U.S. WOMAN TO BE SENTENCED IN PERU

LIMA, Peru (AP) -- It sounded like easy money to Jennifer Davis. All she had
to do was fly to Lima, pick up a few kilos of cocaine and return to Miami,
where drug traffickers would pay her $5,000.

But instead of enjoying easy riches, Davis, 20, of Danville Ill., has spent
1 1/2 years in a cockroach-infested cell in Lima's harsh Chorrillos women's
prison, taking baths with buckets of cold water.

Her sentencing is scheduled for today, and a six-year sentence is the best
she can hope for. The prosecution wants a 10-year jail term.

The tall aspiring model was caught in September 1996 with about eight pounds
of cocaine hidden in her luggage as she tried to board a plane to Miami at
Lima's Jorge Chavez airport.

She pleaded guilty to drug-trafficking charges and since then, has been
waiting for Peru's slow justice system to process her case.

Her parents, Claire and Denny Davis, have fought for a quicker trial. They
even filed a complaint with the Inter-American Human Rights Commission,
arguing the delay in bringing her case to trial and brutal prison conditions
violate their daughter's human rights.

Now, just before her sentencing, Davis is nervous. She dreams of a hot
shower and her family and admits to being ``scared. My life is in the
court's hands and I don't know what they'll do. I want to go home.''

As traffickers change their smuggling routes to outwit anti-drug efforts,
experts say they are using more ``mules'' like Davis -- individuals who
smuggle cocaine taped to their bodies, swallowed in plastic pouches or in
hidden in their luggage on commercial flights -- to get the cocaine abroad.
As a result, more foreigners are getting caught at Lima's airport.

For the traffickers, the risk is worthwhile -- a gram of cocaine that sells
for less than $10 in Lima costs $100 in New York.

Davis and her fellow prisoners say drug traffickers often ``sacrifice'' one
of their mules carrying a small amount of cocaine to distract police while a
larger quantity passes through customs. Davis is unsure if this happened in
her case.

Under a hot sun in the prison courtyard, Davis chats with a half-dozen other
young foreign women caught with drugs at Lima's airport. They come from the
United States, Russia, South Africa and Britain -- all lured to Peru by the
promise of a quick buck smuggling drugs.

Inside the prison yard, salsa booms from a transistor radio, and Peruvian
prisoners with tattoos and scars walk by under the eye of uniformed female
guards.

The women are enjoying a rare treat -- a box of doughnuts and soda brought
by a U.S. Embassy official. For Davis, a vegetarian who lives primarily on
fruit and vegetables brought by her lawyer, it is a form of a last meal
before sentencing.

``I want to tell kids who think they can come here and make a few easy
dollars smuggling drugs not to do it,'' Davis says. ``The drug traffickers
will say that it is easy and no one gets caught -- they lie.''

Along with another inmate, Davis occupies a cell only as wide as her arm
span and as long as her bed. She must provide her own food, water, bed
sheets, toilet paper and other essential items.

Ten days ago she was rushed to the hospital infirmary with a severe
intestinal infection from drinking prison tap water. She recovered, but the
quality of the water and food hasn't changed.

The time Davis has already served will count as part of the sentence. Under
the terms of a treaty between Peru and the United States, Davis could serve
part of her sentence in a U.S. prison.

Davis goes to wait in a long line at a row of pay phones in the courtyard to
call home. She calls it her ``lifeline.''