Column One

AN EPIC FIGHT FOR ONE MAN'S CLEMENCY

Phillip Emmert, Was Serving 27 Years for a First-Time Drug Offense.
He Had No Chance of a Pardon but His Supporters Tried Anyway.

WASHINGTON -- Karen Orehowsky decided to join the Beltway lobbying
crowd not long after getting a phone call from her mother, back home
in Iowa. Her mother told her she had a new pen pal, a former drug
dealer by the name of Phillip Emmert who was serving a 27-year
sentence in federal prison.

Orehowsky was alarmed to hear that her 62-year-old mom was
corresponding with an inmate. But her mother assured her that Emmert
had reformed and did not deserve his long sentence. She said her
rural church had begun writing letters to him to give him hope and
support, and suggested her daughter do the same.

Orehowsky was skeptical. "Nobody in this great country gets 27 years
with no possibility of parole as a nonviolent first offender," she
said, recalling her initial doubts.

But after some research, she, too, came to believe Emmert had been
the victim of an unjust sentence -- and heartbreaking personal
misfortune. He had, she learned, become a model prisoner.

Orehowsky decided she would do more than write him letters: She would
lobby the Justice Department to get President Bush to commute
Emmert's sentence.

As an employee of the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington,
she knew people inside the federal bureaucracy. She talked up the
case at parties attended by administration officials. She sought
advice from government lawyers who had first-hand knowledge of the
clemency process.

Early on, a former Justice Department official warned her that she
was taking on a nearly hopeless task. Orehowsky scribbled her exact
words -- "You have no reasonable chance of success" -- on a piece of
paper and pinned it to a wall above her desk at work.

The Bush administration's record for granting clemency was not
encouraging. In 2002, when Orehowsky embarked on her quixotic task,
Bush had not commuted a single sentence.

He since has taken action in four cases, the most prominent being
that of former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who
was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the CIA leak
case. Bush has also granted full pardons to more than 100 people --
but only after they had served their time.

Cases such as those of Libby and Marc Rich, the fugitive financier
pardoned by President Clinton in 2001, have raised questions about
the fairness of presidential clemency because they involved the
affluent and politically connected.

More routinely, hundreds of the unconnected apply for clemency every
year with little or no guidance or hope. Their petitions are filed
with the 12-person Office of the Pardon Attorney in the Justice
Department, whose deliberations and recommendations are never made
public. Applicants often wait years for a response.

Yet they frequently have compelling stories of rehabilitation and
steep punishment.

Even some prominent conservative jurists have come to believe that
clemency is a tool of the justice system that is not used enough.

"The pardon process, of late, seems to have been drained of its moral
force," Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy told the American
Bar Assn. in 2003 in a speech calling on lawyers to file more
petitions. While defendants in many cases have not served their full
sentences, they have served long enough, Kennedy said.

Tough federal sentencing guidelines over the past two decades have
made sentences uniform across the country -- but also uniformly
harsh. Drug crimes bring stiff "mandatory minimum" sentences even for
first-time offenders.

Parole, once viewed as a tool for addressing injustice, creating
incentives for rehabilitation and accounting for special
circumstances such as family or personal illness, was long ago
abolished for inmates in federal prison.

In Libby's case, Bush declared the 30-month sentence "excessive,"
even though it was at the low end of the range of federal guidelines.
He also said Libby was a first-time offender and that his family had
suffered from his conviction.

Some inmate advocates hope the president now will take another look
at the sentences given lesser-known defendants. Margaret Colgate
Love, a lawyer who once headed the pardon office, said: "There are
scores, perhaps hundreds, of people doing hard time in federal prison
who are also worthy of the president's mercy."

Phillip Emmert grew up in rural Arkansas, one of seven children. He
was 5 when his father left home; his mother worked as a waitress to
support the family. That left the kids to raise themselves, and as
Emmert readily concedes, they did not do a very good job.

He started using drugs at 13. Later, when he was convicted of
breaking into a car and stealing a watch and sunglasses, a judge
offered him the chance to avoid prison by joining the Army.

After his discharge from the service, he got married, had a daughter
- -- and got hooked on methamphetamine.

In 1992, he was implicated in a conspiracy to distribute more than 25
pounds of meth with a group of motorcycle friends. Emmert claimed he
was in on the deal simply to support his own habit. Under the law,
however, he was held responsible for the entire stockpile of drugs.
At age 36, he was sentenced to 324 months -- 27 years -- even though
he was a first-time drug offender. The ringleader got life.

Initially, Emmert had problems as a prisoner. Eighteen months into
his sentence, he was busted for drinking alcohol and sent to an
isolated unit known as "the hole."

That's where he got the news that his wife and daughter had been in a
horrific car accident. His wife was left a paraplegic. His daughter was then 8.

He said the tragedy motivated him to turn his life around. He prayed
and began reading the Bible. "Change didn't happen overnight," he
said, "but change did come."

Over the ensuing decade, he learned a trade: servicing heating,
ventilation and air-conditioning systems. He completed a ministerial
studies program endorsed by the Assemblies of God Church and became
qualified to be a licensed pastor. He served as a hospice volunteer
and mental health companion, attending to terminally ill inmates and
counseling suicidal prisoners.

"I met many inmates who 'found God' but immediately lost Him when it
became evident that God was not going to get them out of prison,"
said Robert Williams, an inmate who served time with Emmert. "But
Phillip was different."

In 1996, Emmert caught a break. After Congress had modified the
sentencing guidelines, the judge shaved five years off his prison
time, leaving him with only 18 more years to serve.

The lobbying team that took up his cause did not look to be a K
Street juggernaut.

