OUR TOWNS: AFTER CONFINEMENT IN TWO KINDS OF PRISONS, A PLEA FOR CLEMENCY

STORMVILLE, N.Y.

MUSCULAR dystrophy slowly makes its way through Terrence Stevens's
body, shutting down muscle after muscle. But his continued
imprisonment is equally contorting.

Mr. Stevens is in the eighth year of a prison sentence of 15 years to
life for cocaine possession and conspiracy, imposed by a judge who has
acknowledged he wished the state's rigid Rockefeller-era drug laws
allowed him to hand down a lighter punishment. Nearly quadriplegic,
Mr. Stevens, 33, relies on others to dress him, put him on the toilet
and turn him in his bed every two hours. When he is taken out of Green
Haven Correctional Facility here to see a specialist, he is shackled
in chains that he is too weak to lift, never mind break. Prison
officials have denied his request for a motorized wheelchair, which doctors
recommend, saying inmates can push him.

The daily struggle sometimes turns cruel. Mr. Stevens said that last
month, after he argued with a corrections officer about telephone
privileges, the officer accused him of exposing his genitalia. He was
kept locked in his cell for a few days until a prison doctor and a
nurse testified at a disciplinary hearing that Mr. Stevens could not
have exposed himself. "They had given testimony that he was unable to
perform such an act because of his physical disability," said Linda
Foglia, a spokeswoman for the State Department of Correctional
Services. He was found guilty of harassment, but the exposure charges
were dropped.

It was reminiscent of a 1994 incident in which Mr. Stevens was kept in
solitary confinement for 40 days for not complying with a strip search,
something else he could not do. Those charges were eventually
reversed. A subsequent strip-search policy referred to Mr. Stevens as
"the one inmate in the facility who is unable, medically, to spread
his buttocks."

Mr. Stevens now seeks a more dignified distinction. He recently
applied to Gov. George E. Pataki for executive clemency. As one of his
lawyers, Vincent F. Gugino, said: "You have a human being imprisoned
in his own body. What do the bars do?"

HIS petition reflects how criminal justice has been contorted by
30-year-old laws that mandate longer minimum sentences for some
lower-level drug crimes than for rape, manslaughter and armed robbery.
Politicians from the governor on down have advocated easing the laws,
but the will to change them collapses year after year in Albany.

Mr. Stevens, who first showed signs of muscular dystrophy while
growing up in a New York City housing project, was already in a
wheelchair when he was arrested on a bus in Buffalo in 1990. He was
charged with possessing just enough cocaine to draw a stiff mandatory
sentence.

He maintains his innocence, but an officer said he saw Mr. Stevens
toss a bag containing drugs into the aisle of the bus. A friend
traveling with Mr. Stevens testified against him. According to court
documents, Mr. Stevens's friend, Patrick Sullivan, said that a state
trooper involved in the drug transaction advised him "to put it all on
Terrence, to tell them that it was all Terrence's drugs." Mr. Sullivan
received probation in exchange for testimony that helped convict Mr.
Stevens and the trooper on drug charges.

John V. Rogowski, the Erie County judge who sentenced Mr. Stevens,
said in an interview in April that he regretted imposing the mandatory
term. "It's a sad commentary that the law doesn't permit for the
proper relief that should be given a human being," said the judge, who
is now retired.

Mr. Stevens lives in a cellblock for handicapped inmates, where he
receives physical therapy and constant care from nurses and other
prisoners. "They're handling the activities of daily life quite well
for someone who's almost totally paraplegic," said Stanley Holstein, a
Westchester County neurologist who examined Mr. Stevens recently.

But "the proper relief that should be given a human being" remains
beyond Mr. Stevens's grasp. A compressed lung makes breathing painful.
It takes all the strength of his two hands to brush his teeth. Two
fingers on his right hand, his stronger hand, have recently gone
rigid. "I feel like eight years should be enough time for taking a bus
ride," he said.

One day last week, Mr. Stevens's mother, aunt and grandmother visited
him. His 85- year-old grandmother, Annie Mosley, said she had heard
that Darryl Strawberry, the former New York Yankee, had been given
house arrest for violating his probation. "Why can't they do that for
Terrence?" she asked "Strawberry can get away. Terrence can't."