Pubdate: Mon, 05 Mar 2001
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2001 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053
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Authors: Richard A. Serrano, Stephen Braun, Times Staff Writers

IN MANY DRUG CASES, NORMAL CLEMENCY PROCESS BYPASSED

WASHINGTON--Mayor Ross Anderson of Salt Lake City was packed with thousands 
of others on the west lawn of the Capitol, watching in the light rain as 
George W. Bush's inauguration officially ended Bill Clinton's eight years 
in office.

But Anderson was preoccupied, trying desperately to get his cell phone to 
work. With the circuits jammed, he could not get a call out to Mickey 
Ibarra, Clinton's director of intergovernmental affairs.

The mayor was eager for news on whether Cory Stringfellow, the 31-year-old 
son of friends, had received a presidential commutation. Anderson had been 
part of an intense lobbying campaign, led by two U.S. senators, a 
congressman and a court reform group, to persuade Clinton to free convicted 
drug offender Stringfellow.

Only after the ceremony was over and Anderson and the crowd began moving 
out of the rain toward Union Station did he finally get through to Ibarra. 
The news was joyous. "I was thrilled," the mayor said.

Like Carlos Vignali, a convicted drug dealer from Los Angeles, Cory 
Stringfellow was one of the lucky ones. Also like Vignali, Stringfellow had 
served about six years of a lengthy sentence.

The two men were among 21 drug offenders released from prison in January by 
presidential order--freed because of Clinton's determination to telegraph 
his disapproval of unyielding sentencing guidelines that have left many 
minor drug convicts languishing in prison.

At first glance, the Vignali clemency seems a case apart from the other 
commutations, an abuse of political influence and money that proves a 
controversial exception to a more legitimate rule.

Indeed, some of the last-minute commutations granted by Clinton do meet his 
standard of clemencies that were deserved. But an examination of other 
cases reveals some of the same hallmarks of the Vignali case--intense 
lobbying by influential community leaders, behind-the-scenes intervention 
in the process, and a failure to notify prosecutors that clemency was being 
seriously considered.

As his hold on the White House slowly wound down, Clinton had been 
unusually outspoken in his comments about reforming federal sentencing 
guidelines that force judges to issue mandatory minimum prison terms that 
often are lengthy.

The outgoing president said he believed it unfair for so many men and 
women--some estimate the number is in the tens of thousands in federal and 
state prisons--to spend so much time behind bars for mistakes they made in 
their youths.

"We should be granting more pardons," Clinton told the Christian Science 
Monitor last year. ". . . not so much to wipe away the past as to free 
people up to live in the present and the future."

In Clinton's final days at the White House, his top staffers were besieged 
with requests for clemencies--from individuals, from Clinton friends, 
contributors and politicians, and from a little-known, Washington-based 
nonprofit organization known as FAMM, the Families Against Mandatory 
Minimums Foundation.

The group submitted memos to both the White House and the Justice 
Department on behalf of commutations for 24 individuals.

In the end, of the 21 drug commutations granted by Clinton, the group had 
pitched 17 of them to White House staffers and the pardon attorney's office.

Vignali was not one of the group's cases. The Vignali application worked 
its own way through the system, with the help of Clinton brother-in-law 
Hugh Rodham, who was working for a $204,280 fee, and the support of a 
number of Southern California officeholders.

Ultimately, Clinton granted the Vignali commutation even though the Justice 
Department recommended that it be denied. On the day Clinton left the White 
House, Vignali walked out of prison a free man.

Julia Stewart, FAMM president, said that although she is grateful that 
Clinton accepted 17 of her cases, she is nevertheless disheartened over the 
Vignali matter and the furor it has caused.

"It's going to make it harder for others now," she said. "It's not just 
Vignali. It's [former fugitive financier Marc] Rich and everybody else" who 
gained clemency by circumventing the standard process.

But many of the drug cases that Stewart supported, such as Stringfellow's, 
also came from outside the normal system. Some applicants, like 
Stringfellow and Vignali, benefited from the help of elected officials. 
Some commutations, again like Stringfellow's, were granted without input 
from prosecutors. Had they been asked to weigh in by the Justice 
Department, as is the normal process, many of the prosecutors would have 
recommended denial.

Cory Stringfellow was a high school dropout who went to work at his 
father's accounting firm. By age 22, he was experimenting with LSD; he 
eventually sold 5,200 doses of the drug to a friend who, in turn, sold it 
to an undercover drug agent.

