Delaware lawmakers consider changes to mandatory jail terms
By JAMES MERRIWEATHER
Dover Bureau reporter
02/09/2003
As Delaware lawmakers consider a proposal to allow judges to bypass mandatory minimum sentences in certain drug cases, some state law enforcement officials faced with crowded prisons offered a degree of support.
Passage of House Bill 35, filed Jan. 28 by Rep. John F. Van Sant, D-Woodcrest, and eight other legislators, would not wipe the mandatory minimum sentences off the books. But it would allow judges to skirt them in favor of drug treatment or other alternatives to prison for certain defendants: first-time offenders, for instance; those who played a minor role in a drug deal; or those who cooperated with police in arresting a drug trafficker.
Van Sant's bill was filed on behalf of Stand Up for What's Right and Just, a 2-year-old, 1,900-member citizens' organization that seeks criminal justice system reform. During the previous session of the legislature, the same proposal was reported out of the House Judiciary Committee, but died in competition with a bill drafted by Attorney General M. Jane Brady and Rep. Wayne A. Smith, R-Clair Manor, the House majority leader.
Brady's approach to sentencing reform would, among other things, allow the waiver of mandatory minimum sentences for motor-vehicle violations and reduce minimum sentences for some drug-possession offenses. It would increase minimum penalties, however, for heroin dealers and violent felons who use firearms.
Stand Up's executive coordinator, Thomas P. Eichler, says the increased penalties would serve to "handcuff" judges and thereby run counter to the overall reform effort.
Already, states such as Louisiana and Arkansas have relaxed mandatory drug penalties or expanded the use of alternatives to incarceration because of burgeoning inmate populations and ever-growing cash shortfalls, said Monica D. Pratt, spokeswoman for Families Against Mandatory Minimums in Washington, D.C.
"We're hoping that sentencing reform becomes a rallying cry for lawmakers around the country as a smart-on-crime solution to problems that every state and even the federal government are facing," Pratt said. She said at least 10 other states, including New Jersey, are considering alterations of sentencing laws.
Michigan Gov. John Engler signed legislation on Christmas Day that eliminated most of his state's mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses and offered early parole to certain offenders convicted under them. Except under extraordinary circumstances, the old laws required a sentence of at least 10 years for conviction of possessing at least 50 grams of cocaine. Under the new law, judges may impose any sentence up to 20 years.
Mandatory minimum sentences became prevalent in Delaware in the mid-1980s and intensified with the enactment of a 1989 state law that prescribed trafficker status and a mandatory three-year sentence for possession of five grams of cocaine.
Alter law or expand jails
Opponents have contended over the years that the law mostly ensnared drug users or low-level dealers and couriers while drug kingpins, the nominal targets, often escaped its grasp.
But the original sponsor of the 1989 drug law, former Sen. Thomas B. Sharp, D-Pinecrest, had vowed he would block efforts to alter it until the state's police chiefs asked him to back off. Sharp had been uniquely positioned to make good on his promise: He was president pro tem of the Senate and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, James T. Vaughn Sr., D-Clayton, said that as a former state trooper, Smyrna police chief and state corrections commissioner, he is not given to coddling people who break the law. But he, too, said he is willing to listen to proposals for change.
Corrections Commissioner Stanley W. Taylor Jr. has signed on publicly to the sentencing-reform effort. He said a 1,000-bed addition to the state's prisons - on top of a 2,600-bed expansion completed in late 2000 - may be needed soon unless judges get more flexibility in deciding which cases merit prison sentences.
At budget hearings last November, Taylor listed the operating capacity of the prison system at 6,587, or 73 inmates fewer than the number in the system at the time. He said that given current population growth trends and sentencing policies, he probably would need to call for an expansion later this year to have needed beds available within two years or so.
Smith, the House majority leader, said the need for more prison beds would not necessarily figure in his support for sentencing changes. "I have never had a constituent tell me that they minded spending money for safety and security," Smith said.
Violent criminals curbed
The state Sentencing Accountability Commission said in a report to the Delaware General Assembly in April that the state's 15-year-old sentencing strategy was working largely as planned - with most violent criminals getting time in prison while less serious offenders receive less restrictive sentences, including probation and home confinement.
The commission's review indicated that increasing inmate populations were driven largely by probation violators and defendants awaiting trial.
In response to an inquiry from Eichler, the state's Statistical Analysis Center reported in October that Delaware's prisons had no inmates serving a mandatory minimum sentence for a nonviolent crime as of June 30, 2000.
The number serving minimum sentences for "violent" drug-related crimes - including drug-dealing offenses that feature no other violent act - was 497.
Reach James Merriweather at 678-4273 or jmerriweather@delawareonline.com.
