WHEN TIME SERVED IS TIME LOST

ALBANY -- The bus was late leaving Columbus Circle
and got caught in a doozy of a Manhattan traffic jam. But there were
no complaints about the hour or two lost. These passengers measure
wasted time in years.

Anthony Papa spent 12 years in prison for making a delivery of four
and a half ounces of cocaine in exchange for $500. "I was desperate,"
he said. "I was young and stupid." It was his first offense, but the
state's Rockefeller-era drug laws demanded a minimum sentence of 15
years. His wife divorced him and he lost a chunk of his life, but he
earned three degrees in prison and became an artist. Gov. George E.
Pataki granted him clemency three years ago, opening a rare escape
hatch from the tough drug sentences.

"That's why I'm on this bus," Mr. Papa said, "to humanize this
experience. There are people who made mistakes. They deserve a second
chance."

Rolling up the New York Thruway to Albany on Monday to an annual rally
against the drug laws, the bus hauled broken lives, hope lost and
regained, tales of endurance. The passengers wanted to shake up
lawmakers who concede that the laws are too harsh but who themselves
seem shackled, by conflicting political agendas.

Regina Stevens was in the first seat. Her son Terrence Stevens is
serving 15 years to life for possession of five ounces of cocaine. He
is largely paralyzed from the neck down with muscular dystrophy, which
struck him as a teenager.

Ms. Stevens is spirited and realistic. She lives in a Manhattan
housing project, works at three jobs and acknowledges past drug use.
"The street got me," she said, "but I was determined not to let the
street get my children." It got one of them, fairly or unfairly. She
believes her son's claims of innocence, but says, "even if he did it,
15 years is too much time."

Near the back of the bus, 73-year-old Eileen Flournoy sat with two
granddaughters. The little girls were cute and talkative and favorite
subjects for photographers at the rally. But they were there because
their mother is not. She's serving an eight-year-to-life sentence for
drug possession. "The drugs took over," Ms. Flournoy said of her
daughter Veronica, the girls' mother. "She got involved with the wrong
people."

The bus riders pleaded for sense, not sympathy.

"Twelve years, 4 months, 17 days," said Jan Warren, sitting in the
middle of the bus in a sundress, recounting her time served for
possession and sale of just under eight ounces of cocaine.

Minimum sentences for manslaughter and rape are shorter than
Rockefeller-era drug sentences. "There's no logic," said Ms. Warren,
who was granted clemency and released in January.

Ms. Warren doesn't excuse the system, or herself. She transported
drugs to make money. "I was trying to start a new life," she said. "I
was trying to get out of a relationship. I was pregnant. I wanted to
go out West, where my family was. I made bad choices."

At 48, she's trying to start again -- working, finishing college,
meeting her 10-month-old granddaughter. But her head is full of prison
images, including the one that got her on the bus trip, sponsored by
the Kunstler Center for Racial Justice in New York.

The day she left Bedford Hills Correctional Center, prisoners rushed
to the windows of the prison school to wave and cheer. The sun on the
windows erased their faces, and all she could see were hands. "You
just wanted to reach out and bring them with you," she said.

The rally hardly altered the debate. About 200 protesters gathered
between the steep Capitol steps and the backside of an imposing
statute of Gen. Philip Henry Sheridan astride a horse. Assemblyman
Marty A. Luster, a Democrat from Ithaca, was one of several speakers
urging them on. But later he said the lawmakers appeared paralyzed by
"political fear."

"There's fear that we're going to be seen as soft on crime," he
said.

The people on the bus know about wasted time. The long trip to Albany
didn't qualify.

Back in Columbus Circle, Henry Clemente exited the bus and headed to
his night job cleaning city buses. His son is in prison on a long drug
sentence. When arrested, his son was a student at the University of
Pennsylvania. The tales on the bus were tangled, the truth obscure.
But so are the politics of the drug laws.

"He's in there," Mr. Clemente said of his son. "You can hardly help
him. It's emotions. In speaking out, you release a lot of built-up
emotion. It gives you a little release. You hope that someone will
hear that."