HARD TIME

This Mother Of Three Will Spend Nearly 20 Years In Federal Prison. Her
Crime? Loving A Man In Trouble With The Law

Like those of many single mothers struggling to raise children alone,
Dorothy Gaines's days and thoughts are largely devoted to her three kids.
She tracks their activities, confers with their teachers, mediates disputes.
And she worries - a lot. Unlike most mothers, however, Dorothy nurtures from
behind the walls of a federal prison. "Paper mothering," she calls it.

Visit the Federal Correctional Institution in Marianna, Florida, and you may
understand why this prison, situated in a remote parklike setting, has
earned the name Club Fed. There are no fences, no bars and no armed guards.
No glass partitions separating inmates from visitors. The women, mostly
young, attractive, well-groomed and Black, mingle freely and are addressed
by the prison staff as Miss or Ms.

All prisons are not this way, of course. Inmates land here by being either a
first-time nonviolent offender or a model prisoner. Dorothy, once a
churchgoing, law-abiding nurse technician back in Mobile, Alabama, is both.
Nonetheless, she is constantly reminded that her life is not her own. Each
day she is told when to get up, when to shower, to eat, to sleep. Without a
miracle or presidential intervention, this will be her life for the next 13
years. Convicted on one count of possession with intent to distribute crack
cocaine and one count of conspiracy - to possess with intent to distribute
crack cocaine, she is in the sixth year of her 19-year, seven-month
sentence. Since, there is no parole in the federal system, the best she can
hope for is a 10 percent sentence reduction for good behavior.

Prisoner Of Love

Dorothy, 42, is one of a growing number of women - a disproportionate number
of whom are Black - doing time predetermined by a federal statute that sets
mandatory minimum sentences, no matter the circumstances of the conviction.
From 1986 to 1996, the number of women in state prisons on drug-related
offenses increased 888 percent, according to a report issued by the
Sentencing Project last November. An earlier report showed that from 1986 to
1991 the number of Black- female drug offenders rose by 828 percent. Like
many other women incarcerated on drug-related offenses, Dorothy's only
crimes appear to be naivete and bad judgment. Simply put, she had fallen in
love with the wrong man.

A prisoner who claims she is not guilty is almost cliche. But Dorothy's
proclamations stand out, so much so that she has become a poster child for
everything that is wrong with the "war on drugs," the government's battle
that often punishes hundreds of thousands of bit players while allowing
those at the top to get away.

"I was dating the wrong person - someone involved with drugs," she says,
referring to her six-year relationship with Terrell Hines, her common-law
husband at the time she was arrested. "I was in love by the time I realized
he was on drugs. I put him in rehab. You see a person who has a thousand
good characteristics and one fault, you don't turn your back on him."

Dorothy checked Terrell into drug rehab in the spring of 1990. Roughly a
year after he got out, he was using crack again. This time he also was
running drugs. When the drug ring that included Terrell was busted, Dorothy
was arrested as part of the conspiracy.

It wasn't the first time she had followed her heart to hell. When she was
16, a brief relationship with 20-year-old Larry Johnson left her pregnant
with her eldest daughter, Natasha. Johnson denied paternity for years and
never paid child support. Nearly ten years later she met the man she thought
would be her life partner, Charles Taylor. Together they had two children --
Chara, now 17, and Phillip, 15. That relationship ended tragically four
years later when Charles died unexpectedly of a heart attack at 32.
Convinced she had lost the one love of her life, Dorothy was inconsolable
for years. Finally she met and became involved with Terrell, a softspoken
man ten years her senior who had recently returned to Mobile after a stint
in the Navy. They fell in love, and before long Terrell moved into the neat
four-bedroom house that Dorothy shared with her three children.

"He was a wonderful, caring person," Dorothy recalls. "You would have never
known he was on drugs. I only found out when things started missing around
the house and bills were getting behind."

From a federal camp in Montgomery, Alabama, Terrell confirms that he was
addicted to crack and that once Dorothy found out, she forced him to get
help. He also admits that he relapsed and became even more entangled in the
drugs. That involvement ultimately cost Dorothy her freedom.

SideBar: How You Can Help Dorothy Gaines

To Date, hundreds of letters have been sent to the Office of the Pardon
Attorney in the Department of Justice and to President Clinton on Dorothy
Gaines's behalf in an effort guided by the Criminal Justice Policy
Foundation (CJPF). Visit the CJPF Web site at www.cjpf.org to email a letter
directly to President Clinton or to find instructions on how to mail him a
request for commutation.

