U.S. JAILS WEST VAN MAN OVER $20 LSD DEAL IN '71

West Vancouver lab technician Allen Richardson has been told he'll be in a
New York jail until March, 2001.

"His wife, Amalia, is very distraught," Richardson's Vancouver lawyer,
Michael Bolton, said yesterday. "He is putting a brave face on it but he
is obviously very upset. In the context of what he did, this is cruel,
pointless, and inhumane."

The 50-year-old Richardson, a fugitive from the U.S. for almost 30 years
for a minor drug offence, turned himself in last month to a judge in
Rochester, N.Y. and pleaded for leniency.

Instead, he's under 22-hour-a-day lockdown at the maximum-security
Downstate Correctional Facility at Fishkill, N.Y. However, he will be
transferred to a medium-security jail.

His wife, who suffers from breast cancer, has been visiting him daily but
plans to come home this week,.

Richardson was sentenced in 1971 to up to four years in prison for selling
$20 in LSD to an undercover cop.

He was sent to the brutal Attica jail and then to a work camp near the
Canada-U.S. border.

When told he would be returning to Attica, he escaped to Canada to start a
new life.

He settled in Horseshoe Bay and lived an "exemplary" life, volunteering for
the SPCA and racing vintage sports cars.

"I am shocked beyond belief at the treatment they are giving him," said
neighbor Liz Byrd, a former West Vancouver councillor. "Canada has got to
do something for this man."

Jim Hanlon, manager of human resources at UBC's TRIUMF lab, where
Richardson worked, said he is shocked at the severity of the sentence and
that Richardson will have a job waiting for him when he's released. "We've
got to help him," said Hanlon. "We're not going to hurt someone when
they're down."