THE CORRUPTING INFLUENCE OF NATION'S WAR ON DRUGS

WASHINGTON - Twenty years ago, my worry was the corrupting influence
of drug trafficking - not just on the poor dumb addicts but on local
sheriff's deputies paid to be somewhere else when the big drop was
made, on small-time politicians and judges and, eventually, I feared,
on large and small governments.

The big-time drug operators had so much money to throw around (and
were so ruthless when it came to those who threatened their riches)
that more and more people were being drawn, however reluctantly, into
their conspiracy.

I still worry. But it's the corrupting influence of the war on drugs
that worries me now. I've just seen what you may have seen a year ago
when PBS first broadcast it: a "Frontline" special called "Snitch."
The program is a compendium of questionable behavior by people sworn
to uphold the law - decent people corrupted by their desire to jail as
many members of the illicit drug business as they can.

Their biggest tool, the show claims, is the snitch: Not some "Huggy
Bear" giving valuable leads to TV detectives but certified crooks who
buy their freedom (or at least reduced sentences) by giving up other
folk who may or may not deserve it.

If you saw the piece, you will remember Lula May Smith, the Mobile,
Ala., motel maid who, then in her late 50s, was arrested, prosecuted,
convicted and sent to prison for seven years. The strokes she endured
while in prison left her crippled.

And here's the truly chilling part of the story: The prosecutor,
Willie Huntley, says flat-out that he never believed her to be
involved in drugs, never thought she should have been convicted and
never wanted her to go to prison. He really wanted her son, Darren
Sharp.

But Sharp, knowing he was being sought, took off. The authorities went
after Lula May Smith in the belief Sharp would turn himself in to free
his mom.

Said the prosecutor: "The jury started reading the verdicts ... and I
think Lula's name was way down near the bottom. ... And the closer we
got to her name, the more I kept hoping, 'Please let them say (she's)
not guilty.' ... I'd pray a little bit harder. ... But ... they said
'guilty' (for her) too. ... I still say she shouldn't have gone to
jail."

Even if you buy the prosecutor's contention that the son was "one of
the biggest dealers in the Prichard (Ala.) area," how can it be right
to throw the innocent mother in the slammer?

Well, say the law-enforcement people who accept that we are in a war
on drugs, innocence is a tricky notion. Most of the people who wind up
doing serious time are guilty, they say, even if they wouldn't have
been convicted without the aid of snitches with information to trade.

But what is startling about these "Frontline" stories is the number of
cases in which the prosecutors had nothing but the snitches' word, and
still managed to get convictions.

The way it apparently works is that somebody gets busted for drug
trafficking and, thanks to the mandatory minimum sentences Congress
enacted in 1986, he's looking at anywhere from five to 10 years to
life. Unless ...

You see, there's a provision in the law that allows leniency for
"substantial assistance" to law-enforcement officers. In other words,
get yourself a deal by giving up your friends - or even strangers.

One young man says he was a small-time dealer for three years but had
been completely out of the business when some acquaintances were
caught and "started naming names," including his. He went to jail for
longer than the snitches.

Clarence Aaron, a Southern University student at the time, stupidly
got involved with some small-time dealers. He says he never used or
sold drugs himself, but did arrange meetings between the dealers and
potential buyers. When his pals were arrested (with previous
convictions they all faced life sentences), they gave up Aaron and got
reduced sentences. Aaron, whose record was clean and against whom the
only evidence was the word of desperate snitches, is in the federal
prison in Atlanta, serving three life terms with no chance of parole.

As one defense lawyer put it, "If I offered a witness a hundred-dollar
bill to come down and say it my way, I'd go to prison for that. But
yet (the prosecutors) can give ... something far more precious than
money. ... They can give ... freedom." It's awfully tempting, in those
circumstances, to tell prosecutors what they want to hear.

So what should we do? Obviously, I wouldn't want to outlaw the use of
snitches, though reliance on the uncorroborated word of snitches whose
own freedom is at stake makes me nervous. And I'm still not ready to
say just legalize drugs and be done with it.

But I am ready to end this stupid and ineffectual "war" on drugs that
puts such a premium on locking people up. And I am more convinced than
ever that it's time to rethink "zero tolerance," mandatory sentences
and all those feel-good nostrums that are corrupting our judicial
system as much as the drug lords ever did.