The Day Dorothy's Nightmare Began

Dorothy lived in a government housing development in which the tenants took
great pride. But on August 21, 1993, the quiet community came under siege.
Dorothy was on her way home with her two youngest children, Chara and
Phillip, then 10 and 8 respectively, and her two grandkids when police cars
surrounded them. One of the officers got into her car and forced her to
drive home while the rest of the patrolmen followed.

Made to wait in the car with the frightened children while cops stormed her
house with guns drawn, Dorothy still had no idea what was happening. Only
later did she learn that the police had received a tip that day that drugs
were in the house.

"They tore my whole house up, she recalls." They took the plants apart, went
through all the drawers, the refrigerator, cupboards. They pulled up the
carpet, took the ceiling out and went into the attic I didn't even know I
had an attic."

The raid turned up nothing. Still the officers took her in for questioning.
When Dorothy couldn't supply any information about a drug ring, she was
charged with distribution. One month later, the Alabama state court threw
out the case, citing a lack of physical evidence to corroborate the charges.

Dorothy thought the ordeal was over. And had she lived somewhere else that
may well have been the case. But southern Alabama is one of the country's
most active federal judicial districts for prosecuting local drug cases. In
that district (population about 784,568), in which Mobile is located,
prosecutors convicted roughly the same number of federal drug offenders in
1998 as in the central California district (population about 16.9 million).

Federal prosecutors brought charges of possession and distribution against
Terrell and subpoenaed Dorothy to testify against him at trial. "The FBI and
prosecutor told me that if I didn't testify, they would indict me, but I
took it as a joke," she remembers. "I thought they were just trying to
intimidate me."

Lyn Campbell, an assistant federal defender, is appointed to represent
defendants who could not afford an attorney. What she has seen in her past
four years of doing so supports Dorothy's statement. "The government's
attitude is 'We will indict you and your mother if you don't tell us what we
want to hear,' " says Campbell, adding that what the government wants to
hear may not necessarily be the truth. "I've had clients pass a polygraph
and the government still would not accept what they said."

The prosecutors' threats were no joke. Eight months after the state of
Alabama dropped her case, a federal grand jury indicted her on the
conspiracy-to-distribute and possession charges, Federal law permits a
person to be prosecuted on uncorroborated testimony -- even if that
testimony comes from admitted drug dealers seeking a sentence reduction.
Facing a life sentence, Dennis Rowe, the drug ring's kingpin, pleaded guilty
to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute crack cocaine and in
exchange for a lighter sentence identified Dorothy as a supplier to
low-level dealers. Larry Johnson, Natasha's father, who was already in
prison on drug charges, acknowledged paternity and then corroborated Rowe's
testimony in exchange for reduced time.

Dorothy was offered a similar "break" -- five years -- in exchange for her
cooperation. But she repeatedly told prosecutors she knew nothing of any
drug ring. Free on bail and confident that she would be exonerated, Dorothy
put her faith in the judicial system.

Her Day In Court

On July 25, 1994, Dorothy's case went to trial. Besides the drug dealers'
testimony, the prosecution had no case.

Dorothy, on the other hand, seemed to have the odds in her favor. In
addition to having no record of drug involvement, the police search of her
home had turned up nothing -- no drugs, no drug residue, no paraphernalia.
She also had no pagers or cell phones, the standard links between drug
pushers and users.

And several law-abiding community members were willing to testify on her
behalf. friends and neighbors, a doctor with whom Dorothy had worked, a bank
officer, even pastors from her church.

"I never knew her to be involved in anything bad," says E.D. Davis, bishop
of the Church of God Pentacostal in Mobile. "Dorothy is a good person; she's
someone I would depend on. What happened to her was terrible. It wasn't
justice."

Pearlie Howard, a schoolteacher who lived across the street from Dorothy,
agrees. When Pearlie's car was firebombed in the early 1980's, she suffered
burns over 65 percent of her body. "Other friends turned their backs on me,
but not Dorothy," recalls Pearlie. "She was my nurse, my housekeeper and my
psychiatrist during all that. When I heard that she had been arrested, I
couldn't believe it. That was not her lifestyle. Dorothy and I went to
church, shopping. We stayed home and did things with our kids."

The evidence seemed to tilt the scales in Dorothy's favor. At one time, Rowe
had testified that he and Terrell kept Dorothy in the dark about any drug
dealings. And although she had ended her relationship with Terrell shortly
before his indictment, he refused to implicate her, though doing so would
have meant a lighter sentence. With a reasonably competent defense,
Dorothy's chances for acquittal looked promising.

