DRUG KINGPIN'S RELEASE ADDS TO CLEMENCY UPROAR

An outcry ensued when Clinton honored the longshot request of a cocaine
dealer. His father's political donations increased sharply after the 1994
conviction.

In the waning days of his presidency, Bill Clinton promised to use his
clemency powers to help low-level drug offenders languishing in prison.
When Carlos Vignali walked out of prison on Jan. 20 and returned home to
his family in Los Angeles, he appeared to fit the broad outlines of that
profile.

But the 30-year-old Vignali, who had served six years of a 15-year sentence
for federal narcotics violations, fit another profile entirely. No
small-time offender, he was the central player in a cocaine ring that
stretched from California to Minnesota. Far from disadvantaged, he owned a
$240,000 condominium in Encino and made his way as the son of affluent Los
Angeles entrepreneur Horacio Vignali.

The doting father became a large-scale political donor in the years after
his son's arrest, donating more than $160,000 to state and federal
officeholders -- including Govs. Pete Wilson and Gray Davis--as he pressed
for his son's freedom. The grateful father called the sudden commutation of
his son's sentence by Clinton "a Hail Mary and a miracle."

The improbability that such a criminal would be granted presidential
clemency, as well as the younger Vignali's claim that he alone steered a
pardon application that caught the president's attention and won his
approval, has sparked disbelief and outrage from nearly everyone involved
in his case.

"It's not plausible; it makes no sense at all," said Margaret Love, the
pardon attorney who oversaw all Justice Department reviews of presidential
clemency applications from 1990 to 1997. "Somebody had to help him. There
is no way that case could have possibly succeeded in the Department of
Justice."

Because it is a hard-edged criminal case, Vignali's commutation adds
another dimension to the wave of eleventh-hour Clinton clemencies and
raises new questions about the influence of political donors and officials
on different stages of the process.

As criminal justice authorities in Minnesota learned of Vignali's sudden
freedom, they reacted with the same indignation that has greeted several
other beneficiaries of the 140 pardons and 36 commutations Clinton granted
in his last hours as president.

The Vignali case also illustrates the secrecy that enshrouds the clemency
process.

A federal prosecutor who had urged Justice Department superiors to reject
clemency for Vignali demanded an official explanation--only to be denied
information from his own department. The judge who sentenced Vignali is
openly aghast at the decision, which was made without his knowledge. And
they all--from defense attorneys to street detectives to former pardon
attorney Love--scoffed that Vignali could have walked free without the
intervention of politically connected helpers.

Key details of the case remain a mystery. Did political officials and other
authoritative figures appeal for Vignali's freedom to the president or
high-ranking Justice Department officials? What action, if any, did the
Justice Department recommend to the White House?

Vignali could not be reached for comment. But his father strongly denied
that he or anyone else in the family asked politicians to press their case
with Clinton.

"I didn't write him a letter, I didn't do anything," Horacio Vignali said.
"But I thank God, and I thank the president every day."

For now, the Vignali case is a curious tale of how an inmate buried deep in
the federal penal system won presidential help while others in more
desperate straits remained behind.

"Go figure," said an exasperated Craig Cascarano, the lawyer for one of
Vignali's 30 co-defendants, many of them poor and black. "How is it that
Carlos Vignali is out eating a nice dinner while my client is still in
prison eating bologna sandwiches?"

Clinton Concerned About Drug Sentences

Clinton and his White House staff have not fully explained why he granted
certain clemencies, including the highly controversial pardon of fugitive
commodities broker Marc Rich.

But in recent months, the president had expressed concern about mandatory
federal sentences imposed on some small-time drug offenders.

"The sentences in many cases are too long for nonviolent offenders,"
Clinton said in a November interview with Rolling Stone magazine. ". . . I
think this whole thing needs to be reexamined."

His comments prompted a flurry of last-minute clemency requests to the
White House, said the former president's spokesman, Jake Siewert,
particularly since Clinton believed that Justice was not moving fast enough
in making clemency recommendations to the White House.

