The prosecutor who speaks for the state’s 62 district attorneys is vowing to fight to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s plan to let more nonviolent drug offenders enter treatment programs.
“The fear is that it will open the doors to people who don’t deserve or need it but use it to circumvent going to prison,” said Staten Island’s Dan Donovan, who heads the state’s District Attorneys Association.
“Not everyone who sells drugs needs treatment,” he added. “Some sell drugs as a business.”
Under current law, a judge must sentence a defendant to at least a year in prison for such Class B felonies as possession with intent to sell. The judge can defer sentencing and let the defendant go into treatment only if the DA agrees.
Under Silver’s plan, judges could decide on their own, as they did before the state passed its draconian Rockefeller drug laws in 1973. Mandatory sentences for nonviolent Class B felonies would end.