DOROTHY GAINES WINS HER FREEDOM

Christmas has come early, and profoundly, for Dorothy Gaines. On
Friday, President Clinton commuted the Mobile woman's lengthy federal
prison sentence for a drug conviction, allowing her an immediate and
joyous homecoming.

"I never lost faith, never," Gaines said during a brief phone
interview Friday afternoon from the prison near Tallahassee, as
officials prepared to release her.

She said her immediate plans were "just to be there with my children"
and to "get in the bathtub," something she has been unable to do while
incarcerated.

Clinton freed Gaines from serving a 19-year, seven-month sentence for
conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine.

Her case, first reported in the Mobile Register in 1997, had drawn
considerable attention from the national media and advocacy groups
opposed to long, mandatory sentences for drug convictions.

Gaines, 42, has always maintained her innocence. She had no felony
record when she was convicted by a Mobile jury in July ((994. The
evidence against her consisted solely of the testimony of admitted
drug dealers who got their sentences cut for cooperating with
authorities.

Though no drugs were ever found in the case, an FBI agent's testimony
of what he had been told about the amounts of drugs that were dealt
influenced Gaines' sentencing.

Federal sentences are particularly harsh for those convicted of
dealing in crack cocaine. Gaines' projected release date was 2012.

As it was, Gaines served nearly six years in jail and federal prison.
She was separated from her two school-age children, Phillip and Chara,
and from an older daughter, Natasha.

Natasha, 26, and her husband, Chuck, were there to greet Gaines upon
her release from the federal prison camp in Marianna, Fla., Friday
evening.

Gaines, wearing a red dress that prison workers obtained for her
earlier in the day, took small, tentative steps away from the door of
the prison office and toward Natasha as a handful of prison employees
and a gaggle of female inmates looked on. Gaines let out a yell when
she closed to within two feet of her daughter, and the two embraced
tightly for more than a minute.

The inmates, perhaps 50 of them, stepped forward, waving and hollering
their best wishes to Gaines as the vehicle she was in pulled away.

"It's hard to leave them behind," Gaines said moments later on the way
to Mobile. "A lot of them are like daughters to me. Plus, I know what
it's like to see somebody else leave, wondering when your number is
gonna come up."

Phillip, 16, had taken a leading role in the effort to free his
mother, getting petitions signed and writing pleading letters of his
own to Clinton.

Phillip, Gaines' youngest child, struggled in her six-year absence,
twice being held back in school. He had not seen his mother in 18
months prior to Friday night, having decided he could not deal with
visiting her in prison.

"I don't want no part of that," he said Friday afternoon, declining to
go meet her for her release.

Gaines spoke with Phillip again on a cellular telephone as she
approached Mobile, but he cut the conversation short.

"He said, 'Mama, I'm tired of talking to you on these phones. I don't
want to talk to you again until it's face to face,'" Gaines said after
hanging up.

Chara, 17, shrieked as she and Phillip ran to greet their mother in
Natasha's front yard in the Pleasant Valley area of Mobile. Overcome
with emotion, Phillip quickly retreated to a back room of the house
crowded with people and presents.

Prosecutors accused Gaines of being part of a crack cocaine ring that
operated in the Mobile area from 1989 to 1993. They were tipped off by
Larry D. Johnson, Natasha's father. Johnson had his own sentence
reduced for agreeing to cooperate with authorities.

But searches of Gaines' home and car turned up no drugs. A state case
against her was dropped for lack of evidence.

Federal authorities continued to pursue her, however, and offered her
a chance to plead guilty and testify against others in exchange for a
short sentence. They hoped to convict, among others, Gaines' boyfriend
Terrell Hines, a crack addict who would eventually admit he helped
sell drugs to support his habit.

But Gaines, while acknowledging she knew of Hines' drug use and tried
to help him get clean, insisted she never had any role in selling
drugs. She refused to plead guilty or cooperate with
prosecutors.

Prosecutors made a case against her anyway.

"She was playing in the big leagues, whether she deserved to be
playing or not," said E.T. Rolison, head of drug prosecutions in the
U.S. Attorney's office in Mobile, during a 1997 interview with the
Register.

U.S. District Judge Alex Howard, now a senior judge in Mobile,
declared at the March 20, 1995, sentencing hearing that Gaines "was
not one of the leaders or organizers of the conspiracy." He then gave
her a prison sentence of 19 years, seven months. That was what the
tough guidelines for crack dictated, for the amount of dope she was
found to have helped sell.

Gaines said Howard was among those who wrote Clinton on her behalf.
The judge told the president that he in no way objected to her early
release, she said.

Her sentence was far longer than those given to the men who had
testified against her, though they had admitted to organizing the
ring. Some of them had lengthy criminal records. Gaines' sole prior
offense was a misdemeanor for writing a bad check.

Gaines took her first plane ride to the federal women's prison in
Danbury, Conn. Later she was transferred to prisons in Tallahassee and
Marianna. As it unfolded, Gaines' saga got no publicity. But Gaines'
daughter Natasha tried to interest local reporters after the fact.

Groups that favor reform of long, mandatory sentences in drug cases
gave Gaines' case attention on their Web sites and in their
newsletters, prompting many letters to Clinton on her behalf.

Gregg Shapiro, a Boston lawyer who mainly handles civil cases, learned
of her case and volunteered to prepare her commutation petition. He
said the media and advocacy group attention was important, as were
affidavits he and his associates collected from Mobilians who said she
always had been a caring mother and good neighbor.

"I'm gratified that the president saw fit to commute Dorothy Gaines'
sentence," Shapiro said Friday. "Her sentence was far longer than any
she might have deserved."

Lyn Hillman Campbell, a federal public defender in Mobile who handled
Gaines' unsuccessful appeals, declared herself "thrilled" at the news
of Gaines' release.

The U.S. attorney in Mobile, Don Foster, would not comment on
Clinton's commutation of Gaines' sentence. Foster was appointed by
Clinton in January 1995, just after Gaines' conviction. But it fell
to Foster to defend his staff's prosecution of her, once media
inquiries began.

Foster did say Friday that he thought Congress should take a hard look
at whether long mandatory sentences in federal drug cases were fair
and effective. Some sentences, he said, "seem very long and you wonder
whether they really fit the crime."

But he added that crack cocaine and other drugs have had serious
negative consequences on families and communities, and that Congress
needs to take the lead in deciding how best to fight the drug war.

"Our job as prosecutors is to enforce the laws as written by
Congress," he said. "If the laws turn out to be harsher than the
public wants, then Congress is the appropriate place to change those
laws."

On Friday, Clinton also commuted the sentence of Kemba Smith, a
Richmond, Va., woman serving 25 years for drug crimes orchestrated by
her late boyfriend.

"We applaud the president for commuting these sentences, but they
represent the tip of the iceberg," said Julie Stewart, president of
Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy
group. "There are thousands of low level, nonviolent offenders in
federal prison and more are pouring in each day."