SEEKING CLEMENCY IS FAR DIFFERENT WHEN YOU'RE NOT RICH, AS TERRI TAYLOR KNOWS

FORT WORTH, Texas -- As Bill Clinton was deciding to pardon fugitive
billionaire Marc Rich during the infamous all-nighter before his last
morning in office, Terri Christine Taylor wasn't getting much sleep either.

A federal inmate here, Ms. Taylor paced the 9-by-12 room she shares with
three other prisoners. Like some 3,000 people across the country, she had a
clemency application pending and knew that Mr. Clinton had until noon on
Jan. 20 to decide who was worthy of mercy.

Her case was plausible: As a 19-year-old in 1990, she was convicted of
conspiring to manufacture illicit drugs, though her role was limited. At
the behest of her 36-year-old boyfriend, she bought legal chemicals that he
needed to make methamphetamine. Ms. Taylor was sentenced under the stern
U.S. Sentencing Guidelines to nearly 20 years.

By commuting the sentences of a handful of other low-level drug defendants,
Mr. Clinton had signaled a willingness near the end of his tenure to
release some nonviolent inmates serving long terms. In prison, Ms. Taylor
had participated in drug rehabilitation, taken college-level classes and
earned praise from corrections officials. And the Justice Department made
inquiries about her clemency application -- an indication that it was taken
seriously.

"I was pacing, praying, hoping and dreaming," she says.

But Inauguration Day brought bad news. She wasn't on the list of 177 people
who received clemency. She sat on her bunk bed, sobbing. "I just wanted to
understand, to make this make sense," she says. How do the lucky few get
chosen?

Ms. Taylor's story illustrates the flip side of the controversy over Mr.
Clinton's clemency grants: For every well-connected successful applicant,
there were dozens of unsuccessful candidates whose pleas may have been
equally meritorious, or more so, but never commanded enough notice to make
the cut.

The former president says he made his decisions strictly on the merits. But
many recipients exploited insider connections to Mr. Clinton, his
relatives, his aides, Democratic fundraisers or donors. Some paid hefty
fees for this influence.

The most startling examples are Mr. Rich and Carlos Vignali Jr., one an
alleged tax-evader and oil-profiteer who fled the country to avoid trial
for 17 years, the other a cocaine trafficker. Mr. Rich's pardon was
advocated by his ex-wife, who gave a total of $1.5 million to Democrats and
Mr. Clinton's library, and by Mr. Rich's lawyer, Jack Quinn, a former White
House counsel. Mr. Vignali, released by the president after serving six
years of a 14-year sentence, was aided by Mr. Clinton's brother-in-law,
Hugh Rodham, an attorney who received $200,000 for working on the case. Mr.
Rodham later returned the money under pressure.

Dozens of other successful applicants also circumvented the Justice
Department's standard pardon-review process or used influential
intermediaries. Ms. Taylor herself had supporters who tried to rally
political backing for her cause. She nearly made it onto a list of
potential clemency recipients submitted to the White House by Clinton
friend Jann Wenner, founder of Rolling Stone magazine. But like most
clemency applicants, Ms. Taylor lacked sufficient clout.

"While we were coming through the front door, following the rules, the back
door of the White House was wide open," says Ms. Taylor, "and the people
Clinton let through there are home now."

Ms. Taylor's home is a 1,500-inmate federal facility here surrounded by two
15-foot fences. She is 30 years old, and has spent nearly 11 years in
prison. The federal system doesn't allow parole, so with time off for good
behavior, the earliest she could get out is Aug. 18, 2006, two days before
her 36th birthday.

The only child of a teenage mother, she was born in Florida and moved to a
small town in south Texas as an adolescent. Her mother, she says, "did the
best she could" but worked long hours as a bartender and wasn't home much.
"I fell in with the wrong crowd and started smoking pot," says Ms. Taylor.
Soon, she moved on to cocaine and methamphetamine. She quit school after
ninth grade.

That's when William Boman intervened. A cousin of Ms. Taylor's mother, he
and his wife, Norma, lived 50 miles away in Houston. Their three children
had grown up and left, so Ms. Taylor moved in with Uncle Buddy and Aunt
Norma, as she calls them. They sent her to hairdressing school. Then she
met Benjamin Alan Roark. She was 17; he was 33. "He was a sweet talker,"
she says, "and I thought, 'Oh, wow!' He was my first real serious
relationship."

"We told her, 'Gal, you're going to get into trouble,' " recalls Mr. Boman.
"But you couldn't tell her anything. She was in love."

Ms. Taylor contends that at first, she didn't know her boyfriend was
involved in the drug trade. "Basically, it was, 'Don't ask no questions,' "
she says. He didn't hit her, she adds, but at times, she felt intimidated,
and "I did what he told me to do."

