MANDATORY SENTENCING BACKLASH BUILDS

Courts: A Life Term Given To A Minor Drug Offender In Alabama Is One Case
Cited By Critics Of The Laws, Which Face Judicial Review And Rollbacks In
Several States.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Theresa Wilson--a first-time, nonviolent drug
offender--tried to sell a prescription medication to an undercover police
officer for $150 back in 1998. She was tried as a "drug baron" under this
state's strict narcotics laws, and sentenced to life in prison.

On Wednesday, the 34-year-old mother of two got perhaps the first break of
her life. She was freed.

"You've gotten a second chance," said Jefferson County Circuit Judge Tommy
Nail. "Don't blow it." To many, Wilson had become a symbol of the high
price of mandatory sentencing. And her release is the latest in a series of
events challenging those laws.

Intended to target drug kingpins, many mandatory minimum laws, as they're
known, more often have sent addicts, drug dealers' girlfriends and college
kids peddling marijuana to prison for long terms.

Now the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases, probably in the
fall, challenging California's three-strikes law, the toughest of its kind
in the nation.

Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a former federal prosecutor, and Orrin G.
Hatch (R-Utah) are pushing a bill that would ease mandatory sentences for
those who played a minimal role in a drug transaction. (Neither lawmaker is
known for being easy on criminals.)

Louisiana, Michigan, Connecticut, North Dakota, Utah, Washington state,
Iowa and Mississippi also have rolled back at least some of their mandatory
minimum statutes in the last year or two.

They have rolled them back to prevent more cases like Wilson's.

"This is an extreme example, but it just shows that mandatory sentencing
doesn't work," Wilson's attorney, Bill Bowen, said a few hours after his
client went free. "Mandatory sentencing is based on the premise that people
all came from the same cookie-cutter, and they didn't."

In 1996, Wilson--a junior high school dropout--was losing all control, she
said in the only interview since her incarceration, in the Birmingham News
this week.

The product of a troubled household, she drank too much, had become
addicted to prescription painkillers after a medical problem, was deeply in
debt and had marital problems. Then her mother died, she said. Then the
state took custody of her two children.

Unable to pay a $95 electricity bill, she got a vial of a prescription
morphine solution from a neighbor whose late husband had used the
painkiller while undergoing cancer treatments.

During a secretly taped conversation with an undercover police officer
posing as a drug buyer, Wilson said she had no idea what the morphine was
worth. So she offered to sell it for $150. She would keep $80 for herself,
she said, and give $70 to the neighbor.

The police officer replied that he only had $80 with him. No problem,
Wilson said on the tape; he could pay her whenever he had the money.

Wilson had no idea that the 97.8 grams of morphine solution had a street
value of $10,000--or that the confluence of circumstances would land her
desperate crime under a law intended to nab Alabama's biggest drug traffickers.

"One of the problems with mandatory sentencing laws is that the low-level
offenders are the most likely to be targeted," said Monica Pratt of the
Washington-based Families Against Mandatory Minimums. "Cooperation is often
the only way to reduce your sentence, and since low-level offenders and
addicts have no information to trade, they have nothing to offer prosecutors."

As she awaited trial, Wilson reunited with her husband--who is now a
minister--regained custody of her children and got a job as a church secretary.

In March 1998, Circuit Judge J. Richmond Pearson was visibly shaken when,
saying he had no choice, he sentenced Wilson to spend the rest of her life
in prison.

Last year, Wilson appealed. In August the state appellate court's opinion
came down.

Wilson's sentence, wrote Judge Sue Bell Cobb, was "grossly disproportionate."

The Alabama attorney general then appealed the case to the state Supreme
Court. In April, the court agreed with the lower court's decision.

Last week, Wilson was transported from Julia Tutwiler Prison in Wetumpka to
the Jefferson County Jail to await Wednesday's hearing.

In the courtroom, Nail allowed her to hug her husband and teenage children.
Then he set her free.

A crying Wilson went back to the jail, signed her release papers, and
headed for a welcome-home supper at her church.