NAVY ANALYST MORISON RECEIVES A PARDON

Three area residents -- the first person ever convicted of leaking
classified government information to the news media and two men who
received controversial drug sentences -- were among the 176 people who
received presidential pardons or commutations yesterday in one of President
Clinton's final acts in office.

Each of the cases -- the earliest of which occurred in 1985 -- provoked
debate at the time of trial over the fairness of the prosecution and
sentencing.

The three are:

- - Samuel Loring Morison, a former Navy intelligence analyst found guilty in
1985 of espionage and theft for leaking three classified spy satellite
photographs to the British magazine Jane's Defence Weekly.

- - Derrick Curry, a college student convicted by a federal jury in 1993 of
conspiracy and distribution of crack cocaine. Curry was sent to prison for
19 years and seven months, with no possibility of parole.

- - Charles F. Campbell, who was convicted in 1994 of conspiring to
distribute more than 50 grams of crack cocaine, although he played a minor
role in the conspiracy.

Campbell and Curry had their sentences commuted by Clinton, authorizing
their release from prison, while Morison received a presidential pardon,
according to a White House list.

Morison, grandson of the famed naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison, also
was convicted in 1985 on separate espionage and theft charges for taking
portions of two other Navy documents, also classified as secret, and
keeping them at his apartment in Crofton, where he still lives, according
to his former attorney.

Morison, then 40, was sentenced to two years in federal prison by a federal
judge who did not accept his attorneys' contention that their client had
been unfairly categorized as a spy.

Since the sentencing, there has been considerable legal debate about
whether espionage statutes apply to disclosure of information to the press.
Before Morison's case, no one had been convicted for disclosing classified
information to journalists.

Morison's former attorney, Mark H. Lynch with the American Civil Liberties
Union, said he was delighted by the pardon.

"Obviously an enormous number of people disclose classified information to
the press," Lynch said. "Sam was picked on by the government to run a test
case to see whether the statute applied."

Michael Schatzow, who prosecuted Morison, called Lynch's statement
"absurd," and said that what Morrison did "was not a mere leak to the
press" to get a story out, but rather an effort to "win favor with a
potential employer."

Curry's case was controversial because, before his arrest, the 20-year-old
had never been in trouble with the law, and was believed to be nothing more
than a delivery boy -- "a flunky," one FBI agent said then -- for a crack
cocaine ring. Curry, a one-time basketball standout at Northwestern High
School in Hyattsville, contended that he broke no laws and did not
understand that he was transporting drugs.

Curry's sentence was mandatory because of a 1988 law that created
minimum-mandatory federal sentences for possession of crack cocaine that
are far harsher than for possession of powder cocaine.

Had Curry been involved with a ring that dealt in powder cocaine, his
sentence could have been far lighter, according to the law. As it was, his
penalty was nearly three times the length of the prison sentence served by
most convicted murderers.

Curry's father, Arthur, a retired Prince George's County high school
principal, said last night that he had just brought his son home from a
prison in Cumberland, Md. He said he and his family "are just very grateful
. . . [to Clinton] for showing mercy and giving my son a second chance"
after the son made a "terrible mistake."

Campbell's case, which occurred a year after Curry's sentencing, had a twist.

Under the federal sentencing statute, Campbell, then 50, faced at least 20
years in prison. However, Senior U.S. District Judge Louis Oberdorfer
surprised defense attorneys as well as prosecutors by giving Campbell and a
co-defendant much less prison time.

Oberdorfer ruled that applying the 1998 federal sentencing law to Campbell
and the co-defendant would have been "cruel and unusual" punishment, and
thus unconstitutional. Instead, the judge imposed 33-month prison terms --
the same sentence that the two likely would have faced in a powder cocaine
case.

Prosecutors appealed the decision. Roger Adams, the Justice Department
lawyer handling yesterday's actions, said Campbell ultimately received 240
months in prison and 10 years' supervised release.

Abbe Jolles, who represented the co-defendant, said last night about
Campbell's commutation, "That Bill Clinton, I could just kiss him."

Reached at his McLean home yesterday, Oberdorfer said he would not comment.

Staff writer Martin Weil contributed to this report.