MANDATORY PRISON TIME FOR DRUGS CHALLENGED

Many Say Treatment Better Than Get-Tough Approach

GOLDSBORO -- Dale Hill has a 7-year-old son, but the only place the child
has ever seen him is in prison.

Hill, a convicted cocaine dealer, knows where the responsibility lies.

"There's no one to blame but me," he said last week during an interview at
the federal prison in this Eastern North Carolina city. "I am guilty of the
charges."

After seven years in prison, his family and supporters say, he's a changed
man who needs to go home to his two sons and his mother's Concord farm.

But chances are Hill, 35, won't be leaving prison anytime soon.

He got slammed with a 14-year, no-parole sentence, even though he was a
low-level dealer in a Charlotte drug outfit and says he only sold to
support his habit.

His supporters say he's an example of what they see as the misguided fervor
of tough 1980s-era laws passed to combat the drug trade. Lengthy mandatory
minimum prison terms and strict sentencing guidelines mean bit players such
as Hill can get hammered just as badly as drug kingpins - sometimes worse.

"I'm not soft on crime," said Ken Andresen, the Charlotte attorney who
initially represented Hill. "I just think, by God, there's got to be a
smarter way."

Critics have been attacking the laws for years, but today they seem to be
gaining momentum as more people voice suspicions that America might be
losing the war on drugs. The rising belief, expressed from Hollywood to the
nation's capital, is that treatment programs should receive greater emphasis.

The get-tough approaches are on their way out, said Elaine Lynch, a
Huntersville resident and coordinator of the 15-member Charlotte chapter of
the national group Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

Her 35-year-old son has served 11 years of a 19-year sentence for drug
conspiracy. She said it was his first conviction, and she hopes such
sentences will become a thing of the past.

"It may not happen this year, but it will happen," she said. "People are
getting fed up with the propaganda. The war on drugs is not working."

But Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Bell, the man who helped put Hill
behind bars, said the threat of tough sentences encourages drug suspects to
plead guilty and assist in bringing down drug conspiracies.

Bell said instead of doing that, Hill demanded a trial - and lost.

"I hope stories like Hill's act as deterrents," Bell said. "Maybe the next
guy won't get into the business as a result of his story."

Hoping for a way out Hill is serving his time at a minimum-security federal
prison on the grounds of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. With its
salmon-pink walls and neat flower beds, it looks more like an elementary
school than a prison. No razor wire-topped fences nor ominous sentry towers
surround the manicured grounds.

That's small consolation for Hill.

"This is the best of the best," he said, sitting in a sunny commons area.
"It's still prison, though."

Of the prison's 550 inmates, 68 percent are drug offenders whose crimes
didn't include violence. The rest are white-collar criminals.

Hill was convicted of dealing at least 15 kilograms - or 33 pounds - of
cocaine. Federal law says that on a first offense for selling more than 5
kilograms, the mandatory minimum sentence is 10 years.

But the sentencing guidelines, which are based on the weight of the drugs
involved, called for the judge to give Hill 12 to 15 years.

Because the option with the heaviest punishment usually applies, his prison
term stemmed from the recommendation in the sentencing guidelines.

Now a born-again Christian, Hill feels he has paid his debt to society and
knows "beyond a shadow of a doubt" he can be a law-abiding citizen. He felt
so strongly, he sought a pardon from former President Clinton.

Dozens of relatives, friends and supporters wrote letters on his behalf to
newspapers and officials. Even U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., has sent a
letter to pardon attorneys urging that Hill's case be given "every proper
consideration."

But Clinton didn't pardon him before leaving office, leaving Hill
frustrated and disappointed.

"This is not just about me," he said. "There's thousands more just like me
who've learned their lesson and are ready to go back to the world, but we
can't."

The 'drug cancer' Increasingly, people are asking whether low-level,
nonviolent drug offenders such as Hill should be sent to treatment programs
rather than prison. New York is considering rewriting its mandatory minimum
laws. New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican, has called the war on
drugs "a miserable failure." And the former U.S. drug czar, retired Gen.
Barry McCaffrey, has said the "drug war" should instead be called the "drug
cancer."