Dorothy says that by the time she realized her lawyer was more concerned
with getting the case over with than getting justice, it was too late. "He
never spent any time with me," she says of her court- appointed lawyer. "The
Friday before my trial, he promised to call me that weekend, but I never
heard from him. He wasn't a public defender, he was a public pretender."

Justice Denied

Dorothy's former lawyer, contacted for comment, did not return repeated
calls. Other attorneys who have reviewed the case extensively point out
problems with Dorothy's defense. Two of them, Gregg Shapiro and Tracey
Hubbard of the law firm Choote, Hall & Stewart in Boston, are working on
Dorothy's petition for clemency at no charge. "The lawyer failed to take a
number of simple steps," notes Shapiro. "First, he didn't cross examine
Rowe, the government's main witness, and before the trial he didn't move to
have Dorothy tried separately. This is not a complicated or unusual motion,
and although it may not be granted, it's worth a try. It's a no-brainer."
And "for a client facing 20 years in prison," Shapiro adds, "the opening
statement by Dorothy's lawyer was about 15 sentences long. It's clear that
there was not much factual investigation done, if any."

Terrell had been indicted months before Dorothy and tried months earlier as
well. Dorothy was tried with three others accused of playing lesser roles
than Dennis Rowe within the ring. Hubbard, Shapiro's associate, adds that
her lawyer never mentioned that two of the witnesses against Dorothy had
changed their testimony. "In Terrell's trial, Dennis Rowe testified that he
went out of his way to make sure Dorothy never knew about the drugs. Another
witness had previously told the FBI that he knew nothing about Dorothy's
storing drugs," he says.

The quality of Dorothy's defense comes as no surprise to Eric Sterling, a
former public defender who now heads the Criminal justice Policy Foundation,
a Washington, D.C., agency that advocates reform of certain federal drug
laws.

"Court-appointed attorneys hope the client pleads guilty," Sterling says.
"They are often not prepared to go to trial. They often don't know how to
try a case. When I was a public defender in the late 1970's, the majority.of
these attorneys saw it as a guaranteed salary while they built a private
practice on the side." Despite her poor defense, Dorothy was hopeful. But
after only about a day of deliberation, the jury voted to convict her on
both counts. She was stunned.

"You might have convicted her, too," Hubbard says. "She was tried with
people who had physical evidence against them, so he was considered guilty
by association."

On March 10, 1995, despite being a first-time, nonviolent offender, Dorothy
received 19 years and seven months, the minimum required by the federal
statute that sets the penalty for manufacture and distribution of controlled
substances. Terrell had received 14 years while Dennis Rowe's life sentence
was whittled down to 12.

Compare Dorothy's sentence to those given for more heinous crimes: sexual
abuse, five and a half years; kidnapping, minimum four and a half,
second-degree murder, 11 and a quarter. Dorothy would have received less
time had she been convicted of criminal sexual abuse of a child.

Drug-War Casualties

Dorothy's daughter Natasha recalls the family's shock when her mother was
sentenced. "We had gotten a guilty verdict, but we still were not prepared
for the sentence," she says. "We were hoping for house arrest or a stiff
probation. We had seen people who killed someone get a few years, so we
figured it couldn't be worse than what you get for killing somebody. It
wasn't until then that we understood that judges don't set the sentences."

Dorothy's children are clearly the biggest casualties, having lost a parent
who took an active interest in their lives. Before her lockup, she'd
attended school conferences, volunteered in the classroom, chaperoned field
trips and hosted sleepovers and birthday parties. Despite being counseled to
"let go of the outside world" by fellow inmates, she clings to her parental
role.

When Dorothy went to prison, Natasha, Chara and Phillip were 19, 11 and 9,
respectively. As the eldest, Natasha was forced to grow up quickly. Already
the mother of two young children, she took custody of her sister and brother
rather than see them go to a foster home.

"This is deja vu," says Natasha. "My mom took custody of her brother and
sister when she was 19." Determined to get an education, Natasha enrolled in
junior college and made the dean's list. But in 1996, stress-related illness
and the strain of raising four children forced her to drop out. Since
Dorothy's incarceration, Phillip, now 15, and Chara 17, once honor students,
have repeatedly brought home failing grades. Angry and self-destructive,
Phillip has been suspended from school and arrested twice. On two other
occasions, he tried to take his own life.