Guilty of conspiracy to possess and distribute LSD, Stringfellow suddenly 
fled. He was not captured for 18 months, when he finally surrendered in 
England. Authorities brought him back to Salt Lake City. But because he had 
fled, his original plea agreement was thrown out and his sentence was more 
than doubled to 16 years.

Several years ago, Anderson met Stringfellow's parents, who were working 
with the FAMM group against harsh prison sentences. He later spoke at a 
FAMM conference in Salt Lake City, and then began working his channels to 
garner more support for the young man.

The long, mandatory sentences are "just an obvious injustice to people, 
most of whom were very young when they committed a nonviolent offense," the 
mayor said in an interview. "It's not only incredibly unjust and wasteful, 
but disastrous to so many loved ones."

A Democrat, Anderson began enlisting help, seeking out Utah Sen. Orrin G. 
Hatch and then-Sen. Robert F. Bennett, both Republicans, to telephone or 
write to the White House. Bennett wrote, Hatch called. He also got 
then-Rep. Merrill Cook, another Utah Republican, to lobby for Stringfellow.

Christopher Rosche, a spokesman for Hatch, said Anderson and FAMM "brought 
quite a lot of material to him" seeking his help on the Stringfellow case.

Roche said Hatch called because he "felt that because of [Stringfellow's] 
age at the time of the crimes and the fact he had tried to turn his life 
around, it would be nice if his sentence could be commuted."

Anderson did not stop there. He called Ibarra at the White House. He called 
White House Counsel Beth Nolan. "I asked her to please carefully review the 
file," he said.

In late November, he wrote the president. The next month, when he shook 
Clinton's hand at a U.S. Conference of Mayors' meeting at the White House, 
he again expressed his concern about harsh prison terms for people like 
Stringfellow.

Then, just two days before Clinton's term ended, Anderson called a press 
conference in Washington to drum up more support for the release of 
Stringfellow and others.

On Jan. 20, he got his wish. Until then, federal prosecutors in Salt Lake 
City were not even aware that Stringfellow had applied for clemency. They 
were aghast.

"No one ever called me," said Assistant U.S. Atty. Gregory C. Diamond. "Not 
the politicians or the mayor or the senators. I found out about this 
commutation through the newspaper."

Had he been asked, Diamond said, he would have opposed an early release for 
Stringfellow because he fled to Europe. "He flouted the courts," Diamond 
said. "He should have been given more time."

(Clinton commuted Stringfellow's sentence on the drug conviction only; he 
must remain in prison until May 20 on the extra time he got for fleeing the 
country.)

Other prosecutors around the country are equally upset that they were never 
given voices in the commutation process for some of the drug offenders they 
sent to prison.

Steve Cole in the U.S. attorney's office in Tampa, Fla., said his office 
was surprised to learn that Donald R. Clark, who was sentenced to life for 
his role in a $30-million, high-grade marijuana ring, was suddenly free 
after less than 10 years in prison. "We were never contacted," he said. "We 
never got anything on it. We like to see people serve their full sentence. 
And this was a pretty big marijuana trafficking case."

Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia were also not consulted before Loretta 
Fish, 44, was released after serving six years of a 19-year, seven-month 
prison term for her involvement in a narcotics ring that brewed and sold 
methamphetamine.

"This office was not told anything," said Mike Levy, a spokesman for the 
U.S. attorney's office there.

But Fish's defenders argued that her sentence was excessive and that she 
was really just a minor player in the drug operation.

Upon her release, she criticized the federal sentencing rules. "I don't 
believe the least culpable should be held the most accountable," she told 
the Morning Call newspaper in Allentown, Pa., last month.

Stringfellow, when he learned of his commutation, wrote a letter to the 
Salt Lake Tribune, thanking the mayor and the senators and all the others 
who helped his cause. He also asked: "Doesn't everyone deserve a second 
chance?"

That question lingers in the minds of many who never sought or received 
clemency from Clinton, including Todd Hopson, a co-defendant in the Vignali 
case who remains locked up, serving 18 years at the Federal Correctional 
Institution in Rochester, Minn.

Hopson more closely fits the model that Clinton, FAMM and others have 
spoken of--a first-time offender, a minor role in the drug crime, and 
someone who does not have the money or connections to get out of prison early.

In a recent letter to The Times, Hopson wrote: "I just want to let the 
world know that I feel cheated."
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