AN UNLIKELY CASUALTY OF THE DRUG WARS

When Amy Pofahl found out that her estranged husband had been arrested In
Germany for drug trafficking, she made a decision that set the course for
the rest of her life.

She helped him.

"In hindsight, I wish I had just done nothing," she said. " I thought that
If there was any problem, it will fall square on the shoulders of the people
who did something wrong."

Nevertheless, on March 21, 1991 two years after her husband's arrest- ~Amy
Pofahl was arrested and charged with conspiracy and money laundering in
connection with her husband's crimes.

The details of the case are disputed, but both sides agree that Pofahl's
involvement was a fraction of her, husband's. Yet he served four years in
Germany, plus three years of American probation, while she has served seven
years of a 24 year sentence in the Federal Correctional Institution in
Dublin.

That 18 year difference comes from legal changes made during the early years
of the war on drugs, which critics contend have caused the number of women
Incarcerated In the nation's prisons and jails to sky-rocket.

A study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia
University measured a 439 percent increase in incarcerated women between
1980 and 1996 while the number of incarcerated men increased by 229 percent,

Many of those women are confined for conspiracy in their husbands' or
boyfriends' crimes, reformers say. But under federal mandatory minimum
sentences that were in place when Amy was convicted, all conspirators were
eligible for the same sentence as the kingpin in a drug operation.

The law allows drug offenders to receive a reduced sentence by providing
information to prosecutors, but but reformers say many women have little
information to offer prosecutors In exchange for a lenient sentence.

As a result, they charge, some major drug peddlers can be arrested, plead
guilty, cooperate with prosecutors and receive a few years in jail while
their wives and girlfriends are put away for decades.

Amy was 25 years old in 1985 when ~he met Charles Pofahl, a man 19 years her
senior. He married her in November, but kept his new wife at a distance, Amy
said - especially when it came to money.

'He told me once he didn't want me to know where his assets were in case we
got divorced" she said. "I think now I would have had more questions than
when I was 25 years old, and he just seemed bigger than big and so
exciting."

The duo shared a home in an exclusive Dallas, Texas suburb and traveled
often, including trips to Guatemala-where federal prosecutors later said
Charles Pofahl was developing an international organization to manufacture
and distribute MDMA, or ecstasy.

Amy Pofahl now says she and her husband sometimes used MDMA - before and
after the drug was declared illegal in 1986 and she once asked him to obtain
some of the drug for a friend, later indicted in the conspiracy. But she
maintains she never knew of nor participated in her husband's illegal drug
operation.

Amy had left her husband and was living alone in Los Angeles when Charles
was arrested in February 1989 by German authorities investigating his MDMA
manufacturing operation there. Amy began receiving frantic faxes from her
estranged husband, telling her to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars
from various Dallas-area vaults via his associates and save it for possible
bail.

Federal prosecutors later said the money she was collecting came from MDMA
sales, the vault she sent an associate to open held a substantial quantity
of the drug, and some of the money her husband's associates provided her
with came from ongoing drug sales.

Amy still maintains she was ignorant of the ongoing activities. But her
husband's associates said otherwise when they testified at her trial as part
of their own plea agreements. The jury found her guilty, making her eligible
for the mandatory minimum sentence.

"She did receive a longer sentence than others who were more culpable."
Federal prosecutor Charles Strauss said. But Strauss said jurors were
convinced by the evidence and testimony that she was far more involved in
the MDMA operation than she acknowledges, and said several other defendants
in the case including Charles - pleaded and cooperated with The government.

"As a result of that," he said, "they received lesser sentences, but Mrs.
Pofahl elected not to cooperate."

Amy is now seeking clemency, her application supported by affidavits from
her ex-husband and several co-conspirators avowing her ignorance of the drug
operation. If she does not succeed, she will remain imprisoned until 2012.

"I still want to think that I'm going to get out of this," she. said. "Which
is odd, because I've learned to almost despise hope."