"Most of the drug cases involved people with a sentence that the prosecutor
or the sentencing judge felt was excessive," Siewert said, "but were
necessitated by mandatory-minimum guidelines.

"So in most of the drug cases, either a prosecutor or a sentencing judge or
some advocate identified people who were relatively minor players or who
had gotten a disproportionate sentence."

Siewert, asked about cases such as Vignali's, said he did not remember any
specific cases but added: "We tried to make a judgment on the merits."

Although Vignali family members themselves may not have tried to influence
the process directly, others weighed in early on. After Carlos was
convicted, and during the legal appeals process, Minnesota authorities were
deluged with phone calls and letters from California political figures
inquiring about the case and urging leniency, they said.

"There was a lot of influence, oh yes," said Andrew Dunne, the assistant
U.S. attorney who prosecuted Vignali in Minnesota. "We would receive
periodic calls from state representatives in California calling on behalf
of Carlos after the sentencing.

Dunne, who said he interpreted some of the more persistent calls as
"perhaps improper influence," said he could not remember whether the
California politicians were based in Sacramento or Washington. But "they
wanted to know: Is there anything that could be done to help reduce the
sentence?" Horacio Vignali said he did not know who made such calls and had
"no idea why they did that."

In a two-year investigation, state and federal law enforcement authorities
used wiretaps and raids to break a drug ring that transported more than 800
pounds of cocaine from California to Minnesota, where it was converted to
crack for sale on the street.

Detectives learned that Vignali, a rapper wannabe who called himself
"C-Low," played a central role in the enterprise. He provided the money to
buy the cocaine in Los Angeles, where it was then shipped to Minnesota by mail.

Tony Adams, one of the police detectives who worked on the case, said
Vignali "was making big money" from the ring. "Let me put it like this," he
said, citing wiretaps: "This kid went to Las Vegas and would lose $200,000
at Caesar's Palace and it was no big deal.

"He had a condo in Encino worth over $240,000. And yet his tax records
showed he was only making $30,000 at his dad's auto body shop."

Most of the defendants pleaded guilty and received prison sentences, but
Vignali and two Minneapolis men went on trial.

The senior Vignali sat through the entire trial and at one point, according
to Cascarano, testified as a character witness on his son's behalf. In his
statement, the lawyer said, Vignali alluded to his wealth by saying that he
had spent $9 million on a palatial Southern California home that once
belonged to actor Sylvester Stallone.

A jury convicted Carlos Vignali in 1994 on three counts: conspiring to
manufacture, possess and distribute cocaine; aiding and abetting the use of
a facility in interstate commerce with the intent to distribute cocaine;
and aiding and abetting the use of communication facilities for the
commission of felonies.

He drew a 15-year prison sentence and wound up as an inmate in the Federal
Correctional Institution in Safford, Ariz.

Todd Hopson, one of the men tried with Vignali, was sentenced to more than
23 years, said his lawyer, Cascarano. The lawyer described Hopson as "an
uneducated black kid with a noticeable stutter" and a middle-level figure
whose role in the Minneapolis drug ring "was nothing compared to Vignali."

But under mandatory federal guidelines, Hopson's conviction required a
stiffer sentence because he had been involved in converting the cocaine
into rocks of crack, Cascarano said.

A Big Jump in Contributions

Political contribution records indicate that Horacio Vignali also
apparently owned interests in used car lots and auto body shops in Los
Angeles and Malibu. And, according to Cascarano and to media reports dating
from the mid-1990s, Vignali also grew wealthy on commercial real estate
interests that included a prime tract across from the Los Angeles
Convention Center.

But when contacted by The Times, the father said only, "I run a taco stand
and a parking lot."

Through 1994, the year his son was convicted, Horacio Vignali made a few
small federal and state campaign contributions, usually less than $1,000,
according to a Times analysis of campaign finance records. But in October
1994, just before the start of his son's seven-week trial, Vignali stepped
up his contributions, donating $53,000 to state officeholders.

