Pubdate: Tue, 20 Mar 2001
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Section: Page One Feature
Copyright: 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  200 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10281
Fax: (212) 416-2658
Website: http://www.wsj.com/
Author: Gary Fields, Staff Reporter Of The Wall Street Journal

SEEKING CLEMENCY IS FAR DIFFERENT WHEN YOU'RE NOT RICH, AS TERRI TAYLOR KNOWS

FORT WORTH, Texas -- As Bill Clinton was deciding to pardon fugitive 
billionaire Marc Rich during the infamous all-nighter before his last 
morning in office, Terri Christine Taylor wasn't getting much sleep either.

A federal inmate here, Ms. Taylor paced the 9-by-12 room she shares with 
three other prisoners. Like some 3,000 people across the country, she had a 
clemency application pending and knew that Mr. Clinton had until noon on 
Jan. 20 to decide who was worthy of mercy.

Her case was plausible: As a 19-year-old in 1990, she was convicted of 
conspiring to manufacture illicit drugs, though her role was limited. At 
the behest of her 36-year-old boyfriend, she bought legal chemicals that he 
needed to make methamphetamine. Ms. Taylor was sentenced under the stern 
U.S. Sentencing Guidelines to nearly 20 years.

By commuting the sentences of a handful of other low-level drug defendants, 
Mr. Clinton had signaled a willingness near the end of his tenure to 
release some nonviolent inmates serving long terms. In prison, Ms. Taylor 
had participated in drug rehabilitation, taken college-level classes and 
earned praise from corrections officials. And the Justice Department made 
inquiries about her clemency application -- an indication that it was taken 
seriously.

"I was pacing, praying, hoping and dreaming," she says.

But Inauguration Day brought bad news. She wasn't on the list of 177 people 
who received clemency. She sat on her bunk bed, sobbing. "I just wanted to 
understand, to make this make sense," she says. How do the lucky few get 
chosen?

Ms. Taylor's story illustrates the flip side of the controversy over Mr. 
Clinton's clemency grants: For every well-connected successful applicant, 
there were dozens of unsuccessful candidates whose pleas may have been 
equally meritorious, or more so, but never commanded enough notice to make 
the cut.

The former president says he made his decisions strictly on the merits. But 
many recipients exploited insider connections to Mr. Clinton, his 
relatives, his aides, Democratic fundraisers or donors. Some paid hefty 
fees for this influence.

The most startling examples are Mr. Rich and Carlos Vignali Jr., one an 
alleged tax-evader and oil-profiteer who fled the country to avoid trial 
for 17 years, the other a cocaine trafficker. Mr. Rich's pardon was 
advocated by his ex-wife, who gave a total of $1.5 million to Democrats and 
Mr. Clinton's library, and by Mr. Rich's lawyer, Jack Quinn, a former White 
House counsel. Mr. Vignali, released by the president after serving six 
years of a 14-year sentence, was aided by Mr. Clinton's brother-in-law, 
Hugh Rodham, an attorney who received $200,000 for working on the case. Mr. 
Rodham later returned the money under pressure.

Dozens of other successful applicants also circumvented the Justice 
Department's standard pardon-review process or used influential 
intermediaries. Ms. Taylor herself had supporters who tried to rally 
political backing for her cause. She nearly made it onto a list of 
potential clemency recipients submitted to the White House by Clinton 
friend Jann Wenner, founder of Rolling Stone magazine. But like most 
clemency applicants, Ms. Taylor lacked sufficient clout.

"While we were coming through the front door, following the rules, the back 
door of the White House was wide open," says Ms. Taylor, "and the people 
Clinton let through there are home now."

Ms. Taylor's home is a 1,500-inmate federal facility here surrounded by two 
15-foot fences. She is 30 years old, and has spent nearly 11 years in 
prison. The federal system doesn't allow parole, so with time off for good 
behavior, the earliest she could get out is Aug. 18, 2006, two days before 
her 36th birthday.

The only child of a teenage mother, she was born in Florida and moved to a 
small town in south Texas as an adolescent. Her mother, she says, "did the 
best she could" but worked long hours as a bartender and wasn't home much. 
"I fell in with the wrong crowd and started smoking pot," says Ms. Taylor. 
Soon, she moved on to cocaine and methamphetamine. She quit school after 
ninth grade.

That's when William Boman intervened. A cousin of Ms. Taylor's mother, he 
and his wife, Norma, lived 50 miles away in Houston. Their three children 
had grown up and left, so Ms. Taylor moved in with Uncle Buddy and Aunt 
Norma, as she calls them. They sent her to hairdressing school. Then she 
met Benjamin Alan Roark. She was 17; he was 33. "He was a sweet talker," 
she says, "and I thought, 'Oh, wow!' He was my first real serious 
relationship."

"We told her, 'Gal, you're going to get into trouble,' " recalls Mr. Boman. 
"But you couldn't tell her anything. She was in love."

