ONE WAY TO GET PARDON HEARING

Pedro Miguel Riveiro, Belinda Lynn Lumpkin and Kellie Ann Mann were not
three of the better known names on the list of 176 clemency grants approved
by President Bill Clinton on his last day in office. All were low-level drug
offenders, sponsored by a group called Families Against Mandatory Minimums -
a respected foe of the nation's strict drug-sentencing laws but hardly a
Washington lobbying powerhouse.

As it turns out, however, even those three-and 14 other drug offenders who
got favorable treatment from Clinton-had a celebrity connection of sorts.

Instead of seeking clemency through the normal Justice Department process,
Families Against Mandatory Minimums used Rolling Stone magazine publisher
Jann Wenner as an emissary to bring the cases directly to the White House
last fall.

And it may have been the shrewdest move the group made.

"I suspect it may have had some influence. I'm not sure they would have
gotten out without it," said Julie Stewart, the group's director. "And I
don't think it's right. Our people generally do not have contacts, and it
does disproportionately impact their ability to get out. The process itself
should allow someone who's a nobody to be given relief without having to pay
money to a well-connected lawyer or know someone on the inside." Those
broader concerns form the backdrop to the continuing pardon controversy that
has dogged Clinton since he left the White House and led last week to the
headline-grabbing announcement by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White that
her office was opening a criminal investigation into the events leading to
the pardon of fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich.

Rich, who fled to Switzerland just before his 1983 indictment by Manhattan
federal prosecutors in the largest tax evasion case in U.S. history, won his
pardon through a direct appeal to Clinton by former White House counsel Jack
Quinn. The probe focuses on donations by his ex-wife, songwriter Denise
Rich, who gave $1.1 million to Democratic political committees, $450,000 to
Clinton's library foundation and $10,000 to Clinton's legal defense fund
during the 1990s.

The criminal probe was triggered when Denise Rich asserted her Fifth
Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refused to answer a list of
14 questions from a House committee, including questions about whether she
was reimbursed by her ex-husband for any of her political contributions.
Before the House grants her immunity, investigators want to examine her
financial and banking records, looking for evidence of any quid pro quo
involving the pardon.

The probe could also turn up evidence of campaign finance violations, if
Marc Rich actually supplied money that was donated in Denise Rich's name.
Rich attempted to renounce his U.S. citizenship after fleeing, and political
contributions from foreigners are illegal. But Clinton, Quinn and Denise
Rich have all denied any improprieties, and legal experts cautioned last
week that speculation about a criminal case is premature. Among other
problems: Rich, as a successful songwriter and the beneficiary of a divorce
settlement with the multimillionaire trader, is believed to have more than
enough money of her own to have made the donations.

"This is an unusual case because the allegations are so visible and because
of the possibility of an early congressional immunity grant," said
ex-prosecutor John Barrett, who teaches criminal law at St. John's
University Law School. "But U.S. attorneys' offices all over the country
every week open investigations and subpoena records that never turn into
criminal charges." Any charges that the pardon was granted in return for
donations would be particularly hard to prove. "A bribery case is an
extremely difficult case to establish," said former prosecutor Martin
Auerbach, one of the lead attorneys in the original tax case brought against
Rich. "You need the testimony of the giver or the receiver or some recording
of the communication to establish that there was an understanding-an
unlawful understanding. I don't think anyone would try to build one of these
cases circumstantially." Whatever the future of the Rich probe, however, the
case has already focused attention on broader questions about the pardon
power. Overall, according to the Justice Department, there is a backlog of
roughly 3,000 pardon and commutation requests before the department's pardon
attorney, who has a staff of six lawyers and an annual budget of about $1.6
million to process them. Clinton granted no pardons at all during four of
his years in office, and more than half of those he granted came during his
last two months in office.

Despite the Justice Department backlog, dozens of the 176 last-minute
pardons and sentence commutations granted by Clinton, including Rich's, did
not go through that process, and were instead processed on an expedited
basis by the White House without input from the prosecutors who handled the
cases. One pardon went to a Florida man who, it turned out, is currently
under investigation for ongoing criminal activity.

While he granted clemency to a number of low-profile offenders like the drug
prisoners sponsored by Families Against Mandatory Minimums, Clinton's
pardons also included a number of individuals with personal or political
ties to him, well-connected lawyers like Quinn, or both. Those included
several figures embroiled in the Whitewater investigation, four Hasidic men
whose Rockland County community gave overwhelming support to Clinton's wife
during her Senate campaign last year, former Arizona Gov. Fyfe Symington and
former CIA director John Deutch.

Polls released last week indicated that nearly two-thirds of New Yorkers
believe that Clinton handed out some pardons as a result of contributions or
favors. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's job approval rating has dropped to 38
percent from 46 percent in December, apparently in part a result of the
pardon controversies. Critics say the Rich case is a classic example of a
process in which clout plays too big a role.

"There probably isn't one person across this country today who is familiar
with this case who doesn't think that it's a question of power, connection,
money and that, in fact, is how this pardon occurred," said Sen. Herbert
Kohl (D-Wis.) at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week.

Despite those concerns, however, constitutional scholars point out that
Clinton is hardly the first president to issue controversial pardons.
President Gerald Ford pardoned former President Richard Nixon, and President
George Bush at the end of his term pardoned oilman Armand Hammer, a big
Republican contributor, and former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger on
the eve of an indictment relating to the Iran-Contra scandal.

Scholars warned against drastic reactions, such as a constitutional
amendment that would allow Congress to overturn pardons on a two-thirds
vote.

"I am not convinced that the relatively small number of putatively
questionable pardons in the 214-year history of our constitutional
experiment warrants tinkering with a system that generally works," said
Kenneth Gormley, a Duquesne University constitutional law expert.

Ironically, although much of the criticism of Clinton over the Rich case and
other pardons has focused on his failure to consult with the Justice
Department and prosecutors, some critics say he may have felt some
justifiable frustration with the normal procedures. While the pardon power
is designed to insert an element of mercy and compassion into the judicial
system, it has come to be dominated by law enforcement agencies that rarely
see any reason to revisit a conviction.

"Over the past 20 years it has gradually come to reflect the unforgiving
culture of federal prosecutors, and now serves primarily as a conduit for
their views," said Margaret Love, who served as the Justice Department's
pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997.

Stewart shares that view. The 17 drug prisoners who won clemency by going
directly to the White House, she noted, are virtually indistinguishable from
scores of other low-level drug offenders serving stiff mandatory sentences.
But few if any of those cases can get a sympathetic hearing in the Justice
Department, and she said she believes the system would work better if the
pardon process were institutionalized inside the White House, serving as a
balance to the views of law enforcement.

"Most cases are summarily denied," Stewart said. "It's very hard to get past
the starting gate. I think pardons should be a more regular part of a
president's term. It should not be an irregular act occurring in a spurt at
the end."