Mr. Roark, now a federal inmate in El Reno, Okla., confirms trying to keep
her in the dark and takes the blame for her conviction. He apologized to
her once, in a 1996 Christmas card. She didn't answer, and they haven't
communicated since.

From Bad to Worse

Not long after getting involved with Mr. Roark, Ms. Taylor was thrown out
of cosmetology school after coming back from lunch with beer on her breath.
She says she eventually became a methamphetamine addict and had repeated
run-ins with the police. In 1988, she pleaded guilty to shoplifting a $5
makeup case and possessing a small packet of the drug, which is also known
as speed and resembles tiny pieces of crystal. Mr. Roark backs her claim
that he had put the drugs in her purse without telling her.

Before being sentenced, Ms. Taylor was arrested again for possessing a
small packet of speed and a baggy containing heroin residue. Mr. Roark
again says the drugs were his. Then, she failed to complete a court-ordered
residential drug-treatment program. She ended up spending a total of four
months in jail on various charges.

Meanwhile, Mr. Roark went to prison in 1989 for a parole violation related
to a prior methamphetamine conviction in Texas state court. He served 16
months.

While Mr. Roark was in prison, Mr. Boman says he saw an opportunity to
straighten out Ms. Taylor. He gave her an old pickup truck and a job at his
industrial-parts delivery business. But after Mr. Roark was released in May
1990, the couple reunited.

In early July 1990, Mr. Roark and Ms. Taylor say in separate interviews, he
instructed her to drive with him to Mobile, Ala., eight hours away. They
say he sent her into a chemical-supply store to buy two pounds of
phenylacetic acid, one gallon of acetic anhydride and one gallon of
methylamine -- legal substances that can be used to make methamphetamine.

Using fake identification, she lied to store employees, saying the
chemicals were for pest control. A suspicious store employee called the
Drug Enforcement Administration, which set up a sting, documents filed in
federal court in Mobile show.

Ms. Taylor returned to Mobile a month later, this time by airplane, with
$4,600 in cash, court documents show. She bought more chemicals and took
them by taxi to a nearby Motel 6. Mr. Roark arrived from Texas in a
Cadillac. He loaded the goods into the car the next morning. As they pulled
onto the highway, DEA agents swooped in and arrested them.

Ms. Taylor and Mr. Roark say he never explicitly told her what he intended
to do with the chemicals. But she admits knowing that he was making drugs.
"Alan told me I wouldn't get into trouble because I was buying chemicals
that were legal to buy," she says. "I thought, 'If I'm not directly
involved, then I'm not involved, right?' "

Wrong. Federal prosecutors in Mobile offered a plea bargain with a 10-year
sentence if she would testify against Mr. Roark, but she declined. "Ten
years sounded crazy to me," she says. "I didn't associate myself with being
a meth manufacturer." At trial, the jury didn't buy her defense that she
was an older man's unknowing dupe. In September 1990, she and Mr. Roark
were convicted.

The federal sentencing guidelines, in place since 1987, give judges little
discretion to reduce sentences in cases involving drug defendants. Ms.
Taylor's prior criminal record and her refusal in court to admit criminal
culpability added to her sentence, which totaled 19 years and seven months.
Mr. Roark got 30 years.

"She wasn't innocent," says Mr. Boman. "I'm not going to say she shouldn't
have gotten some time."

Since then, Ms. Taylor has been shuttled from prison to prison. She has
requested clemency three times, drafting the first two petitions herself,
in 1991 and 1999. While incarcerated in Danbury, Conn., another inmate
recommended a local criminal-defense lawyer, Diane Polan, who agreed last
year to handle Ms. Taylor's latest petition.

Cause for Hope?

Lawyer and client saw cause for hope. In July, Mr. Clinton freed two
inmates Ms. Taylor had met in other institutions: Serena Nunn, who court
documents show was a bit player in a drug ring and acted at the behest of
her boyfriend, and Amy Pofahl, who court documents depict as a minor figure
in her husband's Ecstasy-smuggling operation. Ms. Taylor "was exactly the
kind of person [Mr. Clinton] was pardoning," Ms. Polan says.

On Sept. 7, Ms. Polan filed an application with Roger Adams, the career
government attorney who heads the Justice Department's six-lawyer pardon
office, which is supposed to review all clemency requests and help the
department make recommendations to the White House.

The Taylor application and supporting documents came to about 50 pages. She
acknowledges guilt but blames Mr. Roark, too. "The biggest mistake I've
made was becoming involved with a much older man who entangled me in a drug
conspiracy," her petition states. Mr. Roark swears in an accompanying
affidavit that "to my knowledge, Ms. Taylor has never dealt, trafficked or
manufactured drugs."