Ms. Taylor contends that at first, she didn't know her boyfriend was 
involved in the drug trade. "Basically, it was, 'Don't ask no questions,' " 
she says. He didn't hit her, she adds, but at times, she felt intimidated, 
and "I did what he told me to do."

Mr. Roark, now a federal inmate in El Reno, Okla., confirms trying to keep 
her in the dark and takes the blame for her conviction. He apologized to 
her once, in a 1996 Christmas card. She didn't answer, and they haven't 
communicated since.

 From Bad to Worse

Not long after getting involved with Mr. Roark, Ms. Taylor was thrown out 
of cosmetology school after coming back from lunch with beer on her breath. 
She says she eventually became a methamphetamine addict and had repeated 
run-ins with the police. In 1988, she pleaded guilty to shoplifting a $5 
makeup case and possessing a small packet of the drug, which is also known 
as speed and resembles tiny pieces of crystal. Mr. Roark backs her claim 
that he had put the drugs in her purse without telling her.

Before being sentenced, Ms. Taylor was arrested again for possessing a 
small packet of speed and a baggy containing heroin residue. Mr. Roark 
again says the drugs were his. Then, she failed to complete a court-ordered 
residential drug-treatment program. She ended up spending a total of four 
months in jail on various charges.

Meanwhile, Mr. Roark went to prison in 1989 for a parole violation related 
to a prior methamphetamine conviction in Texas state court. He served 16 
months.

While Mr. Roark was in prison, Mr. Boman says he saw an opportunity to 
straighten out Ms. Taylor. He gave her an old pickup truck and a job at his 
industrial-parts delivery business. But after Mr. Roark was released in May 
1990, the couple reunited.

In early July 1990, Mr. Roark and Ms. Taylor say in separate interviews, he 
instructed her to drive with him to Mobile, Ala., eight hours away. They 
say he sent her into a chemical-supply store to buy two pounds of 
phenylacetic acid, one gallon of acetic anhydride and one gallon of 
methylamine -- legal substances that can be used to make methamphetamine.

Using fake identification, she lied to store employees, saying the 
chemicals were for pest control. A suspicious store employee called the 
Drug Enforcement Administration, which set up a sting, documents filed in 
federal court in Mobile show.

Ms. Taylor returned to Mobile a month later, this time by airplane, with 
$4,600 in cash, court documents show. She bought more chemicals and took 
them by taxi to a nearby Motel 6. Mr. Roark arrived from Texas in a 
Cadillac. He loaded the goods into the car the next morning. As they pulled 
onto the highway, DEA agents swooped in and arrested them.

Ms. Taylor and Mr. Roark say he never explicitly told her what he intended 
to do with the chemicals. But she admits knowing that he was making drugs. 
"Alan told me I wouldn't get into trouble because I was buying chemicals 
that were legal to buy," she says. "I thought, 'If I'm not directly 
involved, then I'm not involved, right?' "

Wrong. Federal prosecutors in Mobile offered a plea bargain with a 10-year 
sentence if she would testify against Mr. Roark, but she declined. "Ten 
years sounded crazy to me," she says. "I didn't associate myself with being 
a meth manufacturer." At trial, the jury didn't buy her defense that she 
was an older man's unknowing dupe. In September 1990, she and Mr. Roark 
were convicted.

The federal sentencing guidelines, in place since 1987, give judges little 
discretion to reduce sentences in cases involving drug defendants. Ms. 
Taylor's prior criminal record and her refusal in court to admit criminal 
culpability added to her sentence, which totaled 19 years and seven months. 
Mr. Roark got 30 years.

"She wasn't innocent," says Mr. Boman. "I'm not going to say she shouldn't 
have gotten some time."

Since then, Ms. Taylor has been shuttled from prison to prison. She has 
requested clemency three times, drafting the first two petitions herself, 
in 1991 and 1999. While incarcerated in Danbury, Conn., another inmate 
recommended a local criminal-defense lawyer, Diane Polan, who agreed last 
year to handle Ms. Taylor's latest petition.

Cause for Hope?

Lawyer and client saw cause for hope. In July, Mr. Clinton freed two 
inmates Ms. Taylor had met in other institutions: Serena Nunn, who court 
documents show was a bit player in a drug ring and acted at the behest of 
her boyfriend, and Amy Pofahl, who court documents depict as a minor figure 
in her husband's Ecstasy-smuggling operation. Ms. Taylor "was exactly the 
kind of person [Mr. Clinton] was pardoning," Ms. Polan says.

On Sept. 7, Ms. Polan filed an application with Roger Adams, the career 
government attorney who heads the Justice Department's six-lawyer pardon 
office, which is supposed to review all clemency requests and help the 
department make recommendations to the White House.

The Taylor application and supporting documents came to about 50 pages. She 
acknowledges guilt but blames Mr. Roark, too. "The biggest mistake I've 
made was becoming involved with a much older man who entangled me in a drug 
conspiracy," her petition states. Mr. Roark swears in an accompanying 
affidavit that "to my knowledge, Ms. Taylor has never dealt, trafficked or 
manufactured drugs."

