Push Is On to Reform Rockefeller Drug Laws

Sliver of hope offered for drug convicts

By BRIAN KATES Daily News Staff Writer

Sunday, May 26, 2002

New York's prisons are filled with inmates who say they didn't do the crime. Cherie Gallipoli is not one of them. But, she says, she shouldn't be doing the time. And a lot of people agree.

Thanks to the so-called Rockefeller drug laws, Gallipoli, caught up in a sweep when her drug-dealer husband was arrested in 1991, is serving 15 years to life at Taconic Correctional Facility in Westchester County.

Only the most horrific killers get a similar sentence — and many get far less. "Harsh" and "Draconian" are the adjectives most frequently used to describe the Rockefeller statutes, which were signed into law 30 years ago this month and are the subject of a major legislative battle in Albany.

Gallipoli does not deny her guilt, but she does dispute the fairness of her sentence. Why, she asks, did she get slapped with more time behind bars than Robert Chambers, who got five to 15 years for strangling Jennifer Levin in the notorious Preppie Murder Case?

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