HEROIN LIFERS' SEE SENTENCING DISPARITIES

Big Dealer Freed While They Spend Lives Jailed

Some mistakes, it seems, can never be forgiven.

In 1975, Richard "Hoghead" Mahogany sold four packets of heroin at $15 a
pop to an undercover New Orleans police officer. A jury found him guilty as
charged, and a judge gave him life in prison.

After years of appeals, Mahogany, 61, who said he made a $10 profit on the
illegal sale, won a chance at freedom last year. Orleans Parish Criminal
District Judge Ben Willard heard his case and decided that 29 years was
enough, crafting a new sentence that placed Mahogany on probation and
ordering his release.

Criminal District Judge Calvin Johnson did the same thing last year for
Albert Rey, who also got a life sentence for dealing heroin in 1975. At his
home back then, in the 2000 block of North Tonti Street, police found 37
foil packets of heroin and a bottle of methadone with his name on it, court
records show.

Rey sold the heroin for $15 a packet, police said. At age 66, he has been
locked up for nearly 30 years. His hearing is failing and he has high blood
pressure, along with arthritis.

Louisiana has a contingent of convicts in their 60s, like Mahogany and Rey,
serving life without parole for heroin dealing, according to the state
corrections department.

They and the other lifers haven't stopped paying for their mistakes. And
the Louisiana Supreme Court says they never will.

After the judges ordered the men released, the Orleans Parish district
attorney's office put up a fight, and the state's highest court came down
on the side of prosecutors, ordering the men to remain behind bars for the
rest of their lives.

Ironically, a much bigger dealer within the cohort of heroin lifers has
found favor in the eyes of the judiciary.

Eighteen months ago, Criminal District Judge Charles Elloie resentenced and
essentially released Raymond "Butter Bowl" Perique, who had been sentenced
to life in prison after his 1974 conviction for possessing $19,000 worth of
heroin.

District Attorney Eddie Jordan's prosecutors chose not to file an appeal to
the high court. Instead, they left his case alone, making Perique a free
man. At the time Jordan said he simply made a "tough call."

$19,000 Dealer Released

Perique, 28 at the time of his arrest, was caught with a liquor box filled
with heroin. Inside were more than 1,500 individual doses worth about $19,000.

His freedom from prison was short. He died a week ago of a heart attack at
his home, at 58.

Jordan refused to let Rey, Mahogany and several others slip through the
same legal loophole to freedom, and in a recent interview he said it was
his policy to oppose efforts by "heroin lifers" to obtain new prison sentences.

Moreover, Rey and Mahogany had violence in their criminal records, whereas
Perique did not.

Rey was convicted of negligent homicide in 1965 and attempted murder in
1972, Jordan said. Mahogany and other heroin lifers also have past criminal
records. Their proper recourse is to the state Pardon Board, he said.

"Under special circumstances, we will exercise discretion: for others, with
no history of violence," Jordan said, adding that "a person who has a
history of violence is a threat to the public's safety, in my opinion."

But for Rey, life imprisonment was what then-Criminal District Judge Oliver
Schulingkamp had in mind, the record shows. At a hearing over the case in
1988, the judge said he had considered other more lenient sentences but
chose life because of Rey's criminal record and the crime at hand.

Rey finally won the kind of reprieve that had nothing to do with the courts
or prosecutors. Dying from brain cancer, he was released late last year
from the state penitentiary at Angola on a "medical furlough," corrections
officials said. Such releases are also very rare in Louisiana.

Sentencing Softens

The draconian sentences of the 1970s coincided with an eruption of concern
about heroin addiction and associated crime.

After 1973, Louisiana law required mandatory life sentences for people
convicted of possessing heroin with the intent to sell, but judges still
could offer probation. That option was stripped away in 1977 legislation
that made life in prison mandatory for Louisiana heroin dealers, with no
possibility of parole, probation or early release.

The drug and its trade were "rapidly destroying the entire society,"
Schulingkamp said as he meted out a life sentence in 1979.

More recently, the law has undergone another radical revision. In 2001,
Louisiana lawmakers tossed out the mandatory life sentence without parole
that it had created for heroin dealers and replaced it with a sentencing
range of five to 50 years. Probation is an option again available to judges
after a convict has served five years.

In Louisiana, as in other states, the rollback of heroin sentencing
guidelines was prompted not so much by compassion for the incarcerated as
the increasingly staggering burden of exploding prison populations and the
escalating cost of caring for elderly inmates.

Among defense attorneys and their clients, the Perique case was cause for
hope. If Perique could get his life sentence cut down to 30 years -- and
the old "good time" laws sawed that in half -- then surely an aging convict
caught with 20, 10, or perhaps five packets of heroin who had served
decades of prison time could catch a break?

That hasn't occurred during the Jordan administration, said defense
attorneys and relatives of the heroin lifers. The Perique release was an
aberration.

And, according to some, a grossly unfair one.

"Of all of these guys, he has the worst facts of his case," said attorney
Sheila Myers, who has four or five clients serving life for heroin
distribution. "When you use the Perique standard, every other case pales in
comparison. If that's the person you choose to use as your standard-bearer,
then every other guy should get the same."