Ms. Taylor's file includes evidence of rehabilitation: a 1991 high-school 
equivalency diploma, a certificate for completing a yearlong prison 
drug-treatment program, a letter from a prison-job foreman calling her "one 
of my most-outstanding workers," and records showing a 3.71 grade-point 
average for classes administered in prison by Eastern Kentucky University.

The effort to free Ms. Taylor lacked one crucial element: heavy-duty 
support from someone close to the Clinton administration. There were, 
however, efforts made on her behalf. Mr. Boman had become the Texas 
coordinator for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a Washington-based 
group that lobbies against lengthy sentences for low-level, nonviolent drug 
offenders. He sent information on her case to 31 members of Congress he 
thought might be sympathetic and pressed fellow state FAMM coordinators to 
contact others.

'Equally Meritorious'

Only one member, Democratic Rep. Patsy Mink of Hawaii, responded with a 
full-blown letter of support sent directly to Mr. Clinton on Nov. 21. Mr. 
Boman had targeted Rep. Mink because she had criticized long sentences for 
nonviolent drug offenders and had advocated clemency for Ms. Pofahl. The 
congresswoman says she concluded that Ms. Taylor's case was "equally 
meritorious."

Working separately, FAMM's president, Julie Stewart, mounted a campaign 
last fall for prisoners deemed most worthy of presidential clemency. Ms. 
Stewart founded FAMM after her brother, Jeff Stewart, was arrested in 1990 
and sentenced to five years in prison for growing marijuana. Although she 
says she abhorred trying to decide who was most worthy, she concluded it 
was "better to pick a few cases from among the hundreds of deserving cases 
and get a few people out than to not have anyone get released."

She selected 24 inmates, all nonviolent, first-time offenders. She says she 
reviewed Ms. Taylor's case but reluctantly rejected it because of the 
prisoner's prior convictions. "We were trying to send the cleanest of the 
clean," she says.

In October, as she was winnowing her list, Ms. Stewart learned that Mr. 
Wenner, a Democratic party contributor, had arranged to interview his 
friend, Mr. Clinton. Mr. Wenner's Rolling Stone magazine had 
sympathetically covered Ms. Stewart's cause for years, so she asked him to 
help. After the interview, Mr. Wenner sent 24 one-page case summaries to 
Mr. Clinton and to one of his closest confidantes, then-Deputy White House 
Counsel Bruce Lindsey. Mr. Wenner says he never directly discussed the 
cases with the president.

Action at the Pardon Office

Over at the pardon office, Ms. Taylor's application wasn't summarily 
dismissed, which is the fate of most petitions. Mr. Adams, the pardon 
attorney, declines to comment on the Taylor case. But people familiar with 
the situation say the office sought information on the case from prison 
officials and the prosecutor who handled it in Mobile -- steps taken only 
in cases that are being seriously considered.

Without revealing the department's recommendation, one official there says 
the Taylor application was viewed sympathetically. "It has facts that are 
similar to other cases where commutations were granted," this official says.

It couldn't be determined whether Mr. Clinton ever squarely addressed the 
Taylor application. Rep. Mink's Nov. 21 letter prompted what appears to be 
a standard response from the White House on Dec. 11. "I've shared your 
concern with the president," wrote Kay Casstevens, then Mr. Clinton's 
deputy legislative-affairs director. But Ms. Casstevens says she recalls 
nothing about the case.

That isn't surprising, given that by late last year, the Clinton White 
House was swamped with clemency requests. According to recent congressional 
testimony by his former aides, Mr. Clinton realized early in 2000 that he 
had granted an unusually small number of pardons and commutations compared 
with past presidents. As word spread among well-connected private lawyers 
in Washington that the president was in a forgiving mood, applicants 
inundated the White House with appeals that bypassed or paralleled formal 
applications to the Justice Department.

Hundreds of telephone calls and letters from Congress also flooded the 
White House. One eleventh-hour appeal came from Democratic Rep. John 
Conyers of Michigan, whose Jan. 17 missive briefly mentioned Ms. Taylor's 
case, among about a dozen others.

On the evening of Jan. 19-20, chaos reigned in the White House as the 
president and his aides sifted through clemency applications. When the 
final clemency list was released on Jan. 20, it included 17 of the 24 
inmates on the FAMM list Mr. Wenner submitted.

One of those freed was Kimberly Johnson, who had been serving time on a 
drug conviction here in Fort Worth with Ms. Taylor. "I watched her walk out 
that Saturday afternoon," Ms. Taylor says.

Mr. Boman, her surrogate father, now plans to press her case with President 
Bush. "I'm 71 years old, and I'd like to see her released while I'm still 
healthy enough to show her the administrative part of my business so I can 
leave it to her," he says.

Ms. Taylor says she is trying to resign herself to five more years in 
prison. She is taking typing and Spanish classes and working nights in the 
prison medical center, mostly mopping floors.
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