COMMUTATIONS SHOW SENTENCING DISPARITY

WASHINGTON - In the time it takes to earn a bachelor's degree, Kemba Smith
went from college student to battered woman on the lam with a drug-dealing man.

She loved and feared her boyfriend, Peter Hall, too much to help the FBI
capture him. Hall eventually was killed. Smith got 25 years in prison for
drug crimes about which she and her supporters contend she knew very little.

President Clinton set her free Friday, along with Dorothy Gaines, whose
19-year sentence also underscored disparities in federally mandated
punishments for bit players in the war on drugs.

Gaines, 42, of Mobile, Ala., and Smith, 29, of Richmond, Va., were among
three prisoners whose sentences were commuted by Clinton on Friday. Gaines
served seven years. Smith served six, and gave birth while in prison to her
son Armani, now 6. He is being raised by her parents, Gus and Odessa Smith.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which took on Smith's case in
1996, said it was a dramatic example of the need to eliminate mandatory
minimum sentences established by Congress in the 1980s to take down drug
kingpins.

The problem, fund director Elaine Jones said, is that the kingpins are able
to cooperate with authorities and barter their freedom, while lower-level
players lack enough information to do that and typically end up in prison.

Those offenders, Jones said, often are young, black or Latino, poor and
before the judge on a first-time offense.

"President Clinton has acted correctly," Jones said. "We hope Congress will
move forward to reform these overly harsh sentencing policies."

Smith and Gaines contend they never actually handled the crack cocaine that
put them behind bars.

Smith's role in the drug ring involved renting a storage space here, a car
or apartment there. In court papers, she said she got involved in Hall's
crack cocaine ring to keep him from beating her.