockefeller laws. What was the culture like back in 1973 when the laws were passed?
Joseph Lentol: I think the culture was very bad, because we had a serious drug epidemic in our city and throughout the state. At that time, I believe heroin was the drug of choice. There were a lack of treatment programs, and the treatment programs that existed really were in their infancy. And when you think about how we deal with drugs today, they knew very little about drug addiction. We came to learn about it and what treatment modalities were effective. We were in a climate where somebody needed to step up and do something, and Governor Rockefeller—to his credit—came up with a proposal that he imported from the Far East. He had just returned from Singapore and Japan. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was my first year in the Assembly.
CH: What did Rockefeller take from that trip?JL: He saw the way that they dealt with the drug pusher in Singapore: that they got life. And so, his answer to the drug problem was to give everybody life. And I think he may have even suggested it for people who possessed large quantities of drugs. It wasn’t received too well, even though both houses were controlled by Republicans. I think for many of the criminal justice experts in Albany—even for some conservative Republicans—it was a pretty wild notion.
CH: When lawmakers cast their votes on the Rockefeller laws, did they realize the gravity?
JL: I think they did. We as a conference had long and hard discussions over this and believed that this was wrong. All of the Democrats that were in the minority in the Assembly voted against the bill, to a person.
CH: Did your two years working for the Brooklyn DA’s office influence your decision to vote no?
JL: I was a hard-nosed prosecutor. I don’t think that there was anybody who worked with me who thought that I was a bleeding heart when it came to criminal justice issues. It was very tough to oppose a tough crime measure like this. But I also realized that it was really out of whack with the other criminal statutes that were on the books that I had prosecuted people on. For example, I could give a guy who’s in possession of a quantity of drugs life, and have a term of only years for somebody who commits a violent sex offense. That seemed a little wacky, and it would really throw the criminal justice system out of proportion. The more I learned about the problem, I actually believed in my years in the DA’s office that drugs were a crime that really were epidemic, because we hadn’t figured out a way to treat them. Drug offenders, if they go to jail, when they come out, they’re just going to come out and do drugs again. Because that’s what they do.
CH: The five district attorneys from New York City recently came out against these reforms, saying they took too much power from prosecutors. What did you make of that?
JL: It’s all a question of whose ox is being gored. And the district attorneys don’t want to give up their power. For 36 years they’ve done it their own way. To some extent, they do have a gripe. The way in which the law has been applied—it probably has been a lot of people going to drug treatment in New York City, and a lot of people going to jail upstate, by virtue of tough DAs there. That’s the way this law has grown. You don’t have the law being administered even-handedly by those controlling the process. It’s been based on geography, not the facts of each individual case.
CH: You’re obviously happy these reforms were passed. But what did you think about their inclusion in the budget, instead of going through the normal legislative process?
JL: I actually would have preferred they didn’t go through the budget. I don’t like the idea of legislation going through the budget. But the precedent was started a long, long time ago, used most prevalently by Governor Pataki. We didn’t establish the precedent in the Legislature. It was done mostly by governors who wanted to get their agenda passed.
CH: Would these reforms have passed if they had not been part of the budget?
JL: It would have been difficult in the Senate to pass a stand-alone bill outside the budget. It might have been difficult because of the close number they have, Democrat versus Republican.
CH: You believe reforming these laws is good policy, but do you have any concerns about the timing, given that crime usually goes up during a recession?
JL: I think crime in general is going to be a problem in bad economic times. But I don’t think there will be a spike in drugs because of it, because I don’t think that’s necessarily related to the economy. I think the crime that’s driven by the economy is the property crimes from people that don’t have any money, that don’t think they’re going to be able to make a living.
CH: So are you done reforming the state’s drug laws, or do you have more in mind?
JL: This is a major, historic reform, and almost does do what is required—and that is putting discretion for sentencing back in the hands of a judge. Now there are other things that need to be done, like the longer sentencing for A1 and A2 felonies that may be required. There’s still longer sentences for the more severe felonies than in any state in the nation. And the weights of drugs that qualify you for a more serious crime—that is something we may want to deal with down the road. But we have time now to deal with that.
CH: Are there other parts of the criminal code beyond drug laws where you think a philosophy of prevention, rather than punishment, could be applied?
JL: You could see it working in cases of sexual offenses, once we’ve perfected a system whereby we know there’s something that could be done to treat sex offenders—I’m not going to say right now we’ve come to a point. I can see that’s the type of crime where it’s more difficult to change the law, because drug crimes are usually victimless. And sex crimes aren’t. So, politically, it would be very hard to change a system that punishes someone for sex crimes and one that puts them into treatment.
CH: After 36 years of failure, did you ever think you would still be in the Assembly when the Rockefeller laws were finally reformed?
JL: It’s very hard to change tough laws once they’re on the books. And, generally speaking, we’re the only country in the Western world that responds to political pressure from the newspaper and editorials that politicize the criminal justice system. Most other counties deal with it very intelligently and don’t do what we do—labeling somebody soft on crime if they don’t give out the harsher punishment. So I didn’t really expect it to be changed in my lifetime.
--
ABOVE: Assembly Member Joseph Lentol, one of two members of the Assembly to vote against the Rockefeller drug laws in 1973, helped lead the effort to reform them. Photo by Andrew Schwartz
