Donald Clark, sentenced to life in prison 10 years ago for growing
marijuana, was one of the people pardoned by President Clinton

PARRISH -- The phone that Donald Clark found in his hand was curiously small.

He tried to hold it to his ear, but making a call was an awkward proposition.

It was a cellular phone, a basic tool of urban survival to many, but
a novelty to someone who has spent the last decade of his life in
federal prison.

Making a call was one of the first acts as a free man committed
Saturday by Clark, 60, who was among 176 people who were issued
pardons or commutations in the waning hours of former President
Clinton's term.

Clark had been a farmer in eastern Manatee County before he was
sentenced to life in prison for growing marijuana -- a victim, said
his family and supporters, of reactionary drug laws with minimum
mandatory sentences targeting drug kingpins.

"I've been down 10 years and I ain't seen a kingpin yet," Clark
quipped as he stood outside his sister's house Tuesday and talked to
reporters. "They say if you dance you might have to pay the fiddler.
Well, I didn't think I danced that long."

Federal prosecutors accused Clark, a successful sod and watermelon
farmer, of leading an entire community in the ways of cultivating
"Myakka Gold" in rural Manatee County in the 1980s -- a $30-million
operation that ultimately involved more than a million plants.

But Clark's lawyers argued their client got out of the pot business
when he was busted on state marijuana charges in 1985, and that it
was unfair to punish him for what others did after that.

The federal conspiracy charges that ultimately landed him in prison
were based on the same acts that led to the state convictions --
double jeopardy, contended Clark, but not according to the law.

James Wardell, a Tampa lawyer who asked for the commutation on
Clark's behalf, said his client was no drug mastermind.

Clark, who acknowledges his stubborn streak, was the only one of two
dozen defendants who refused to plead guilty and accept a plea
bargain. He was convicted at trial and received a much more severe
punishment.

"It has always been the unfairest, biggest injustice I have ever
seen," Wardell said.

Wardell said the Clark case was the first he worked on after
graduating from Stetson University's law school. Over the years, he
kept in touch with Clark's family.

In 1996, Clark's sentence was reduced to 27 years, Wardell said,
because the firearm authorities confiscated in Clark's barn was not
connected to his crime. Wardell said Clark's ex-wife recently saw
another opportunity to help Donald Clark: a newspaper story saying
Clinton would be considering pardons and commutations over the
Christmas holiday. Wardell drafted a letter asking the president to
look at Clark's case.

"It was a last-ditch effort," Wardell said.

At the same time, Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), a
Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, also was lobbying the White
House on behalf of Clark and two dozen other people unfairly
imprisoned, they said, on drug charges.

"This case shouted injustice," said Julie Stewart, president and
founder of FAMM.

And while she is thrilled about Clark's release, it does not address
the harsh minimum mandatory sentencing laws that leave judges unable
to make sentences fit the crime.

"There are thousands of Donnie Clarks in prison," Stewart said. "This
doesn't solve the problem."

Clark, who is finding the adjustment to life outside prison more
difficult than he imagined, said he is not sure how he'll make a
living. But he definitely wants to help prisoners who are separated
from their families by overly harsh sentences.

"There's got to be some sort of solution," he said. "Though I don't
know what it is. Lives are being destroyed."

He also has considered going back to farming, though the economics of
the business makes that difficult. While he was in prison, one of his
jobs was to tend the turf on the ballfields.

"My job was growing grass -- what I got put in prison for," said
Clark, the son of a former Manatee County commissioner.

Since his release from the Federal Correctional Complex at Coleman,
in Sumter County, he has been trying to reconnect with his family and
friends. The key to surviving in prison is adjusting to a new sense
of normal, which also happens to be the key to figuring out how to
live outside.

Since he had only hours' notice of his release, he had little time to
figure out how to acquire the necessary tools to survive in society
- -- such as a job and a driver's license.

"I'm not a violent person, but I'm branded with this felony," he
said. "That scares me right now more than anything."