A CAGED BIRD, BECAUSE SHE DIDN'T SING

ON MAY 6, Serena Nunn, 36, will graduate the University of Michigan
Law School. Armed with a law degree, she will be in a better position
to challenge draconian federal drug laws that six years ago had her
serving a 15-year, eight-month sentence for a first-time nonviolent
drug offense committed when she was 19.

But as Nunn came to know, even federal judges have been powerless to
mete out just punishments under the federal mandatory-minimum
sentencing system, first legislated by Congress in 1986.

Be clear on this: Nunn broke the law. After she dropped out of
college, she took up with the wrong boyfriend, a drug dealer -- known
as Monte -- whose father (Plukey Duke) was believed to be the leader
of the biggest cocaine ring in Minnesota. After Monte tried to buy
cocaine from a government informant, the feds charged 24 people
involved in the ring, including Serena, on felony charges involving
cocaine distribution.

At trial, prosecutors established that Nunn drove Monte to drug deals
and phoned people who owed Monte money. They found 6.5 grams of
cocaine and 4 grams of crack stashed in her bedroom. A jury found
Nunn guilty on all three counts.

Meanwhile, prosecutors had offered sweet deals to repeat offenders
who testified against others. Mandatory-minimum sentences were
supposed to guarantee that drug kingpins serve hard time. Yet the
feds allowed the co-leader of this drug ring, Marvin McCaleb, to
serve just seven years -- despite prior convictions for major drug
dealing, rape and manslaughter.

I know I will receive e-mail from readers who will say that Nunn
deserved her 15-year sentence; they only regret that prosecutors
didn't sentence the kingpins to harder time. They fail to recognize
that this system routinely sacrifices small fish of the drug trade --
who don't have much information to trade -- while enabling the big
fish to re-offend. The system too frequently offers a
get-out-of-jail-early card to the worst criminals.

In December 1997, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that McCaleb
was living free in Long Beach, Calif., while Nunn would not get out
of prison until 2003. Sam Sheldon of San Diego had been a lawyer for
a week when he read the story. He was one year younger than Nunn, but
already she had spent eight years behind bars. Sheldon offered to
take on her case pro bono.

Thanks to Sheldon's efforts, President Clinton commuted Nunn's
sentence in July 2000. It helped that one of Nunn's prosecutors and
then-Gov. Jesse Ventura of Minnesota wrote letters for Sheldon. The
most breathtaking argument came from the sentencing judge, David A.
Doty, who wrote an eight-page letter that ripped the
mandatory-minimum system to shreds.

In 1990, his heart went out to Nunn because of the lengthy sentence
he was required to impose on her, while others in the drug ring were
sentence to as little as one year. Doty wrote, "If mandatory-minimum
sentencing did not exist, no judge in America, including me, would
have ever sentenced Ms. Nunn to 15 years in prison based on her role
in the conspiracy, her age and the fact that she had no prior
criminal convictions before the instant offense."

On the phone Monday, Nunn told me of the frustration she faced after
spending more than a decade behind bars -- and wanting just one
chance to turn her life around -- while watching "someone who gets
those opportunities, not once, not twice, but even three times"
re-offend and return to prison.

Nunn looks back on her old life and realizes how the drug ring
"harmed our communities" and "helped destroy families." And: "I am a
firm believer in people being punished for things they do when they
break the law. If you don't punish people, you'll have a chaotic society."

But when societies overpunish small-change offenders and underpunish
kingpins - when 19-year-old kids serve sentences that exceed a
decade, while career thugs do shorter time -- you end up with
expensive injustice.