Posh Zaccaro ‘Jail’ Quarters Upset Governor

BURLINGTON, Vt. — Vermont’s governor, stunned by reports that John Zaccaro Jr. is serving a four-month jail term for cocaine peddling in a posh $1,500-a-month apartment, today ordered a review of state corrections policy.

“We will take a look and maybe we will make changes,” said a spokesman for Gov. Madeleine M. Kunin.

The prosecutor who tried Zaccaro said conditions of his incarceration under an experimental house-arrest program are making a mockery of the jail sentence.

“I think it’s a joke,” said Addison County State’s Atty. John Quinn. “I don’t think it’s any punishment at all. Basically, he’s grounded for 90 days.”

Zaccaro, son of 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine A. Ferraro, was ordered on June 16 to serve four months of a one- to five-year prison term following his conviction in April for selling $25 of cocaine to an undercover police officer.

‘The Pharmacist’

At the time of his arrest in 1986, Zaccaro was a student at Middlebury College, where he was widely known as “the pharmacist.”

Defense lawyers persuaded Judge Francis McCaffrey to recommend that Zaccaro serve his sentence in Chittenden County, where he has since qualified for a pilot program under which some nonviolent inmates are kept under house arrest rather than behind bars.

Corrections Department Planning Director John Perry cited confidentiality rules in refusing to confirm published reports that Zaccaro is living in a $1,500-a-month apartment with cable television, maid service and privileges at the neighboring YMCA.

But Kunin press secretary Louis Berney said the report is basically accurate.