DENTIST ASKS LESSER DRUG TERM

He Ran A Cocaine Ring In The 1980s And Got A 42-Year Term. He Says A 25-Year
Deal Was Offered.

Larry Lavin, the Ivy League-educated Main Line dentist who helped run a
massive cocaine ring in the 1980s, was back in a Philadelphia federal
courtroom yesterday, trying to shave time off the 42-year sentence he was
handed in 1986.

Gaunt and gray after 13 years in prison, Lavin, 44, testified that he was
given bad advice by his then-attorney, Thomas Bergstrom, when Bergstrom told
him "he could beat" a 25-year plea bargain being offered by prosecutors in
1986. But the prosecutor in the case testified that a 25-year deal was never
on the table. Yesterday's hearing in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Diane
Welsh was a step in a complicated legal process that Lavin hopes will lead
to a federal judge accepting a 25-year plea bargain. That would allow Lavin,
a University of Pennsylvania graduate, to possibly be released sometime next
year with time off for good behavior. Without
that reduction, a more likely date for parole would be in 2010.

"There's no one who doubts, including the prosecutors, that Larry would
never commit another crime after being released," his lawyer, Peter Scuderi,
said in an interview. "He is completely rehabilitated." Articulate and
erudite, Lavin testified that Bergstrom told him that he could do better
than the 25-year plea agreement. According to his testimony, Bergstrom
advised him that if he pleaded guilty, he would get lesser sentences on drug
and income-tax evasion charges -- something in the range of 20 years, and
be eligible for parole after serving about two-thirds of the sentence.

Bergstrom also took the stand and endorsed Lavin's recollection.

U.S. District Judge Louis H. Pollak handed Lavin sentences of 15, 4 and 3
years on drug charges -- in line with Bergstrom's expectations. Under those
sentences, Lavin would have been eligible for parole after serving
two-thirds of the 15-year sentence. But U.S. District Judge Louis C.
Bechtle, who sentenced Lavin on the tax charges, gave the dentist 20 years
- -- to run consecutive to the drug sentence.

"In my mind, it was more likely that there would be a hurricane on the moon
than for Judge Bechtle to give him a 20-year consecutive sentence for tax
evasion," Bergstrom testified yesterday. Lavin, jailed in the Federal
Medical Center in Rochester, Minn., did most of the legal research for his
motion. He spoke respectfully of the people who prosecuted him, but
challenged the recollection of former Assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Noble, who
testified last week that there was no 25-year deal offered and that it was
Bergstrom who brought it up in informal discussions. Noble is now a law
professor at New York University and is a candidate to head Interpol, the
international law-enforcement agency.

Lavin, dressed in a white T-shirt and tan pants, recounted a discussion with
Noble during which he contended that Noble, who is African American, said he
was relieved that Lavin had turned down the plea agreement. The reason,
Lavin recalled, was that Noble was concerned the sentence might be seen as
too lenient,
compared to sentences meted out to African Americans found guilty of similar
crimes. Noble denied the conversation ever took place and testified that he
was offended by Lavin's account.

"It was never intended as a racially offensive comment. I have great respect
for Ron Noble," Lavin testified. He said he brought up the incident to
buttress his contention that the 25-year plea agreement was the government's
idea, not Bergstrom's.

"If it was Tom's number," Lavin said, "he would have been pushing it."
Assistant U.S. Attorney J. Alvin Stout 3d argued in cross-examination that
Lavin could not be trusted. After the dentist was indicted in 1984, he fled
to Virginia Beach with his family and $1.2 million. There, he created about
50 false identities as he invested his money. Lavin was arrested in 1986
after federal investigators tracked him down through a birthday party for
one of his children at a local pizza restaurant.

The government accused Lavin of being Philadelphia's primary cocaine
supplier in the late 1970s and early 1980s, distributing hundreds of
kilograms of drugs through a network of friends and associates and amassing
millions of dollars in profits.

Since his sentencing, Lavin has been in a series of prisons that has
included Leavenworth, Kan.; Oxford, Wis.; and more recently, the medical
facility in Rochester, Minn. A spokesperson for the federal Bureau of
Prisons did not know if Lavin was there for a medical reason.