From the State House News Service... Your phone calls/emails are working. If you have not called/emailed, it would be a great time to do it. The narrative is shifting. We may need to "give" on a narrower/less sucky "3 strikes" piece, in order to get truly good reforms like reduced sentences on non-violent criminals and reductions in school zones. If you have not called, please do. I will update the calling rubric/talking points shortly!
CONFEREE OFFERS TO PITCH SENATE’S REDUCED DRUG SENTENCES TO HOUSE MEMBERS
By Matt Murphy
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, FEB. 3, 2012…. Without the opportunity for House members to vote on key pieces of a Senate crime bill, House Judiciary Chairman Eugene O’Flaherty said on Friday he believed he could sell a compromise bill to the full House that toughens penalties for repeat violent offenders and includes Senate plans reducing mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenders, lowering drug weight limits that trigger tougher sentences, and slashing the size of school zones with special penalties for drug dealers.
O’Flaherty made his offer to Friday morning to three Senate members of a conference committee negotiating an omnibus sentencing reform package that cleared the House and Senate in different forms late last year. The House passed a much narrower bill that only dealt with repeat violent offenders by eliminating parole after a third felony, a measure also included in the Senate bill.
The positioning from the House Friday appeared to open a window for compromise on a bill that has drawn protests from social justice, prisoner and religious groups for its “harsh” approach to dealing with repeat offenders.
If House conferees agree to provisions of the Senate bill not addressed by the full House, the consensus bill would not be subject to amendments, only up-or-down votes in the branches.
Gov. Deval Patrick has called for the Legislature to send him a “balanced bill,” and one Senate conferee said he was reluctant to take key pieces of the Senate package completely off the table.
“I think it’s possible that we could convince our House colleagues that in order to create prison space or prison beds for what we considered to be the most violent repeat recidivists that are committing some of the crimes, and we can talk about the recidivist piece as a separate issue, moving forward in our discussion, I think in terms of the minimum mandatory revisions you folks did I’m intrigued by it and I think there’s an opportunity to reach some common ground with what you’ve done there as well as possibly the school zones,” O’Flaherty said during a rare open conference committee meeting that lasted 39 minutes.
O’Flaherty said that beyond the key areas where he felt he could create a “nexus” between keeping violent criminals behind bars and releasing non-violent offenders to relieve prison overcrowding, he felt it would be difficult to get House members to agree to other provisions such as an expansion of wiretapping laws and mandatory post-release supervision without a full House debate.
“It would be very difficult for me to go back to my members, and I say this respectfully, with a more bloated bill,” O’Flaherty said. Senate conferees said they might have the same problem in that branch if they return with a less comprehensive piece of legislation.
As the conferees met, opponents of the habitual offender bill held a press conference in Gardner Auditorium critiquing the bill as “punitive and harsh” that will add millions in costs for prisons.
“We condemn the three-strikes bill. We feel that is harsh, very punitive and does not provide any preventive or rehabilitative mechanism that basically looks at a long-term preventative effort and as a matter of fact we strongly believe it undermines public safety and community security," said. Rev. George Walters-Sleyon of the Center for Church and Prisons at a State House event featuring several clergy and community leaders in opposition to the bill.
The conference committee members agreed to have their staffs begin the work of drafting compromise language on the issues laid out by O’Flaherty while the senators go back to their leadership and members to discuss whether a scaled-back bill might be accepted.
Unlike the Senate, which engaged in months of talks with stakeholders over the various pieces of its bill prior to its vote, O’Flaherty said the Senate passed “up to 30 or 40 other matters that you folks added by amendment on the Senate side and sent to us with 48 hours to go before a recess.”
In the interest of getting a bill that addresses public safety done in a timely manner, O’Flaherty said, narrowing the scope of the bill should enable the conference committee to reach a deal before debate over the state budget and health care reform “subsume” the branches.
Sen. Cynthia Creem, the co-chair of the Judiciary Committee and the lead Senate conferee, said she was open to the offer made by O’Flaherty, but noted that some of the pieces the House wants to exclude from negotiations such as good-behavior credits for inmates and work release were important to some members.
“I’m amenable. I’m open to anything right now. This was a great beginning and my agenda has always been to change the mandatory minimums and be smart on crime and that’s always been my priority,” Creem said.
Sen. Steven Baddour (D-Methuen) took a harder line, telling O’Flaherty that he was not prepared to support a final bill that did not include a reform of the state’s wiretapping laws to include new electronic forms of communication.
“The wiretapping piece, as far as I’m concerned, is critical and I’m not prepared to support a bill that doesn’t include that piece,” Baddour said, noting that the Senate might not have passed a bill without winning the support of the district attorneys who he said compromised on sentencing and mandatory minimums.
After the meeting, Baddour said compromise means discussing all aspects of the proposed law changes to find common ground, not excluding pieces before those negotiations begin.
Creem, however, said the support of the district attorneys would not weigh on her decision to accept or reject the House’s offer to compromise on key portions of the Senate bill.
“I don’t just vote how the DA’s tell me,” Creem said.
Baddour responded by reiterating that the input from the district attorneys played a key role in convincing other senators to back to omnibus crime bill because the changes would enhance their ability to prosecute criminals. “I don’t either, and I have an understanding of how the criminal justice system works,” Baddour said.
Rep. David Linsky, one of the House conferees, said there are 1,000 people in state prisons currently serving mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes without the opportunity for parole, while those convicted of secondary murder and aggravated rape are getting parole hearings.
“The more we start to confuse the issue by bringing up issues like wiretapping, which may or may not have merit but can be dealt with in other vehicles, the less opportunity we have to resolve the important issues,” Linsky said.
The Senate bill included numerous provisions reducing mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, including a decrease from five years to three-and-a-half years for trafficking between 2,000 and 10,000 pounds of marijuana and a reduction from five years to three-and-a-half years for possessing or distributing a Class A drug like heroin after one similar offense.
Though not speaking for his fellow conferees or the House, O’Flaherty said he would prefer to see the school zones that trigger harsher penalties for drug offenses reduced to 100 feet, from 1,000 feet. The Senate bill reduced school zones to 500 feet. A Senate amendment to drop the zone to 250 feet failed last year on a vote of 6-29, but Creem noted that her initial preference, like O’Flaherty, was for a 100-foot school zone.
O’Flaherty also told Senate Majority Leader Bruce Tarr that he believed the conference committee could also include changes to the operation of the parole board included in the Senate bill, such as an expansion of its membership.
Tarr expressed an openness to working with the House, though he said he had reservations about taking issues off the table at the outset of negotiations, but acknowledged that prompt resolution of the bill was important because of the potential budget impacts the bill could have on corrections funding.
Rep. Brad Hill, an Ipswich Republican and sponsor of legislation creating a three-strikes law, attended the conference committee meeting, but did not comment on the proposals and was not immediately available to discuss the developments after the meeting.
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02/03/2012
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Thank you for getting this organized. It is great to see the pressure working!
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