GRANT DRUG OFFENDERS CLEMENCY, ROCKY SAYS

WASHINGTON -- Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson called Tuesday for
President Clinton to grant clemency to possibly hundreds of
nonviolent drug offenders.

Anderson told a Capitol Hill press conference that federal sentencing
guidelines require punishment that often is far more severe than
merited for minor drug violations. He said clemency by Clinton could
be the first step to change those guidelines.

"President Clinton, during these last hours of your eight-year term .
. . please take a stand against the waste and injustice of our
destructive sentencing laws," Anderson said.

That continues a high-profile battle by Anderson against the
traditional "war on drugs" and was why he was chosen as the main
speaker at the clemency press conference called by clergy, policy
groups and parents of nonviolent drug offenders.

Anderson has told several national audiences in the past year that
politicians trying to appear tough on drugs put too much emphasis on
punishment -- and not enough on treatment and prevention. He also
canceled the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program in
schools, saying it was ineffective.

At the press conference Tuesday, he specifically called for clemency
for Utahn Cory Stringfellow, saying his case shows that federal
sentences are unjust.

"Because of Cory's involvement with drugs during his teen years and
early 20s, and because he panicked and fled just before sentencing,
he was sentenced to 188 months -- more than 15 1/2 years -- to a
federal penitentiary."

During the 5 1/2 years that he has served, Anderson said,
Stringfellow completed a drug program and earned a master's degree in
business administration.

"Five and one-half years is long enough for Cory to have spent in
prison for his foolishness as a young man. For him to serve another
10 years would be wasteful, cruel and incredibly unjust," Anderson
said.

He also noted, "Many politicians excuse their earlier use of drugs as
being 'youthful indiscretions' -- yet thousands of individual lives
and families have been destroyed for making similar mistakes and
getting caught."

Several Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee released,
at the press conference, a letter to Clinton calling for clemency for
up to 487 prisoners they said were identified as first-time,
nonviolent, cooperative offenders.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., leader of that group, said, "President
Clinton has one last opportunity to end the meanest, least human,
least justified aspect of our federal criminal justice system: the
outrageous, excessive jailing of nonviolent people who have harmed no
one."

Frank added, "These people and their families should no longer be
martyred by the demagogic politics of an illogical drug policy."

Anderson agreed, and called for rejecting "the phony, ineffective,
feel-good elements of the war on drugs -- elements such as outrageous
minimum-mandatory and guideline sentencing."

He said emphasis on tougher penalties has not decreased drug use, but
has swelled prison populations. "We must stop this insanity. We must
stop this inhumanity," Anderson said.

Instead, he called to "commit our resources to prevention programs
that really work, to good public health education, and to treatment
programs."

He concluded that Clinton could "start the process of change by
granting the commutation petitions of those who have been sentenced
for unconscionable long terms for non-violent drug offenses."