A PRISONER'S PLEA TO A PRESIDENT

A Decade Into Her 23-Year Sentence, A First-Time Offender Pinned Her Hopes
On Clinton. Hers Is A Case, Advocates Say, Of A Pardon That Should Have Been.

If there hadn't been so much hope before, there would not be so much
despair now. Like thousands of others seeking clemency from President Bill
Clinton in the waning days of his administration, Vanessa Wade knew he was
her only chance for mercy. And so she hoped.

Her petition for clemency laid bare the sordid facts of her life: her
mother's suicide when Vanessa was 19 and the subsequent responsibility for
her younger siblings, her rescue from poverty by her boyfriend, her
involvement in his Miami cocaine operation.

In May 1990, when she was 19, Wade agreed to transport 22 grams of cocaine
for her boyfriend. A maid at the hotel where Wade and a 17-year-old
accomplice were staying found the drugs, and hotel officials called the
police. Tried as a "lieutenant" because of her supervisorial role over the
youth, she was convicted of conspiracy to distribute and possession with
intent to distribute cocaine.

By last year, Wade, a first-time nonviolent offender, had served 10 years
of her 23-year sentence. In her plea to the president, she did what all
clemency seekers are advised to do: accept responsibility and repent.
Clinton already had commuted the sentences of several low-level drug
offenders and he had openly declared the unfairness of laws that meted out
kingpin sentences to minor players.

"I knew some of those women he had freed and I didn't see much difference
between their cases and mine," she said. While outrage has centered on
whether Clinton was influenced by family members and Democratic Party
donors to pardon the undeserving, for many prisoner advocates Clinton's
greatest sin did not involve those who were pardoned, but those who were not.

"The day Clinton left office without pardoning so many people who really
deserved it was one of the most miserable experiences of my life," said
Nora Callahan, head of the November Coalition, a drug-sentencing reform
group in Colville, Wash.

Wade, who is incarcerated in a Fort Worth federal prison, dared to hope
after a fellow inmate told her Iowa attorney, John Ackerman, about Wade's
case. Working without a fee, Ackerman asked Wade for permission to seek
clemency on her behalf. "Vanessa committed a crime and she deserved to be
punished, but the penalties are way beyond what they should be," he said.

No one involved with her case would help.

"I contacted the judge in the case who said he didn't want to be involved.
I contacted the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, who said
no one should ever be pardoned," he said.

Ackerman filed the application last October with the Justice Department's
pardon attorney's office, which reviews all clemency requests.

Pardon attorney Roger Adams, however, told him the petition was arriving so
late that unless the White House showed interest, Wade's petition would not
be a priority. Some people with petitions filed later than Wade's, however,
did receive clemency while others who had filed earlier did not.

In the last months of the Clinton administration, the White House was awash
with nearly 3,000 clemency requests. Former aides recently testified in
congressional hearings that Clinton, realizing he had granted fewer pardons
than previous presidents, wanted to increase the number. "Roger talked to
me personally and said if we get any call for these papers from the
president we'll have them ready," Ackerman said. "So I wrote to the
president. You get this thing back that says your letter was received."

Wade wrote to Clinton too, every day, from Dec. 1 to Jan. 15.

In theory, applications for clemency go to the pardon attorney's office,
where they are rigorously reviewed by a staff attorney. Support from
prosecutors or the judge involved in the case is critical for most standard
applications. Since Clinton left office, however, prosecutors around the
country have said they were never contacted regarding clemency for people
he freed.

If viewed favorably by the pardon attorney, applications moved up to former
Deputy Atty. Gen. Eric Holder's office, and then to the White House. That's
the theory.

Margaret Love, the nation's pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997, in both the
Bush and Clinton administrations, said the reality is far different. The
current focus of political inquiry--whether strings were pulled in some
special clemency cases--misses the point, she says. Pulling strings has
been almost the only way for anyone to obtain clemency. While she was
pardon attorney, Love said, she was discouraged from urging commutation for
anyone who did not have high-powered support.

"I was operating under what was in effect a 'just say no' directive from
the deputy attorney general's office," Love said. "At one point I was told
explicitly that favorable recommendations in commutation cases would not be
favorably received unless there had been a prior expression of interest
from the White House or from a member of Congress."

