A TOUGH SENTENCE OR ROUGH JUSTICE?

An Inmate's Case Reflects Tension Between Ashcroft's Directive and Doubts
in Judiciary

ALDERSON, W.Va. -- Attorney General John Ashcroft has ordered federal
prosecutors across the country to "take all steps necessary" to stop judges
from handing out prison terms shorter than those suggested by federal
guidelines.

The case of Shellie Lee Langmade illustrates the possible result of that
policy. Just before Mr. Ashcroft became attorney general, prosecutors spent
months on an all-out effort to lengthen her prison sentence for making
methamphetamine, also known as speed.

At the time, get-tough sentencing initiatives, which were widely adopted in
the 1990s, were coming under fire, with some states backing off and some
politicians -- including presidential candidate George W. Bush --
questioning whether they had gone too far. Some federal judges were
rebelling by ignoring statutory guidelines.

But Mr. Ashcroft has been determined to stay the course. He sought and
received from Congress legislation restricting judges' discretion, and
directed federal prosecutors to limit plea deals, file the most serious
provable charges and appeal lenient departures from sentencing guidelines.

The moves have encountered opposition from the judiciary, led by Chief
Justice William Rehnquist, who contends they will impair judges' ability to
mete out "responsible and just" punishments. But for now, the stay-tough
crowd has the upper hand. The likely result is an ever-increasing federal
prison population serving longer sentences, and more stories like Ms.
Langmade's, which in many ways is typical of inmates at the federal prison
camp here.

Ms. Langmade, who is 41 years old, freely admits she risked the welfare of
her five children by nursing her drug addiction for 17 years and joining
the drug trade. In October 1999, she pleaded guilty to making
methamphetamine in Minneapolis federal court in an unremarkable plea deal.
About 95% of the 60,000 cases handled by federal prosecutors each year end
with such deals.

At first everybody involved in the case, including prosecutors, figured she
would serve less than six years. But a presentencing report turned up two
six-year-old state misdemeanor convictions for writing bad checks -- for
$38.50 and $45, written to a bar and to an Anoka County, Minn., government
agency. Ms. Langmade had made the checks good after being caught, and paid
a $100 fine. But she also had been put on unsupervised probation for a year
- -- just long enough to trigger a mandatory minimum penalty of four extra
years under federal sentencing laws.

The report suggested that the earlier convictions be disregarded because
they "significantly over-represent the seriousness of the defender's
criminal history or the likelihood that the defendant will commit further
crimes." U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson agreed, saying that many
counties in the area decline to prosecute hot-check cases altogether. "They
refuse and force banks to collect by civil means," the judge says now. "Ms.
Langmade was unfortunately in the wrong county."

Eric Johnson, then an assistant U.S. Attorney, argued that disregarding Ms.
Langmade's prior convictions would be bad precedent. After Judge Magnuson
disregarded statutory guidelines and sentenced Ms. Langmade to slightly
less than six years, prosecutors appealed to the Eighth Circuit Court of
Appeals based in St. Louis. They argued that allowing the sentence to stand
would free federal judges in their seven-state circuit to grant lenient
sentences to other defendants with past convictions.

Such appeals are rare. In 2001, appeals courts ruled on 4,275 sentencing
cases, but prosecutors initiated only 93 of them.

Ms. Langmade's lawyer, Paul Schneck, tried to render the federal appeal
moot by asking a state judge to expunge her 1993 convictions. Judge
Magnuson supported the move, and State Judge Thomas Hayes suggested in
court that he might retroactively reduce the probation sentence to less
than a year -- the threshold for a longer sentence.

But then Mr. Johnson, the federal prosecutor, wrote a letter to Anoka
County prosecutors urging them to oppose that notion. Expungement was
"designed to reward individuals for their rehabilitative efforts and to
clear the record for those people who ... have demonstrated an extended
period of rehabilitation," he wrote. "That does not appear to be the case
here." A copy was sent to Judge Hayes, who rejected the expungement motion,
writing that granting it "would defeat the sentencing scheme developed and
implemented by Congress."

Thomas Heffelfinger, Minneapolis's current U.S. Attorney, says now that it
would have been "fundamentally unfair, after the fact, to attempt to change
her record. Your record is what your record is." Judge Magnuson, though,
says he believes federal prosecutors went too far by intervening in a state
case.

On Jan. 8, 2001, the appeals court overturned Judge Magnuson's six-year
sentence and ordered him to impose the full 10 years. Instead, the judge
recused himself, writing, "Langmade will be sacrificed on the altar of
Congress's obsession with punishing crimes involving narcotics. I am so
embittered by the government's merciless conduct that I simply could not be
impartial upon resentencing." He now says, "I just lost my temper at that
point."

Eventually, Ms. Langmade reached a deal admitting to two lesser counts and
receiving eight years. "We thought that was the appropriate sentence," says
Robert Small, a top federal prosecutor in Minnesota.

Of five defendants involved in the original conspiracy, though, only two
remain in prison today, including Ms. Langmade. The other three, including
her ex-husband, are already out after cutting better deals.

Ms. Langmade is seeking clemency to get her sentence reduced to the
original six years -- a process requiring her to convince Mr. Ashcroft that
she is worthy of mercy. But President Bush hasn't shortened sentences for
anyone, rejecting more than 2,400 applications. The 11 full pardons he has
granted all involve decades-old convictions.

"A couple years in prison has done her some good," says Margaret Love, Ms.
Langmade's clemency lawyer and formerly a pardon attorney in the Clinton
Justice Department. "But eight years, when she was looking at less than
six, and everybody had initially thought that was fine?"

A tall, athletic woman with dark hair and haunting blue eyes, Ms. Langmade
says she's found God in prison, while getting off drugs and learning auto
mechanics and firefighting. Her reputation there is impeccable, officials say.

"I want to take my past, which is my drug abuse, and my present, which is
my walk with God, and ... show people the consequences of walking off the
path," she says.