At 26, Natasha is now married and has three children. Seven people occupy
her cramped house in a poor neighborhood of Mobile, a far cry from the
well-kept neighborhood where they once lived.

Although the war on drugs is sold as a way to protect our children, the
government fails to acknowledge the problems it creates. Each time a parent
is incarcerated for drug crimes, the child's chance of leading a
well-adjusted life is greatly diminished. According to several
organizations, such as The Sentencing Project, between I million and 2
million children have been displaced when parents were sent to prison.

For those who argue that the children are better off without that parent,
statistics say 67 percent of all convicted nonviolent prisoners of the drug
war were employed at the time of their arrest, They went from being
tax-paying citizens to being wards of the state prison system, and in most
cases, their children go into instant poverty.

The Bigger Picture

Dorothy's experience and fate are part of a disturbing trend. Federal drug
officers tend to target people of color disproportionately, though the
overwhelming majority of drug users are White. Black and Latino
neighborhoods are more heavily patrolled, so more of us are arrested for
drug-related offenses. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse found
that in 1998, 72 percent of illegal drug use was by White people, while the
Bureau of justice Statistics found that Blacks and Latinos made up 76.3
percent of drug convictions.

Despite its $18 billion-a-year price tag, the drug war is a dismal failure:
Few politicians will admit that, despite the growing number of people
imprisoned for drug-related offenses, reports indicate that illegal drugs a
purer and even more plentiful than 20 years ago. The number of drug-related
deaths was 7,101 in 1979 and 15,973 in 1997 according to the Office of
National Drug Control Strategy. The price of a gram of cocaine was $191.35
in 1981 and $44.51 in 1998. Street-level purity rose from 40 percent in 1981
to 71.23 percent in 1998.

"Back in 1980, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said
that the best way to measure the effectiveness of the drug war is by price
going up and purity going down," says Sterling of the Criminal justice
Policy Foundation. "These figures show the opposite. If you waste your time
locking up the Dorothy Gaineses, Mr. Big doesn't have to worry justice has
very little to do with the laws."

Sterling should know. In 1986, when these laws were being drafted, he was
the lead attorney on drug laws for the House Judiciary Committee. Headlines
blared news of the drug-overdose death of Len Bias, college basketball star
and first-round draft pick of the Boston Celtics. After being pummeled in
the 1984 elections, Democrats saw the drug issue as the White Knight to
sweep them back into power. In just four weeks, congressional Democrats
crafted an antidrug bill that established tough sentences for anyone caught
with drugs -- even first-time offenders. In their haste, they failed to
consult the Bureau of Prisons, federal judges, the DEA or the Justice
Department. As a result, 15 years later, we're left with a law that has
locked up hundreds of thousands of people but done nothing to stem the flow
of illegal drugs.

Is There Hope For Dorothy?

After Dorothy's conviction, Lyn Campbell, the federal defender, took up her
cause. "When I started, I was sure I could get her out," Campbell says.
"There was nothing to support the witnesses' testimony against her, and all
of them had a reason to lie. But they're so pro- prosecution in South
Alabama, you could convict a ham sandwich of capital murder."

Campbell soon found out that though it may be difficult to get an acquittal,
having a conviction overturned is even harder. After five years and
Campbell's best efforts, Dorothy remains behind bars. "The judiciary just
doesn't care," Campbell says. "All who reviewed her case closed their eyes
to the things that didn't make sense."

The years behind bars have taken their toll on Dorothy. Eating as a result
of anxiety and frustration, she has put on about 120 pounds. The additional
weight brings with it serious health problems: She was recently diagnosed
with glaucoma and high blood pressure. In spite of everything, Dorothy's
sense of humor remains intact. She jokes about taking the first plane ride
of her life en route to prison and even laughs about the time the guard
strip-searched her looking for stolen chicken. Her plight has not quenched
her hope. "I know through faith that I can get through this," she says. "God
can touch somebody's heart and show them I don't belong here."

Besides prayer and faith,, Dorothy's final hope is a grant of commutation
from Bill Clinton. Tracey Hubbard and Gregg Shapiro have scoured stacks of
court documents and talked to dozens of people to prepare the petition for
commutation scheduled to be filed as this article goes to press. The
Criminal justice Policy Foundation, the November Coalition, and Families
Against Mandatory Minimums have taken up her cause. Still, the odds of
success are long. In 1999, of the 748 petitions for commutation received,
only 12 were granted. Now the only thing Dorothy can do is wait. Time is the
one thing she has in abundance.

Melba Newsome is a freelance writer living in Matthews, North Carolina.