Such was the case with Marc Rich, an alleged tax evader who fled the
country to avoid trial, and Carlos Vignali Jr., a Los Angeles cocaine
trafficker. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak lobbied Clinton, as
did Rich's ex-wife, Denise Rich, who had given $1.5 million over the years
to Democrats and Clinton's presidential library fund. Vignali had
high-profile supporters who included a number of Los Angeles public
officials and Clinton's brother-in-law, attorney Hugh Rodham, who received
$200,000 for working on the case. Rodham later returned the money. Some
ordinary people did get the president's attention, but not easily. Kemba
Smith of Richmond, Va., 29, had received a 24-year sentence after becoming
involved with her abusive boyfriend's cocaine ring. She gained her freedom
after a six-year effort by her middle-class parents, who began a foundation
in her name. They launched a national media campaign, lobbied Congress, won
the backing of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and bankrupted themselves twice.

Wade's family has no such resources. Both parents are dead; from the age of
10, she and her two younger siblings lived with her grandmother in a small
Florida town. Before her arrest, she had studied cosmetology at a community
college and worked at her boyfriend's restaurant, earning $226 a week.

In prison, she has stayed out of trouble and has spent her time working
toward a college degree.

On Jan. 19, a Friday and the day before Clinton left office, Wade kept
vigil before the television. "I heard a girl out of Connecticut got
released, and then they said there's not going to be any more people. I had
to take all kind of stress medication--after 10 years of being in here and
there being a strong possibility of me getting out--it was too much for me."

Saturday brought new hope.

"A newscaster said the last act will be presidential pardons and that some
of the people that will be released will be people you don't
recognize--people know who were given excessive sentences," Wade said. "A
chill went through my body, from head to toe. I got a couple of addresses
of people here I wanted to keep in touch with.

"And then, suddenly Bush was president. I couldn't talk, I was in shock. I
had to come into the unit and lay down. I said a lot of prayers and I cried
and I cried and I cried."

It had taken four years in prison for her to accept responsibility for her
crime and recognize that she deserved to be punished. "Over time I came to
see that I was at fault. But I'm a first-time offender and I was only 19
years old when I made a mistake. I've seen rapists and murderers get out
quicker--my brother was killed, and the guy that murdered him was out after
two years."

In the months before Clinton left office, advocates seeking to overturn
long sentences for low-level, nonviolent drug offenders had campaigned
heavily, some on behalf of specific individuals, others for the entire
class of prisoner. Under mandatory federal sentencing guidelines enacted in
the 1980s, most sentences are determined by the quantity of drugs, without
regard to the defendant's record, motives or likelihood of breaking the law
again. Callahan and the November Coalition were pressing Clinton to release
all such offenders who had served at least five years of their sentences.
"Did we ever dream that Clinton would let out people who served five
years." Callahan asked. "Yes, we did. We're still drying tears here."

Families Against Mandatory Minimums, one of the groups that led the
national campaign for clemency, had some success. The Washington,
D.C.-based group had submitted clemency petitions to the pardon attorney's
office on behalf of 12 people, and 11 received clemency. Although
disappointed that more people did not receive mercy, founder Julie Stewart
says the group's focus remains on sentencing reform, not individual
releases. "You don't get your money's worth by spending all your waking
hours getting a handful of people out of prison when five times as many are
going in that same day."

"The people I'm representing, even Vanessa, are guilty," Ackerman said.
"Whether they deserve to be in jail for the length of time they're given is
the question."

Whether Wade and others who did not receive clemency were treated unfairly,
he said, is a complex question. "Suppose you have 10 people and they're all
going to be executed and one gets a stay of execution," he said. "Does that
really make it worse for the other nine. No."

Individual hopes have been dashed, but the sentencing reform movement
continues apace. On Wednesday, Families Against Mandatory Minimums will
bring 14 former prisoners who were granted clemency in December and January
to Washington, D.C., for a day of lobbying Congress and celebration later
that evening.

Wade, who will leave prison in eight years if she is released early for
good behavior, says she is not angry, but remains bewildered. "It's just
that I thought everybody's paperwork would go through the same process."

Although she did not know it at the time, Wade never had any real reason to
hope. Busy arranging his deal to avoid prosecution for making false
statements about his affair with Monica Lewinsky and weighing the Vignali
and Rich petitions, Clinton never even saw Wade's petition.