HARSH DRUG SENTENCES MUST BE RE-EXAMINED

President Bill Clinton acted with both compassion and common sense
when he freed Kemba Smith from a federal prison last week. A grateful
Smith, a Richmond-area native who served more than five years of a 24
1/2 -year term, said after her release that she would ``urge revision
of tough, mandatory sentences that require long periods of
incarceration for nonviolent offenders.''

However, it will be up to Clinton's successor, President-elect George
W. Bush, to re-examine those draconian sentencing guidelines. Thus,
we'll all see just how ``compassionate'' the conservative Bush will
be.

Quite simply, federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws, many of them
passed in the 1980s as a weapon in the drug war, should be rescinded
or revised. They have not lived up to their original promise.

The laws have treated drug kingpins and low-level players as equals.
They have tied the hands of judges, who are not allowed to use
discretion in passing sentence on individuals who played minor roles
in drug organizations. They have not noticeably stemmed the tide of
drug trafficking or drug use. And many people perceive the laws as
racist, because crack cocaine defendants have been treated much more
harshly than defendants facing powder cocaine charges. Because of
that disparity, African American defendants have borne the brunt of
these laws.

Eric E. Sterling, president of the nonprofit Criminal Justice Policy
Foundation, has been particularly critical. In a column earlier this
year, Sterling wrote: ``The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported in
1995 that more than 55 percent of federal drug defendants were the
lowest-level offenders -- `mules,' bodyguards or street-level
dealers. Only 11.2 percent were high-level traffickers. Of over
20,000 federal drug defendants in 1998, only 41 were kingpins. The
Justice Department is not going after high-level traffickers.''

And Sterling should know more than a little bit about the intent of
these laws. From 1979 to 1989 he was counsel to the U.S. House
Judiciary Committee, at a time when the mandatory-minimum sentencing
laws were being drafted.

Kemba Smith, the Virginia woman who formerly attended Hampton
University, is indeed fortunate that Clinton commuted her sentence.
She was a low-level operative in a drug ring run by her boyfriend,
Peter Hall, who was shot to death before police could arrest him on a
federal indictment.

Smith did not sell the drugs, but she did help transport them.
However, this first-time, nonviolent offender earned a prison term
longer than the average state sentences for crimes such as
manslaughter, robbery and sexual assault.

Smith benefited from a huge amount of media publicity, the backing of
the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the tireless efforts of her
parents, Gus and Odessa Smith. Countless others, however, remain in
prison under circumstances similar to Smith's. What of them? They
shouldn't have to navigate the court system, or beg the president for
mercy, all the while locked up under an extremely punitive sentence.

Bush must already know this. He should help set policy on this issue
and bring about some fairness.

The current sentencing guidelines are a disgrace. They must be revised.