KEMBA SMITH CONSIDERS HERSELF ONE OF 'REAL FACES' BEHIND LAWS

Pardon Leads Woman To Take Action On Laws

She received a 294-month sentence because of mandatory minimum- sentencing
laws. Speeches, such as her Friday appearance before a Roanoke group, are
part of her new life.

For Kemba Smith, freedom is fraught with responsibility.

Nearly two years ago, Smith was released from prison on a pardon from
President Clinton. At the time, she had served six years of a 24 1/2 -year
prison sentence imposed under federal mandatory minimum-sentencing laws for
drug offenders.

A college student with no prior record, Smith by all accounts played a
marginal role in a cocaine enterprise run by an abusive boyfriend she was
afraid to leave. Yet she received a prison term longer than what is given
to some killers and rapists.

Smith's case became a rallying cry for those who say mandatory sentences
are misguided and often have unintended consequences. After that message
reached the White House, Smith walked free.

But she did not walk away from the issue.

Over the past two years, the Richmond resident has crisscrossed the
country, giving more than 50 speeches on drug-policy reform, meeting with
politicians, working with community groups, and telling young people how to
avoid the mistakes she made.

In Roanoke on Friday to address the city's NAACP chapter, Smith said she
feels an obligation to speak out - not just for the people like her who
remain in prison, but for those who have yet to experience injustice under
the law.

"Sometimes it can be a burden being a poster child for this issue," she
said shortly before the speech to the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People. "But I think myself and others do serve to
humanize the issue by allowing people to see real faces."

The facts of Smith's crime seem at odds with her punishment.

As a student at Hampton University, she fell in with the wrong crowd and
met Peter Hall, who was eight years her senior. She says by the time she
realized Hall was a drug dealer, she had learned something else about him -
he was a violent man who beat her and would go on to kill his best friend
for informing on him.

Motivated by fear, Smith said, she carried cash for Hall and did other
low-level jobs. "He would tell me what to do, and I would do it."

"My worst crime was just not being cautious in my associations and allowing
myself to fall in love with a drug dealer and not have enough self-love and
self-worth to recognize how much I was risking," she said.

When Hall was shot to death in Seattle in 1994, Smith was left to take the
blame for his business.

She went to court hoping for a break. "The judge said 294 months," Smith
recalled. "I couldn't even calculate that, and I didn't want to."

Passed in the 1980s during the height of the nation's crack epidemic,
mandatory minimum-sentencing laws have been criticized as unfair to blacks
because they mandate harsher punishments for crack cocaine than powder
cocaine. The laws also remove any discretion a judge might have for unusual
situations such as Smith's.

Critics say the laws unfairly penalize women, who often perform low-level
duties out of love for their drug-dealing boyfriends or husbands. Some of
them, like Smith, are abused and act under duress.

"Women are the fastest-growing segment of the prison population, and
mandatory minimum-sentencing laws are the driving force behind the
incarceration of these women," said Monica Pratt, director of
communications for the Washington-based group Families Against Mandatory
Minimums.

"Kemba's release gave many prisoners and their families a lot of hope,"
Pratt said. "But the bottom line is that we have to change these mandatory
minimums laws."

Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a Sacramento,
Calif.-based organization that supports victims' rights and tough
punishment for criminals, said legislators might need to look at some
aspects of the law, such as disparities between sentences for crack and
powder cocaine.

But there is no need to sweep the laws off the books, Scheidegger said.

"Because frankly," he said, "there are some judges who are just way too
lenient on sentencing."

For Smith, who had no prior record, a presidential pardon was the only way
to get out of prison before turning 48.

Now 31, she juggles her campaign against the sentencing laws with the
duties of working as a legal assistant at a Richmond law firm and being the
single mother of a seven-year-old. She recently completed her college
degree in social work, and has set her sights on law school.

For her new life, Smith credits her faith in God and the help she received
from her parents and numerous community, political and minority groups who
lobbied for her release.

"Had it not been for them," she said, "I would still be sitting in prison."