Earlier this year, the Oscar-nominee movie "Traffic" caused a stir in
Washington with its provocative message that the United States is losing
the drug war. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who
appeared in the movie, said the film provided "the final tipping point" to
convince him more should be spent on treatment and prevention.

The movie seemed to say aloud what many Americans privately feel. A poll of
1,500 adults this year by the Pew Research Center showed 74 percent believe
the United States is losing the drug war.

That poll, however, still showed strong support for tough anti-drug law
enforcement and some ambivalence about whether mandatory minimum sentences,
which have sent prison populations soaring, should be rolled back.

In 1980, there were 19,000 drug offenders in state prisons and 4,900 in
federal prisons, according to the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based
prison reform group.

By 1998, the number of drug offenders in state prisons had jumped to
236,800, making them nearly a quarter of the inmate population. In federal
prisons, there were 63,011, making up more than half of all federal inmates.

Lynch, the FAMM coordinator, said in many cases, those aren't drug
kingpins. She said the defendants who get the best plea deals are those
with the most information - often the people at the top of drug
conspiracies. She said that sometimes leaves low-level dealers to take the
worst punishment.

"It's not that (drug offenders) shouldn't be punished," she said. "But let
the punishment fit the crime."

Prisons and politics Lyle Yurko, a Charlotte defense lawyer, is cautiously
optimistic about the chances of change. He is a member of the N.C.
Sentencing Commission and sits on an advisory board to the U.S. Sentencing
Commission, a panel that advises Congress.

He believes the lengths of sentences are so strongly centered on the amount
of drugs involved that important factors such as gunplay and violence don't
receive as much weight.

He said a minor street-level dealer doesn't take long to sell 500 grams -
little more than a pound - of powder cocaine. At that level, a mandatory
minimum sentence of five to 40 years kicks in.

He believes the impact of the tough laws is more substantial on low-level
criminals who regularly sell small amounts of drugs than on large-scale
drug dealers who use firearms and lead drug conspiracies.

He said the national commission is about to tackle such issues, and he
hopes the growing distrust of the drug war will embolden politicians. But
he knows it won't be easy.

"It's a very difficult thing to try to get political entities to repeal
laws that sound tough, but in reality are simply unfair," he said. "Drug
sentencing has become so tied up with politics that it is very difficult to
make changes that are rational and sensible."

But Bell, the federal prosecutor, said the laws do work.

He said the way for defendants to avoid mandatory minimums and the
sentencing guidelines is to cooperate with prosecutors. For "substantial
assistance" that helps solve a case, defendants usually cut their possible
prison time in half.

"The goal is to work our way up the distribution chain," he said.

Still, he acknowledged that kingpins who cooperate do sometimes receive
lighter sentences than do their underlings, especially when, as in Hill's
case, a low-level offender demands a trial, while the leaders plead guilty.

For instance, Boyd Raymond Williams, a Charlotte man identified in court
papers as one of Hill's cocaine suppliers, received a four-year sentence.

Bell added that the laws do allow additional charges and heavier punishment
when drug dealers use guns to advance their illegal enterprises.

"If he sold drugs every day and took a gun out on the street with him every
day, each one of them is a separate offense," the prosecutor said. "I've
had 80 to 100 years on people for the gun part before we even start talking
about the drugs."

'All I can do is hope' When he was indicted in 1992, Hill thought he could
beat the charges. He refused to take a plea bargain and a seven-year
sentence - even after his lawyers told him he didn't have a prayer at trial.

"In some ways, it really was a shame, because the case really was
overwhelming," Bell said. "But it was his option."

Hill just shakes his head.

"It was a major mistake," he said. "There have been a lot of days I've
kicked myself in the butt thinking about that."

Today, he looks back with hard-earned wisdom, and a belief that he has
learned his lesson.

Last week, he said his mother, Alice Hill, and Edwina Eubanks, a legal
assistant, were working on his latest pardon application. This one goes to
President Bush.

Without a miracle from Washington, his sons won't see him outside a prison
anytime soon.

"All I can do is hope," he said.