There was a small-town church -- First Assembly of God in Washington,
Iowa, whose members included farmers, plumbers, and electricians but
"not a single professional among them," said Orehowsky. Her own
credentials consisted of running an office at the EPA that regulates
vehicle emissions.

It was clear the group would need some political muscle, but that
would not be easy.

Iowa's senior U.S. senator, Charles E. Grassley, was a tough-on-crime
conservative who supported the sort of lengthy sentence that Emmert
got. And the scourge of methamphetamine addiction was becoming a
major concern in the heartland. Aides signaled Grassley would have
trouble supporting clemency for Emmert.

"The statistics were unbelievably against them," said James A. Leach,
then a member of the Iowa congressional delegation and another
lawmaker the group approached.

As a first step, Orehowsky found a major Washington law firm willing
to take on Emmert's case as a public service. The firm, Crowell &
Moring, filed an eloquent brief with the Justice Department. But the
firm's lawyers found the assignment frustrating because
communications were so one-sided.

"It is a black hole," said Thomas Means, one of the lawyers involved.
"They don't tell you anything at the pardon office. You can't get
anything out of them."

Means and Orehowsky decided to step up the offensive.

"You take every opportunity to tell the story to somebody. You never
know who might get through," Means said. "That seems to be the
essence of the process -- somehow rising above the pack."

Orehowsky began working the bureaucracy. She found out that her boss
at EPA once worked in the auto industry with Andrew H. Card Jr.,
Bush's first chief of staff. The boss agreed to write a letter to
Card about Emmert.

"Every time I went to a dinner party, every time I met someone who
said, 'Oh, I work for the Justice Department,' they got my [Emmert]
story," Orehowsky said.

She turned friends -- and friends of friends -- into lobbying
partners. When one got to play a round of golf with a cousin of the
president, she made sure he took along a "one-pager" on Emmert.

She had Pastor James E. Cluney, of First Assembly of God church in
Iowa, write to former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, a member of the same
denomination, which had also given Emmert his divinity papers.
Ashcroft wrote a letter of support -- he sent Orehowsky a signed copy
- -- but it was unclear whether he ever sent it to the Justice
Department. Orehowsky urged Cluney and his flock to write their own letters.

Initially skeptical, Leach agreed to host a meeting in his Washington
office with representatives from the pardon division and his Iowa
constituents. Cluney and Emmert's wife, Dixie, who uses a wheelchair,
flew in to help make the case.

The Justice lawyers were polite but poker-faced as they listened.

A formal clemency petition had been filed in February 2004, and for
nearly three years, hopes ebbed and flowed.

At one point, Means also appealed to U.S. District Judge Charles R.
Wolle in Des Moines, who had given Emmert the hefty sentence.

Wolle initially was not interested in helping arrange an early
release. But the judge had an unexplained change of heart. He decided
that, while the sentence was legally correct, Emmert had been
rehabilitated and deserved a break. "The purpose of the sentence I
imposed has fully been served," Wolle wrote the Justice Department in
June 2004.

Six months later, Grassley came around, writing a passionate letter
on behalf of Emmert two days before Christmas. Hopes were high. But
the holiday passed without word from Bush.

"Every year Christmas time rolls around and you think that would be a
great Christmas present," Cluney said, "and it would come and go, and
other things would happen."

Last December, Means received a phone call from the Justice
Department: Bush had granted clemency.

Emmert was summoned to the office of a corrections official at the
federal prison camp in Duluth, Minn., and told to contact his
attorney. He was not prepared for the news he was about to receive.

"'You are going home a free man,'" he recalls Means telling him over the phone.

"I cried like a little girl. I pretty much lost it." He still chokes
up at the memory.

Emmert was released Jan. 19, and, on a Sunday night in February, had
an emotional homecoming at the First Assembly of God church in Iowa,
where he preached about his journey to a packed congregation that
included some former biker friends. He had served 14 years, four
months. The lobbying campaign had taken more than four years,
including 300 hours of attorney time. More than 100 people were
involved, including 70 from Washington, Iowa, who wrote letters.
Throughout the process, Emmert, who had received copies of the
letters that were being sent on his behalf, knew that unusual
influence was being brought to bear. "Karen was just tenacious," he
said. "I thought, 'Boy, if this doesn't happen, this is going to crush her.' "

But he also recognized the odds were against him, and he tried not to
get his hopes up.

Orehowsky's mother, whose August 2002 phone call launched the drive
to free Emmert, was diagnosed with cancer in 2004 and died five weeks
later. She did not live to see her pen pal released.

Today, Emmert works the night shift as a housekeeper at the Veterans
Administration hospital in Iowa City. He is hoping to get day hours
so he can preach and counsel drug users. The local sheriff has a
standing offer for him to speak with youth groups.

He is rebuilding a small house that Dixie's father bought her after
she became paralyzed. She works part time as a clerk at a farm
implements store. His daughter, now 22, has her own apartment in Iowa City.

In July, Emmert was eating dinner, watching a TV news report about
Libby's sentence being commuted, when he saw his name flash across
the screen. "I stopped with my mouth full," he said. "There was
Scooter Libby, me and two other people."

The report noted that Emmert was part of an exclusive club: four
people granted clemency by Bush.

"I know why I am on that list. It is because of the prayers of many,
many people," he said. "But there are a lot more deserving people, if
you take the time to look."

Orehowsky said she has no idea what compelled the president to act;
the White House declined to provide an explanation. "It will always
be an amazing mystery to me why it had the outcome it did," she said.

"I am not one who believes a drug dealer should go free. A decade in
federal prison is just what Phillip Emmert needed."

But, she added, "he is really an example of how mercy and second
chances are so important."