American Notes NEW YORK CITY

When New York State Supreme Court Justice Lewis Douglass sent convicted Drug Dealer Agapito Lopez up the river to prison last year, he noted that $440,000 had been found in Lopez's Brooklyn apartment. That was merely cash on hand: in addition, the district attorney's office claims, Lopez owns three houses in New York, a car dealership, and several apartments in his native Puerto Rico. Last week Judge Douglass decided to redistribute some of Lopez's assets. He ordered the dealer to hand over more than $2 million in restitution to New York City's drug-rehabilitation programs. It marked the most sweeping invocation of victim-compensation laws by a judge in a drug case.