THEY SPEAK FOR THE FALLEN IN WAR ON DRUGS

BLACK WOMEN'S GROUP URGES CLEMENCY FOR DEALER'S GIRLFRIEND

An audience of 1,500 professional black women sat in a hotel ballroom
yesterday and gasped at details of how a young woman, whose dreams of
business success reminded them of their own daughters, fell in love with a
smooth-talking drug dealer and ended up sentenced to prison for a quarter
century.

Members of The Links Inc., a national group, expressed outrage over the
case of Kemba Smith, 26, who is serving a 24 1/2-year sentence under
federal mandatory drug sentencing laws - even though prosecutors said she
never used, handled, or benefited from her boyfriend's illegal trade.

''Every informed and educated parent should say, `But for the grace of God
that could be my child,''' said Sarah Brown-Clark, a college professor from
Youngstown, Ohio. ''Too often now we're seeing our children getting trapped
in this situation.''

The case of Kemba Smith is galvanizing activists, students, mothers, and
criminal-justice advocates across the country to call not only for her
release but for radical reform of the mandatory drug sentencing laws. They
maintain that laws designed to bring down crack dealers are ensnaring
low-level offenders and locking up a generation of blacks.

The Links, which is devoted to community service, used its national
conference at the Boston Marriott Copley Place to initiate a letter-writing
campaign yesterday to President Clinton, demanding clemency for Smith. She
is serving time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Conn.,
and is ineligible for parole.

''Kemba is everybody's child, anybody's child, and our child,'' said
Patricia Russell-McCloud, national president of the 10,000-member group,
which has 270 chapters in 40 US states, Nassau, the Bahamas, and Frankfurt.
''We will free Kemba.''

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund has filed an appeal on Smith's
behalf in the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va.,
said Elaine R. Jones, president of the legal agency.

''Kemba represents the tip of the iceberg,'' Jones said, referring to the
thousands of blacks who serve time under mandatory minimum sentences. ''We
hope to get a new trial.'' Such state and federal laws allow judges no
discretion, officials say.

The laws have come under fire in Massachusetts and elsewhere, partly
because of their impact on African-Americans - with penalties 100 times
more severe for crack cocaine, a drug used mostly in black communities,
than for powder cocaine, used often by white people.

Smith, a Virginia native, was attending Hampton University when she met
Peter Michael Hall, who prosecutors say ran a violent $4 million drug
operation between Virginia and New York.

Smith's father and mother, Gus and Odessa Smith, who spoke at the
conference yesterday, said Hall had abused their daughter severely in their
three-year relationship. The Smiths said their daughter had a miscarriage.
She became pregnant again with Hall and gave birth to a boy, Armani, who is
being raised by her parents.

Hall eluded law enforcement officers and was shot dead in a Seattle
apartment while on the run.

Smith, on advice of counsel, later pleaded guilty to charges of money
laundering, conspiracy, and lying, said Gus Smith. He said the money
laundering charges were filed because his daughter signed an apartment
lease and a contract for the purchase of a car for Hall. He said she also
denied knowing Hall's whereabouts when a prosecutor had asked, and faced
conspiracy charges since she knew about the drug operation.

''We believe even the staunchest conservative politician would agree that
these laws were not designed for people like Kemba to get caught in the
system,'' said Odessa Smith.

The impact of the laws, drafted at the height of the nation's so-called war
on drugs in the 1980s, has been vast, imprisoning thousands and sparking an
exponential rise in incarceration rates for black women.

From 1986 to 1991, young African-American women in state prison for drug
offenses increased 828 percent, according to the Sentencing Project in
Washington.

A 1994 Justice Department study showed that women were overrepresented
among low-level, nonviolent drug offenders with minimal or no criminal
history, such as Kemba Smith.

''This punishment by far exceeds the crime,'' said Barbara Lord Watkins, a
Dallas member of The Links. ''We need to develop strategies to move
collectively and make sure this doesn't happen again.''

© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.

Checked-by: Richard Lake