ADJUSTED PENALTIES FOR CRACK MAY AID EX-BALLPLAYER'S CASE

Willie Mays Aikens is a part of baseball lore. As a member of the
1980 Kansas City Royals, he became the only man to hit more than one
home run in two games of the same World Series.

But 27 years after his feat, Aikens languishes in a federal prison in
Jessup, Ga., brought low by cocaine addiction and a federal law that
mandated long prison sentences for crack cocaine offenses.

From a face on a baseball card, Aikens is now a poster child for
what some jurists and civil rights activists say is the absurdity of
the difference between the way federal law treats people convicted of
crack cocaine offenses and those found guilty of crimes involving
powder cocaine.

Aikens received more than 15 years for possession of 64 grams of
crack -- about the weight of a large Snickers bar. To receive an
equivalent sentence, he would have had to possess nearly 6 1/2 kilos
- -- more than 14 pounds -- of powder cocaine.

"You can supply a whole neighborhood with 6 1/2 kilos," Aikens said
by telephone from prison, where he is in the 13th year of his sentence.

Activists, lawyers and many federal judges say cases such as Aikens's
demonstrate the inequity of cocaine sentencing laws and validate the
U.S. Sentencing Commission's recent decision to ease prison time
guidelines for crack offenders. The new guidelines will apply
retroactively to about 19,500 inmates.

Within hours of the decision, Aikens said he was on the telephone
with his lawyers, asking them to request a sentence reduction. They
calculated that the new guidelines could shave nearly 2 1/2 years off
his sentence.

"The disparity, as far as I'm concerned, is totally wrong," said
Aikens, a nonviolent offender. "This took me away from my family. My
girls were 4 and 5 years old when I was sentenced. Now they're 18 and 19."

The Bush administration fought the new guidelines, saying inmate
petitions would overburden the federal court system, and hardened
criminals, some violent, might go free.

Thousands of cases will have to be litigated again in the courts
where they were heard, and "those cases are going to detract from the
many cases that are already pending in overworked, understaffed U.S.
attorney's offices," said Steve Cook, vice president of the National
Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

Commission members have said it is highly unlikely that judges would
free inmates with violent pasts.

The sentencing disparity is more than two decades old. It was
established after the cocaine-related death of University of Maryland
basketball star Len Bias prompted Congress to pass the Anti-Drug
Abuse Act of 1986. It allowed sentences for offenses involving crack
cocaine, seen at the time as the more dangerous form of the drug, to
be 100 times more severe than for crimes involving powder cocaine.

The law was intended to curb the violence associated with the crack
cocaine trade in black communities. But opponents say it was fraught
with problems.

More than 80 percent of defendants were, like Aikens, African
American. According to this year's sentencing commission report to
Congress, the median weight of the crack carried by offenders was 51
grams. The median weight carried by powder cocaine offenders was 6,000 grams.

"Most of these crack dealers are, in fact, low-level offenders," said
Eric E. Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy
Foundation. "Most of them aren't violent. There is this vicious
stereotype of black dope dealers armed to the teeth. But it's not
true. It's a shame that this type of stereotype started coming out
again in the debate over drug sentencing."

The disparity prompted police to concentrate on black crack cocaine
distributors more than the mostly white and Latino powder cocaine
dealers, said Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Some attorneys contend that undercover police and informants, posing
as users or distributors, encouraged powder cocaine users to cook
crack and turned the cases over to federal authorities because those
prosecutions resulted in more prison time.

"The disparity created by the guidelines . . . increased the impact
of . . . this procedure," Reimer added. "It creates the opportunity
to turn a person with one level of criminality to another level with
profound consequences."

Such was the case with Aikens.

A big man from South Carolina, he was a natural at slugging a
baseball. The California Angels drafted him but soon traded him to
the Kansas City Royals.

In the 1980 World Series won by the Philadelphia Phillies, Aikens hit
two home runs in the first game and another two in the fourth game, a
first in major league history and a record that stands, according to
the National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum.

Two years later, he was walking in a hotel hallway and saw a few
teammates huddled together in a room. He entered the room and
eventually tried powder cocaine for the first time. A year later, he
was arrested in a sting with other players, including Royals
outfielder Willie Wilson and pitcher Vida Blue.

Aikens went to prison and later failed to recapture his hitting
prowess with the Toronto Blue Jays. He went on to play in Mexico. In
1992, he returned to Kansas City, still an addict.

In December 1993, an undercover Kansas City police officer in a car
approached Aikens. According to court records, she told him she was
lost and asked for directions. Minutes later, she asked for
narcotics. Aikens told her, "I can get whatever you want."

Over two months, Aikens bought powder and cooked it into crack when
asked. "He was encouraged in a manner that was calculated to maximize
his prison sentence," said his attorney, Margaret Colgate Love.

Cook, of the assistant U.S. attorneys association, said he is not
aware of such tactics. "It's not something I've seen in my
experience. . . . There's no shortage of crack dealers for us to
prosecute," he said.

But during the last drug buy in February 1994, Love said the officer,
Ginger Locke, made her intentions clear. Locke said in court
testimony that she asked for drugs, and Aikens returned from his
supplier with a bag of powder.

"I thought you said that you were going to get crack," Locke said,
according to transcripts of her testimony.

Aikens tried to return the drug, but his dealer would not accept it,
so he purchased a glass beaker at a toy store and cooked the powder into crack.

"If she hadn't asked me to cook it up for her, I probably never would
have done that," Aikens said from prison. "If all she wanted was
cocaine, she would have taken the powder and left."

The next month, officers kicked down the door of Aikens's Kansas City
home and arrested him. Aikens was charged with six counts of
distributing "cocaine base," or crack.

In prison, Aikens went through three rehabilitation programs to
overcome his drug addiction and now calls his incarceration a godsend.

"Before, I used to blame this undercover cop," he said. "Yes, I do
believe she entrapped me, but . . . Ginger Locke wasn't the
foundation of my problem. My drug use is the foundation of my problem."

But, his lawyers said, the prison time Aikens received was excessive,
and he should no longer be behind bars.

"I think he got a raw deal," Love said. "There are murderers who get
less time. Now we've changed our minds and we've decided that we were
too hard on people. All you can say is, it's about time."