Ms. Taylor's file includes evidence of rehabilitation: a 1991 high-school
equivalency diploma, a certificate for completing a yearlong prison
drug-treatment program, a letter from a prison-job foreman calling her "one
of my most-outstanding workers," and records showing a 3.71 grade-point
average for classes administered in prison by Eastern Kentucky University.

The effort to free Ms. Taylor lacked one crucial element: heavy-duty
support from someone close to the Clinton administration. There were,
however, efforts made on her behalf. Mr. Boman had become the Texas
coordinator for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a Washington-based
group that lobbies against lengthy sentences for low-level, nonviolent drug
offenders. He sent information on her case to 31 members of Congress he
thought might be sympathetic and pressed fellow state FAMM coordinators to
contact others.

'Equally Meritorious'

Only one member, Democratic Rep. Patsy Mink of Hawaii, responded with a
full-blown letter of support sent directly to Mr. Clinton on Nov. 21. Mr.
Boman had targeted Rep. Mink because she had criticized long sentences for
nonviolent drug offenders and had advocated clemency for Ms. Pofahl. The
congresswoman says she concluded that Ms. Taylor's case was "equally
meritorious."

Working separately, FAMM's president, Julie Stewart, mounted a campaign
last fall for prisoners deemed most worthy of presidential clemency. Ms.
Stewart founded FAMM after her brother, Jeff Stewart, was arrested in 1990
and sentenced to five years in prison for growing marijuana. Although she
says she abhorred trying to decide who was most worthy, she concluded it
was "better to pick a few cases from among the hundreds of deserving cases
and get a few people out than to not have anyone get released."

She selected 24 inmates, all nonviolent, first-time offenders. She says she
reviewed Ms. Taylor's case but reluctantly rejected it because of the
prisoner's prior convictions. "We were trying to send the cleanest of the
clean," she says.

In October, as she was winnowing her list, Ms. Stewart learned that Mr.
Wenner, a Democratic party contributor, had arranged to interview his
friend, Mr. Clinton. Mr. Wenner's Rolling Stone magazine had
sympathetically covered Ms. Stewart's cause for years, so she asked him to
help. After the interview, Mr. Wenner sent 24 one-page case summaries to
Mr. Clinton and to one of his closest confidantes, then-Deputy White House
Counsel Bruce Lindsey. Mr. Wenner says he never directly discussed the
cases with the president.

Action at the Pardon Office

Over at the pardon office, Ms. Taylor's application wasn't summarily
dismissed, which is the fate of most petitions. Mr. Adams, the pardon
attorney, declines to comment on the Taylor case. But people familiar with
the situation say the office sought information on the case from prison
officials and the prosecutor who handled it in Mobile -- steps taken only
in cases that are being seriously considered.

Without revealing the department's recommendation, one official there says
the Taylor application was viewed sympathetically. "It has facts that are
similar to other cases where commutations were granted," this official says.

It couldn't be determined whether Mr. Clinton ever squarely addressed the
Taylor application. Rep. Mink's Nov. 21 letter prompted what appears to be
a standard response from the White House on Dec. 11. "I've shared your
concern with the president," wrote Kay Casstevens, then Mr. Clinton's
deputy legislative-affairs director. But Ms. Casstevens says she recalls
nothing about the case.

That isn't surprising, given that by late last year, the Clinton White
House was swamped with clemency requests. According to recent congressional
testimony by his former aides, Mr. Clinton realized early in 2000 that he
had granted an unusually small number of pardons and commutations compared
with past presidents. As word spread among well-connected private lawyers
in Washington that the president was in a forgiving mood, applicants
inundated the White House with appeals that bypassed or paralleled formal
applications to the Justice Department.

Hundreds of telephone calls and letters from Congress also flooded the
White House. One eleventh-hour appeal came from Democratic Rep. John
Conyers of Michigan, whose Jan. 17 missive briefly mentioned Ms. Taylor's
case, among about a dozen others.

On the evening of Jan. 19-20, chaos reigned in the White House as the
president and his aides sifted through clemency applications. When the
final clemency list was released on Jan. 20, it included 17 of the 24
inmates on the FAMM list Mr. Wenner submitted.

One of those freed was Kimberly Johnson, who had been serving time on a
drug conviction here in Fort Worth with Ms. Taylor. "I watched her walk out
that Saturday afternoon," Ms. Taylor says.

Mr. Boman, her surrogate father, now plans to press her case with President
Bush. "I'm 71 years old, and I'd like to see her released while I'm still
healthy enough to show her the administrative part of my business so I can
leave it to her," he says.

Ms. Taylor says she is trying to resign herself to five more years in
prison. She is taking typing and Spanish classes and working nights in the
prison medical center, mostly mopping floors.