Pubdate: Wed, 08 May 2002
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2002 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Section: New York Region: OUR TOWNS
Author: Matthew Purdy

IT TAKES A TOUGH LAW TO HOLD HER

BEDFORD HILLS, N.Y. - Martha Weatherspoon makes her way across the waiting 
room at the women's prison. "Don't try to get away, now," a correction 
officer says.

It's a jailhouse joke. Ms. Weatherspoon is 73 and is going nowhere slowly. 
She walks with a cane, has a long scar where they opened her up to replace 
her right knee, and wears loose sandals to accommodate a persistent corn on 
her little toe. And she is not due to leave prison until just before her 
80th birthday.

Ms. Weatherspoon is serving 20 years to life for drug sale and possession. 
Her age and condition mean nothing under toughest-in-the-nation drug laws 
that Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller signed 29 years ago today, calling them 
"the strongest possible tools to protect our law-abiding citizens from drug 
pushers."

The laws arose from frustration in Albany over the intractable heroin 
epidemic. They require longer sentences for sale of two ounces or 
possession of four ounces of narcotics than the minimum sentences for rape 
and manslaughter. Judges have no discretion, there's little use in 
appealing, and grants of clemency are rare.

All the cards are in the hands of prosecutors, who are the laws' strongest 
defenders, warning nervous lawmakers against appearing soft on crime.

Today's anniversary will bring calls for change from a widening array of 
advocates, now including the laws' original sponsor, clergymen, judges and 
elected officials, not to mention an organization of inmate relatives 
called Mothers of the Disappeared. Gov. George E. Pataki declared in his 
State of the State address: "Let's reform the outdated Rockefeller drug 
laws." But in Albany, good ideas have only a casual relationship with 
legislative action.

Politically, it is easier to let Martha Weatherspoon sit behind razor wire 
at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Not that it's a bad place. It's 
a Smith College of prisons, and Ms. Weatherspoon, who entered at the age of 
60 with a third-grade education, has taken advantage of it.

She learned pottery and went to school, stopping only when her aging, 
injured back made it painful to sit in class. "I've learned a lot of 
things," she said. "I never knew fractions or division."

She has already served 13 years, more than some violent criminals. And now 
she has become a testament to the simplistic reasoning behind the 
Rockefeller laws.

Ms. Weatherspoon grew up farming in Alabama and came north, first cleaning 
houses in the New York City suburbs and then picking vegetables and fruit 
on the farms around Syracuse. She fell from a ladder while picking apples 
in the early 1980's, cracking her ribs and leaving her disabled and 
destitute. Drugs hooked two of her four daughters. "It broke my heart," she 
said. But then, Ms. Weatherspoon started dealing drugs to make money. "I 
bought furniture for my apartment, clothes and lots of food," she said. 
"Then I stopped."

Then she started again, procuring eight ounces of cocaine for a man who 
turned out to be an undercover officer. "She made some bad choices, 
beginning with selling drugs," said Richard Southwick, a federal 
prosecutor, who prosecuted Ms. Weatherspoon when he was an assistant 
district attorney. Ms. Weatherspoon rejected a plea deal and a reduced 
sentence, choosing to fight instead. She ended up with 20 years, which 
feels like a life sentence.

"It is illegal and there is punishment," said Shirley Witherspoon, Ms. 
Weatherspoon's daughter, who spells her last name differently. "But this 
harsh a punishment for a woman of her age?"

Ms. Weatherspoon's daughter does not argue that all prison time is bad. She 
credits her own six-month prison term in 1994 with breaking her drug addiction.

BUT even Ms. Weatherspoon's prosecutor can not argue that her lengthy term 
makes sense. "One has to ask oneself," he said, "what's being served by her 
continued incarceration?"

Apparently not drug control at the subsidized apartment complex where Ms. 
Weatherspoon lived and sold drugs. "Drugs were all over the place," said 
Shirley Witherspoon.

Ask law enforcement officials now about the complex on Syracuse's east side 
and you'll hear the same frustration that motivated Albany lawmakers a 
generation ago. Drugs have survived the efforts of the police and apartment 
managers. Even a name change worthy of politicians - from Hilltop 
apartments to Rolling Green Estates - hasn't helped. "They can put Happy 
Acres on it," said Ed McQuat, the chief of narcotics for the Onondaga 
County district attorney's office. "It is what it is."
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