Pubdate: Sun, 12 Aug 2001
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2001 San Francisco Chronicle
Contact:  http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Debra J. Saunders

BUSH SHOULD STAND UP FOR JUSTICE

Kemba Smith, 29, and Dorothy Gaines, 43, are the rare, worthy and 
olitically unconnected recipients of clemency granted by former President 
Clinton. Their sentences were outrages that demanded extraordinary action.

In 1994, a federal judge sentenced Smith to 24 1/2 years in prison for 
conspiracy in a 255-kilogram crack operation. You'd think that sentence 
means she was a kingpin, calling the shots in a violent crack ring. In 
fact, she was a lovesick college student who took up with an abusive drug 
dealer (who was murdered by the time of her sentencing), broke some laws 
and found herself pregnant with his child.

She said on a visit to San Francisco sponsored by Legal Services for 
Prisoners with Children that she does not believe she should have been 
incarcerated. If it had to happen, she said, she should have been sentenced 
to two years behind bars, maximum. But the federal conspiracy laws that 
were supposed to make it easier to give kingpins hard time were used to 
send a nonviolent, first-time drug offender behind bars for a longer term 
than many murderers serve: almost 25 years.

"To me that was like having a life sentence," Smith explained.

Would she have been sentenced to serve this much time if she were a white 
college student?

"I feel if I was white, I wouldn't have had to do a day," she answered.

Gaines, who is also African American, thinks likewise. In 1995, Gaines was 
sentenced to just under 20 years in jail because, she says, she had been 
involved with a crack kingpin. "I am not mad because white (people) are not 
going to prison," she said. She is angry at prosecutors who put first-time 
drug offenders away for decades based on the testimony of "snitches" with 
records who are "trying to get their time cut."

Julie Stewart founded Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) in 1991 
after the feds sentenced her brother to five years in prison for growing 
marijuana, but gave his accomplices -- convicted felons -- probation after 
they rolled on her brother. Stewart's brother is white, but she has seen 
the inequities of which Gaines speaks. According to U.S. Sentencing 
Commission Vice Chair John Steer, 60 percent of federal prisoners serving 
20-year mandatory-minimum sentences are African American.

And the practice of rewarding snitching helps men, who have more 
information to trade. As Smith noted, "We're not the ones who are running 
the organizations. It's the men who are running the organizations. When 
things hit the fan, the men have more information to give as far as 
snitching, where their time gets reduced."

I'm not saying Gaines and Smith were blameless. Both women took up with 
drug dealers. Kemba Smith lied to authorities about her boyfriend and she 
helped him with his illegal drug trade. While Gaines claims she did nothing 
to warrant incarceration, U.S. Attorney J. Don Foster is convinced she is 
guilty. Even if he is right, her sentence was too stiff. In a country where 
the punishment is supposed to fit the crime, decades in prison for 
low-level, first-time drug offenses are an abomination.

No credit to him, President Bush supports the federal mandatory-minimum 
sentencing system. As a presidential candidate, he told the NAACP, "I 
believe our systems of justice must be fair and impartial to all, 
regardless of race. Mandatory-minimum sentences can help achieve this goal 
by insuring consistent sentences for all defendants."

"That shows how little he knows," responded FAMM's Stewart. Judges have to 
stick to sentencing guidelines based on the quantity of drugs sold. 
Prosecutors, however, determine who spends decades in prison because they 
decide the amount of drugs involved in a "conspiracy" case.

That hurt Kemba Smith, who was charged in a conspiracy case for drugs her 
boyfriend dealt when they weren't together.

Today, Clinton's pardons stand largely discredited as pardons for the rich 
and politically well connected. Dorothy Gaines and Kemba Smith serve as 
worthy exceptions. Gaines trusts that "God can touch (Bush's) heart."

FAMM has a wish list of other federal prisoners whose sentences far exceed 
their crimes. Bush should commute their sentences, then roll up his sleeves 
to humanize federal drug sentencing.
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