CJPF'S ERIC STERLING AT COURT TV PANEL DISCUSSION

For more information, contact:
Eric E. Sterling, President
The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation
Tel. (301) 301-589-6020

SILVER SPRING, MD – Eric Sterling, President of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation (CJPF), will appear in a Court TV panel discussion at New York Law School about the negative impact of mandatory minimum drug sentencing laws on March 11 at 10:00 a.m. at 40 Worth Street, in New York City.

The panel discussion is a prelude to Court TV's March 13 premiere of Guilt By Association, the network's first original movie about a woman who unwittingly becomes a victim of the country's war on drugs after police find her boyfriend to be dealing drugs. Such cases have become common. Mandatory minimum laws, designed to keep drugs and drug dealers off the streets, instead punish many low-level participants with the harshest sentences.

Eric E. Sterling is all-too-familiar with the controversial mandatory minimum laws -- he helped write them as Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary in 1986. "This law came out of my word processor. The enormity of our mistake is undoubtedly the low point of my 26 years as a lawyer. Congress acted with terrible haste and inadequate fact-finding," said Sterling.

There has been a dramatic increase in the number of women victimized by mandatory minimum laws, leaving children without mothers and families torn apart. Since 1986, the number of women incarcerated in state prisons on drug charges increased 888%, according to The Sentencing Project. Half of the total increase in women in America's prisons from 1986 to 1996 was due to drug offenses.

In 1991, Mr. Sterling helped create Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), a non-profit organization that challenges the excessive penalties required by mandatory minimum sentences. Since 1989, Mr. Sterling has served as President of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a non-profit center that educates the nation about criminal justice issues.