DEADHEADS REUNITED AFTER LENGTHY JAIL SENTENCES

Couple Say Solution Is Not Incarceration

Heather and Pat Jordan have spent most of the past decade on a journey
through the federal criminal justice system, a trip that was longer - and
in many ways stranger - than any they took following the Grateful Dead.

The Jordans were Deadheads. They met, on the road and even now are as
likely to recall an important event by what -show they were at as by the
date it occurred. Like many of their tie-dyed peers, the Jordans used LSD,
seeing little wrong with it.

"LSD had been a life-affirming and life-changing medium for -me," said
Heather Jordan, who first used the drug as a 15-year-old.

Pat Jordan, too, remembers his acid experience in a positive lot.

Both moved from using the drug to occasionally selling It almost by chance.
Pat Jordan made his first sale as a favor for a friend who had given him a
ride to a show in Long Beach.

By 1991, the Jordans' combined income from selling LSD was a couple of
thousand dollars each month.

Heather sent about 20,000 hits over the course of a year to a friend in
Tennessee. Unbeknown to the Jordans, the friend was working with state and
federal drug investigators as part of a plea bargain, hoping to shave years
off her own probable sentence.

"Things started to get weird in September of '91'. Heather Jordan said. "We
started getting followed on the highways by helicopters and other strange
things."

Uncertain whether they were in trouble or simply paranoid, the Jordans
moved into a recreational vehicle in November 1991 and set off on a cross
country trip to see Grateful Dead front man Jerry Garcia play back East.

On the way, they planned to stop in Tennessee to pick up $900 from
Heather's friend.

Instead, they walked straight into a trap set by a federal Drug Enforcement
Administration task force.

The Jordans knew they were In trouble, but they did not know how, much.
Heather had a friend who had been caught In 1987 with 6.5 grams of acid and
served five years in jail. Heather guessed she would get about the same.

But that was before the war on drugs toughened.

At trial, the Jordans learned they were being charged with responsibility
not only for about 7 grams of LSD - a charge to which they would plead
guilty - but also for Heather's stash: a brown, bottle containing LSD
dissolved in solvent. The government wanted to count every drop of liquid
in the bottle against them - more than 13 grams.

The Jordans had landed square on a legal fault-line of the war on drugs.
How the contents of Heather's little brown bottle were measured would make
the difference between the Jordans spending less than 10 years in jail - or
at least 20.

The case was heard in Tennessee's federal court by U.S. District Judge
Thomas Wiseman, who did not buy the prosecution's claim that everything in
Heather Jordan's little brown bottle should be counted in determining
whether they qualified for mandatory minimum sentences.

In a precedent-setting case, Wiseman ruled against the prosecution's method
of weighing the evidence.

Pat Jordan ultimately was sentenced to 10 years in prison; Heather Jordan
to eight. Prison gave Pat Jordan perspective on how lucky they were - one
of his fellow inmates, incarcerated for, selling crack cocaine, was
beginning a 45-year sentence.

"My 10 years was a short sentence, comparatively," Pat Jordan said. "I was
embarrassed to tell people. I felt guilty."

Newly reunited on the outside, the Jordans now live in a small Oakland
apartment, its walls covered with psychedelic posters and signed photos of
LSD discoverer Albert Hoffman.

Both have some regrets about the past, but they also remain convinced that
the punishment they suffered was the wrong one for the crime they committed.

"The solution is not incarceration," Pat Jordan said. "You can't fight it
with brutality. You need to fight it with compassion."