Myers said the only other avenue that the heroin lifers have, once their
appeals are denied, is new legislation. She has watched the Legislature
change the law, but her clients age and remain imprisoned.

"Right now you could have a ton of heroin and the maximum sentence is 50
years," Myers said. "From a clearly conservative point of view, most of
these guys are getting into their 60s and have lots of medical problems.
They're costing a lot of care."

But as the district attorney's office has said, there are other options for
the heroin lifers than getting a new sentence at Criminal District Court.

In December, the state Pardon Board unanimously agreed to give another
heroin New Orleans convict a recommendation for a pardon. However, it's up
to Gov. Kathleen Blanco to determine whether Leo Jackson will ever leave
Angola.

Jackson was convicted in 1975 of dealing heroin, for having three single
doses of heroin on him, a stash worth about $36. He hasn't left prison since.

At the time of Jackson's trial, the sentence for heroin dealing was
mandatory life. Judges had no discretion.

"Given the quantity of drugs involved, a life sentence is clearly
excessive" and unconstitutionally cruel, Justice Bernette Johnson wrote in
2001, when her colleagues denied Jackson's appeal.

'Caught in the Changes'

Give or take a couple of months in 1993 when he was at liberty -- one of
several instances in which a state judge let him out only to have another
judge reimpose the life sentence and slap him back in prison -- Mahogany
has served almost 29 years behind bars.

Rey was a trusty at Angola, meaning he has earned privileges, such as being
able to walk about without constant supervision and hold a job. He has no
children, but he has sisters, nieces and friends who appeared in court on
his behalf in February.

"They still care enough about him that they would welcome him back into
their world to allow him comfort and a place to live his remaining years,"
attorney Laurie White told the judge at the hearing.

Johnson, the judge in Rey's case, noted that times and the laws have changed.

"Well, obviously we have changed our belief," Johnson said before
essentially giving Rey a new sentence that meant he would go free. "But it
seems to me, he shouldn't be caught in the switches, caught in the changes."

The Supreme Court, in a 6-1 decision, sent Rey and Mahogany back to prison
with their life sentences intact. Judges Johnson and Willard overstepped
their bounds by letting the convicts out on probation, the majority of
justices said.

The majority opinion consisted of a couple of paragraphs.

Louisiana's highest court long ago said life without parole for heroin
dealing is not unconstitutionally cruel. The lone holdout has been Johnson,
who steadfastly has dissented from the majority when weighing cases like
Mahogany's.

"Under the law that existed at the time of their convictions, and under the
law that exists today, both defendants are eligible for probation or
suspension of sentence," Johnson wrote in her dissent to the dual decision
of Rey and Mahogany last March, noting that each has been behind bars for
more than 28 years. "I believe that a life sentence, without benefit of
probation or suspension of sentence, is so disproportionate to the severity
of the crimes committed by these defendants. . . ."

Dealing to Feed Addiction

Both Mahogany and Rey were heroin addicts who sold the drug to pay for
their own habits, court records indicate.

Milton Ray Isaac, who also is serving life, said he also was an addict. His
appeal didn't make it further than Tulane and Broad, where Criminal
District Judge Camille Buras flatly denied his motion to "correct an
illegal sentence."

Isaac, 42, was arrested in 1985, when police were called to a home in the
Florida housing project. When officers arrived at the nightmarish scene,
Edgar Barabino was holding a pistol in Isaac's mouth, according to police
reports. The two men were separated by police, and a pat-down search of
Isaac turned up 24 foil packets of heroin, wrapped in a fat roll of $1 bills.

At trial, Isaac testified that he was an addict and sought out Barabino for
heroin. When he came up short of cash, Isaac said he tried to rob Barabino,
who in turn said he didn't sell drugs and called Isaac a liar.

But not every heroin lifer is a professed addict claiming to be caught up
in draconian sentencing laws.

Melvin Lard was arrested on Oct. 5, 1982, after two plainclothes officers
approached him. When the detectives stopped him, identifying themselves as
police, he tried to toss aside a purple Crown Royal whiskey bag, according
to court records.

Asked what was in it, Lard said, "Dope . . . heroin."

He had 277 packets of the drug, it turned out, and was carrying $324 in
cash, the jury heard at trial. The packets were in bundles of about 25
each. Lard had no needles or spoons.

Someone dealing that much, an officer testified, would not typically be a
junkie selling enough to score his next fix.

"To my knowledge, he never used it," Kenyon Davis recently said of his
father. "He confessed and said, 'I did it; I sold drugs.' "

Twenty-two years after an informant tipped off the police to a drug sale at
the corner of Thalia and Baronne streets, Lard remains at Angola with no
end in sight except to die there.

His appeals have failed. In 1985 the state Supreme Court approved declared
in one sentence, "The result is correct."

Davis, 27, a network administrator at a local bank, said he understands the
destruction caused by heroin dealers in the late 1970s, his father among
them, but questions whether 22 years isn't enough of a price

Today Lard is approaching age 50 and has already had hip replacement
surgery -- at the public's expense. He poses no threat, his family says.
Davis just wants his father to have the chance to ask a judge for some type
of reprieve. Just one chance, he said, even if the answer is no.

"In my young life I have witnessed people actually go to jail for
manslaughter and get out," Davis said. "It doesn't seem like it's fair at all."