By last year, he had become a large-scale contributor. Vignali has given at
least $47,000 to Gov. Gray Davis. He gave $32,000 to former Gov. Pete
Wilson during his last term. He made two $5,000 donations to a political
action committee operated by Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles). And last
August, while the Democrats were holding their national convention in Los
Angeles, he contributed $10,000 to the Democratic National Committee.

Asked about his donations, the senior Vignali said only, "I'm a Democrat."
As he was becoming a major contributor, the senior Vignali also hired more
attorneys to appeal his son's conviction. But by 1996, he had exhausted the
appeals process.

He then turned to Danny Davis, the Los Angeles lawyer who had helped
represent the young man at trial, with another request: to pursue a
presidential commutation for his son.

Davis declined, telling the father his chances were "like a snowball in
Hades." Davis criticized the political nature of the clemency process but
suggested that the family was smart enough to realize that Clinton could be
contacted through political channels.

Still, Davis said Carlos Vignali deserves credit for successfully handling
his own application for clemency.

It is unclear when Carlos Vignali filed his application, but by February
1999, it would have seemed quite dead.

That was when Dunne received an inquiry from the Justice Department asking
for a recommendation on the Vignali pardon application. Dunne and his boss,
then-U.S. Atty. Todd Jones, wrote a scathing letter sharply opposing any
break for Vignali.

They pointed out how deeply Vignali was involved in the drug ring and how
he had never acknowledged responsibility or shown any remorse. After
sending the letter, Dunne said, "I never thought this had a chance of
happening. As far as we were concerned, this was a dead issue."

Jones also remembered being vehemently against a commutation. "I can't tell
you how strongly we registered our objection," he said. Love, the former
pardon attorney, said that, without approval from prosecutors, any such
clemency request usually is denied. Told of Vignali's freedom, she said:
"What you're telling me is absolutely mind-boggling."

Vignali's trial judge, U.S. District Judge David Doty, said he was not
contacted by the Justice Department. Had he been, he said, he would have
joined the prosecution in arguing against special treatment for Vignali.

Doty said Vignali never acknowledged his crime after his conviction nor
showed any remorse.

"He was non-repentant," the judge said. "Even after I sentenced him, he
claimed he had been railroaded."

However, Doty did write Clinton on behalf of drug defendants in two other
cases, both involving disadvantaged individuals who had been subjected to
harsh sentences for minor drug offenses.

Clinton commuted the sentences on his last day in office.

Doty said that those were worthwhile commutations--noting that both
defendants were sorrowful and had completed most of their prison time.

The pardon attorney's office refused to release any information about
Vignali's commutation to The Times.

Horacio Vignali said he learned that his son was out on Jan. 20, the day
Clinton left the White House and George W. Bush became president. "My son
called the house and he said, 'They're turning me loose! They're turning me
loose! I'm a free man! I'm a free man!' "

The father insisted that his son put together the pardon request with
minimal help from Los Angeles attorney Don Re. (Re did not return phone
calls for comment.)

Ron Meshbesher, a Minneapolis defense attorney who also represented the son
during his trial, said that several days after the commutation the Vignalis
called him at his office.

The son came on the line "all excited," Meshbesher recalled. The stunned
lawyer asked: "How'd you get out?" Vignali told him that the "word around
prison was that it was the right time to approach the president." The son
insisted he had written the application himself.

In an interview with The Times, Horacio Vignali insisted that Clinton's
commutation was not payback for his Democratic Party contributions. He said
that he met Clinton only once, in 1994, around the time of his son's
conviction. Vignali said he shook the president's hand in a rope line at a
fund-raiser.

Although he insisted that he had not orchestrated his son's freedom, the
senior Vignali conceded that others may have helped.

"I guess some people wrote on his behalf," he said. "I have no idea who
they are. I just don't know."