WHEN JUSTICE IS TO BLIND

I wouldn't blame Karen Blakney of Southeast Washington if she's been
following with a bit of cynicism the Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton show
downtown. Blakney shouldn't even be blamed if she's feeling pangs of
jealousy as she watches Linda Tripp and Lucianne Goldberg do their thing.
Because there is one absolute certainty about the ultimate outcome of this
latest White House scandal. Whether the coming months produce impeachment,
moral condemnation, exoneration or veneration, everybody who's anybody in
this sex, lies and audiotape saga will end up at some point down the road
free as birds and financially better off than ever before. America's social
and moral codes of the '90s were made for these folks.

And perhaps that's the part that makes Karen Blakney most heartsick of all.
Because Blakney, a mother of nine children, has been having her own go-round
with the American system of justice. And it sure ain't like what's being
served up in the headlines these days.

Though both Blakney and Monica Lewinsky are women of Washington, their lives
couldn't be farther apart. Blakney's getting by on welfare and food stamps
with a little extra help from her youngest child's father and from her
oldest daughter, who's working while going to school. Lewinsky, of Watergate
and product of an affluent Beverly Hills lifestyle, has probably never had a
serious hunger pang in her life. The only thing they may have in common,
besides gender, is one experience with law enforcement.

Lewinsky's came as she sat for lunch in an upscale Virginia hotel with
friend-turned-traitor Linda Tripp. As you know, dear reader, unbeknownst to
Lewinsky, the FBI also had joined them at the table in the form of a body
wire worn by Tripp that recorded every word being said about Lewinsky's
alleged sexual affair and coverup plot involving the president of the United
States.

Blakney experienced a government "gotcha" of her own. It came courtesy of
two undercover federal agents posing as drug buyers. Not that Blakney, also
known as "Cookie," was doing any of the selling when the agents revealed
their identities.

The drugs were being peddled by two traffickers. A drug-addicted bit player,
Blakney was hired (in keeping with her nickname) to cook powder cocaine into
crack, for which she received the whopping sum of $100. Nonetheless, it was
enough to get her busted -- a then 29-year-old junkie in handcuffs for
trying to feed a bad habit. Today, eight years later and following three
years behind bars, Blakney is still fighting the nightmare of that arrest.

Blakney's criminal justice experience makes Bill Clinton's crisis look like
high tea in the White House Rose Garden.

She was caught cooking powder cocaine into crack. Because there's a 100-to-1
disparity between sentences for crack and powder cocaine offenses, Blakney
faced a mandatory sentence several times worse than if she had been found
packaging the powder. It's a difference enshrined in law -- a law that is
sending a generation of young black men and women like Blakney to jail for
long stretches. Why? Most powder cocaine users are white. And the 90 percent
of defendants in crack prosecutions? You got it -- they're black. This could
have changed in 1995, when Congress and Clinton took a look at the
sentencing disparities. But it was before an election year, and the
Republicans -- not needing us -- and Clinton -- owning us -- agreed that the
law could stay the way it is. After all, why should they care?

So at the time of her sentencing in federal court, Blakney faced a mandatory
minimum of 10 years in jail. However, Senior U.S. Judge Louis Oberdorfer, a
brilliant and compassionate jurist and a conscientious foe of arbitrary
mandatory minimum sentences, ruled that a compulsory sentence of 10 years
for a minor player like Blakney would be a "cruel and unusual" application
of the law in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Now, Oberdorfer's no softie. He sentenced the drug traffickers in the same
case to life in prison without parole. When it came to Blakney, however,
Oberdorfer imposed 33 months, the sentence she would have faced in a powder
cocaine case.

You think independent counsel Ken Starr's a junkyard dog? Check out our own
U.S. attorney's office in the District. Prosecutors there became apoplectic
at the thought of a pipehead not spending a decade behind bars as prescribed
by law. So with dozens of unprosecuted D.C. government corruption cases
collecting dust in their office, federal lawyers rushed off to challenge
Judge Oberdorfer's ruling. They struck pay dirt when a three-judge panel at
the U.S. Court of Appeals here reversed the ruling and kicked it back to
Judge Oberdorfer for resentencing.

To his everlasting credit, Judge Oberdorfer tried to hang tough, sentencing
Blakney to the 33 months she had already served by the time he took up her
case for resentencing. He had good reasons for not sending her back to jail.
Since her release, Blakney had turned her life around.

She didn't have someone from the social A list like Clinton's sidekick,
Vernon Jordan, looking out for her -- you see, she's a "nobody" from east of
the river. Nor does Blakney have the benefit of a rich father or a
fashionable mom who can fix her up with a place in the Watergate or a New
York apartment. But she does have grit -- and since that incarceration, she
does have God.

After jail, Blakney successfully completed a drug-treatment program and
knocked off the illicit drugs -- as random drug testing continues to show.
She's involved in her church's Outreach Ministry Program and has become a
leader in turning youth and others in the community away from drug
addiction. "Exemplary" is the way Senior U.S. Probation Officer Verdale
Freeman described Blakney's post-jail adjustment. And best of all, according
to court papers, Blakney is on good terms with her young family and keeping
it on the straight and narrow.

But guess what? Prosecutors said to hell with Blakney's reforming herself.
The law says we've got to take her from her family and lock her up for seven
more years. So what if her kids become public charges of the city's
much-maligned foster-care system?

The appeals panel, agreeing that Blakney's successful rehabilitation and
community service are irrelevant, threw in with the prosecutors and vacated
Judge Oberdorfer's resentencing decision. It's all too much for Judge
Oberdorfer, who has recused himself from the case. Blakney's fate is now in
the hands of U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler, who has set a status
hearing for Feb. 10. That's when Blakney may find out when she has to kiss
her kids goodbye.

And that, my friends, is a glimpse of American justice as administered away
from the front pages and evening news. Blakney's among the thousands of
faceless Americans who -- unlike Lewinsky, the Clintons and the rest of that
ilk -- pay a steep price for being poor. Go ahead, get worked up and choose
sides in the Clinton-Lewinsky controversy if you must. But remember people
like Blakney who go through this life without a margin of safety. That is
the face of justice nobody sees.

© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company