CONSTITUTION - CLINTON CAN RECTIFY INJUSTICES IN LAW BY GIVING MERCY TO
DRUG OFFENDERS

It is not often that we find ourselves agreeing with President Clinton, but
after last month's sentence commutations of Kemba Smith and Dorothy Gaines,
two drug prisoners, we found ourselves nodding our heads in agreement.

As a matter of policy, Clinton does not comment on such commutations, but
in his recent interview in Rolling Stone magazine he characterized
America's imprisonment policies as counterproductive and said, ''I ran out
of time before I could do . . . a re-examination of our entire policy on
imprisonment.''

Our message to him is that he still has time to provoke the kind of
re-examination he seeks by further exercising his pardon power and granting
executive clemency to many more of the low-level, nonviolent drug offenders
who are serving lengthy terms of incarceration.

The U.S. Constitution gives the president extraordinary power to curb
excessive punishment. Clemency provides him the means to address, in a
small but significant way, his belief that mandatory sentencing policies
should be re-examined to prevent low-level offenders from serving terms
grossly out of proportion to their conduct.

Sentencing Rules Too Rigid

By his act, he would rectify this disproportionate punishment, reunite many
parents with their children and provoke a much-needed national debate about
how drug users should be treated by the law.

Since 1987, when mandatory drug sentencing laws went into effect, federal
judges have had to impose severe penalties for drug possession and
distribution. Because the sentences are based primarily on the type and
weight of the drug, judges cannot consider factors traditionally taken into
account when sentencing each defendant.

This year, more than 1,000 prisoners have petitioned the president for
sentence commutations. Many are young, nonviolent drug offenders like the
two Clinton freed last month, whose sentences are wildly disproportionate
to their roles in the drug trade.

Their continued incarceration serves little social purpose.

Paying Too Heavy A Price

They include Derrick Curry, at one time a promising high school basketball
player with a college sports scholarship, who was arrested while serving as
a drug mule and charged with conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. For
his minor role, he received a sentence of 19 years --- a period of time
equal to his age when he was arrested. When arrested, Curry had $150 in a
savings account and had to borrow his mother's 1981 Chevy Citation and even
the gas money to drive it around. At his sentencing, the judge said that
''if I were sentencing in a situation other than a guideline, I would not
impose the sentence that I am going to impose.'' Curry has spent seven
years in prison.

Derrick Curry, Kemba Smith and Dorothy Gaines are only a handful of the
many prisoners serving sentences that, while legally unassailable, are
nothing less than miscarriages of justice.

Victims Of Bad Timing

Other examples include the entire class of prisoners who were unlucky
enough to have committed their offenses before 1994. That was the year
legislation was enacted to allow judges to sentence below the mandatory
minimum sentence if the defendant met strict congressional criteria:
first-time, nonviolent drug offenders who were neither leaders nor
organizers, did not use firearms, and who provided the government with all
the information about their cases. There are 487 of these stranded
prisoners taking up valuable prison space while serving unconscionably long
sentences that similar defendants today would not receive.

With the stroke of his pen, President Clinton could grant clemency to this
entire class of prisoners.

Clemency does not deny the guilt of the person pardoned. Rather, clemency
is a statement about the injustice of applying particular rules to
particular persons under particular situations.

President Clinton has pledged to consider all of the commutation petitions
awaiting decision before he leaves office. He should do justice by granting
clemency to many of the low-level nonviolent drug offenders now warehoused
in federal prisons across the country.