COMMUNITY LEADER GETS LIGHTER SENTENCE

Homewood community leader Shawn Hall escaped a 15-year minimum jail term
Tuesday for drug trafficking when a federal judge ruled his criminal record
didn't warrant such a stiff penalty.

U.S. Senior District Judge Maurice B. Cohill sentenced Hall, 28, to six
years in prison and five years supervised release for helping to transport
2 kilograms of cocaine from California to Pittsburgh. Hall had pleaded
guilty in September to one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

"Working with community groups, you know what damage the drug scene does,"
Cohill told Hall.

From 1994-96, Hall coached basketball, football and baseball and was a
youth counselor for the East End Youth Outreach Program at the
Homewood-Brushton YMCA.

He also helped to rehabilitate a former gas station, ran a landscaping
company that employed neighborhood teen-agers and spoke at a Gang Peace
Initiative conference at Seven Springs resort, said his attorney, Ralph Karsh.

Turning toward a dozen supporters at his sentencing, Hall apologized to his
family and told the judge that he would continue to attend Alcoholics
Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings while in prison "to make this
bad situation into a good situation."

Hall could have received 15 to 19 years in prison because of two prior
convictions - one for drug trafficking and the other for simple assault.
Hall's attorney described the previous drug-trafficking conviction as a
"street-level offense." The assault conviction stemmed from a 1991
movie-theater fight.

Ruling that the fight "overrepresented" Hall's true criminal status, Cohill
reduced Hall's sentence.

Without Cohill's decision, "he (Hall) would have been treated the same as a
rapist or an armed bank robber who hurt someone during a robbery," Karsh
said after the hearing yesterday.

According to an affidavit, Hall's latest legal trouble started this past
February, when a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper found 2 kilograms of cocaine
inside a car stopped for speeding on Interstate 70.

The car's driver, Darryl Sheppard, said Hall paid him $1,800 to go to
Rialto, Calif., in a rented car in order to bring cocaine back to
Pittsburgh. Another $1,200 would be paid on delivery, Sheppard had said.

Once in Pittsburgh, federal drug-enforcement agents accompanied Sheppard to
a meeting with Hall and another man. They were arrested as they tried to
drive away with the cocaine, according to the affidavit.