BUSH SHOULD STAND UP FOR JUSTICE

Kemba Smith, 29, and Dorothy Gaines, 43, are the rare, worthy and
olitically unconnected recipients of clemency granted by former President
Clinton. Their sentences were outrages that demanded extraordinary action.

In 1994, a federal judge sentenced Smith to 24 1/2 years in prison for
conspiracy in a 255-kilogram crack operation. You'd think that sentence
means she was a kingpin, calling the shots in a violent crack ring. In
fact, she was a lovesick college student who took up with an abusive drug
dealer (who was murdered by the time of her sentencing), broke some laws
and found herself pregnant with his child.

She said on a visit to San Francisco sponsored by Legal Services for
Prisoners with Children that she does not believe she should have been
incarcerated. If it had to happen, she said, she should have been sentenced
to two years behind bars, maximum. But the federal conspiracy laws that
were supposed to make it easier to give kingpins hard time were used to
send a nonviolent, first-time drug offender behind bars for a longer term
than many murderers serve: almost 25 years.

"To me that was like having a life sentence," Smith explained.

Would she have been sentenced to serve this much time if she were a white
college student?

"I feel if I was white, I wouldn't have had to do a day," she answered.

Gaines, who is also African American, thinks likewise. In 1995, Gaines was
sentenced to just under 20 years in jail because, she says, she had been
involved with a crack kingpin. "I am not mad because white (people) are not
going to prison," she said. She is angry at prosecutors who put first-time
drug offenders away for decades based on the testimony of "snitches" with
records who are "trying to get their time cut."

Julie Stewart founded Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) in 1991
after the feds sentenced her brother to five years in prison for growing
marijuana, but gave his accomplices -- convicted felons -- probation after
they rolled on her brother. Stewart's brother is white, but she has seen
the inequities of which Gaines speaks. According to U.S. Sentencing
Commission Vice Chair John Steer, 60 percent of federal prisoners serving
20-year mandatory-minimum sentences are African American.

And the practice of rewarding snitching helps men, who have more
information to trade. As Smith noted, "We're not the ones who are running
the organizations. It's the men who are running the organizations. When
things hit the fan, the men have more information to give as far as
snitching, where their time gets reduced."

I'm not saying Gaines and Smith were blameless. Both women took up with
drug dealers. Kemba Smith lied to authorities about her boyfriend and she
helped him with his illegal drug trade. While Gaines claims she did nothing
to warrant incarceration, U.S. Attorney J. Don Foster is convinced she is
guilty. Even if he is right, her sentence was too stiff. In a country where
the punishment is supposed to fit the crime, decades in prison for
low-level, first-time drug offenses are an abomination.

No credit to him, President Bush supports the federal mandatory-minimum
sentencing system. As a presidential candidate, he told the NAACP, "I
believe our systems of justice must be fair and impartial to all,
regardless of race. Mandatory-minimum sentences can help achieve this goal
by insuring consistent sentences for all defendants."

"That shows how little he knows," responded FAMM's Stewart. Judges have to
stick to sentencing guidelines based on the quantity of drugs sold.
Prosecutors, however, determine who spends decades in prison because they
decide the amount of drugs involved in a "conspiracy" case.

That hurt Kemba Smith, who was charged in a conspiracy case for drugs her
boyfriend dealt when they weren't together.

Today, Clinton's pardons stand largely discredited as pardons for the rich
and politically well connected. Dorothy Gaines and Kemba Smith serve as
worthy exceptions. Gaines trusts that "God can touch (Bush's) heart."

FAMM has a wish list of other federal prisoners whose sentences far exceed
their crimes. Bush should commute their sentences, then roll up his sleeves
to humanize federal drug sentencing.