THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 22, 1996 TAG: 9601220038
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOE JACKSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 119 lines
For two years, small-time crack dealer Nathaniel Williams was a pawn in a legal struggle between federal judges and prosecutors over defendants' rights - and prosecutors' powers - in the war on drugs.
Last week, the struggle ended. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith sentenced Williams to the absolute minimum prison term she could under federal sentencing guidelines. But that still came to seven years and three months in prison without parole.
In 1994, Williams made a decision that, for a drug defendant, that was highly unusual. When a Virginia Beach prosecutor demanded he plead guilty to state charges and cooperate with police in an undercover drug operation or face federal prosecution, subjecting him to a more severe sentence, Williams rejected the deal. He said he feared for his and his family's safety.
True to their word, prosecutors sought - and got - federal indictments. Soon afterward, U.S. District Judge Richard B. Kellam dismissed the charges, calling the threat unconstitutional. A year later, in February 1995, a federal appeals court reversed Kellam. Soon Williams was back in jail.
The heart of the debate was simply how far prosecutors could go in pursuing drug cases. Kellam agreed with Williams' lawyers that the federal indictments were vindictive; he said a defendant had the right to enter an unconditional guilty plea. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.
But compounding this were the stringent federal sentencing guidelines. Federal law imposes a minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum of life for those convicted of selling more than 50 grams of crack cocaine. By contrast, Virginia law calls for a range of five years to 40 years for crack distribution. Recent riots in federal prisons were sparked by inmates' anger over stringent federal sentences.
Defense lawyers have said that, in Hampton Roads, Virginia Beach prosecutors have the biggest reputation for pressuring drug defendants into accepting plea agreements by threatening to take their charges to federal court.
On Friday, Williams, 33, sounded beaten. In his statement to the judge before sentencing, he apologized to his family for ``all I've put you through.''
``I'm glad it's all over. . . . I just want to take my punishment. I just want to get on with my life.''
Judge Smith said that because Williams cooperated with the government and pleaded guilty in October to one count of cocaine distribution, she could go below the law's minimum sentence of 10 years.
But her hands were tied if she wanted to go below 87 months, the minimum sentence called for by federal guidelines, Smith said. The only remaining relief was if Williams had been able to provide prosecutors with more information about Virginia Beach drug sales. But Williams was such a low-level dealer that he couldn't tell prosecutors more than they already knew.
``This makes him indictment fodder,'' said David Arnold, his attorney. ``This puts him in a real Catch-22.''
Smith acknowledged that the system seemed unfair. ``There are judges in this court who have tried to give defendants'' a break, only to be overruled by the federal appeals court, Smith said. ``I can't violate the law, and if I do it will just be overturned.''
Her voice grew quieter as she sentenced him. `I see many people come before me and . . . I don't think you are a bad person,'' she said as the wind moaned outside and three rows of Williams' relatives hung on her every word. ``I don't think there are a lot of bad people out there. I think there are a lot of bad influences . . . and people are weak.''
Then Smith did something unusual for a federal judge. She granted him fifteen minutes with his wife to say goodbye.
It all started in June 1993, when Williams was arrested as part of an undercover sting operation in Virginia Beach. He made crack sales of 48 grams and 52 grams to undercover agents, police said.
Before that arrest, Williams' record was clean. But there were many citations for reckless driving, testimony showed.
The driving record was the beginning of his downfall, records showed. A driver with the Virginia Beach Department of Public Works from 1983 to 1988, Williams lost his job when his license was suspended for the reckless driving charges. That started ``a bad time'' in his life, he testified - a time that included small-scale drug dealing.
According to Kellam's 14-page opinion, Beach prosecutor Mike Cummings offered his plea bargain two months later at Williams' preliminary hearing in Virginia Beach General District Court. In making his case, Cummings emphasized several times that federal drug sentences are ``more severe.''
During the negotiations, Stanley Sacks, Williams' original lawyer, asked about the extent of the cooperation being demanded from Williams. The case detective said that Williams would have to make several undercover drug buys, testify before grand juries and in open court, and share his knowledge of any criminal activities.
Williams rejected the offer on Oct. 7, 1993. Later that month, a federal grand jury indicted him.
Then, in January 1994, Judge Kellam ruled that the choice given to Williams was no choice at all but an unreasonable demand that violated his constitutional right to due process.
Kellam said he dismissed Williams' case reluctantly because plea bargains resolve a significant majority of cases in the overloaded criminal justice system. But the judge said he had no other choice.
Federal prosecutors appealed Kellam's decision to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. They argued that other courts have sanctioned the threat of federal court as a bargaining tool as long as defendants were fully informed of the consequences of their choices. They claimed there was no vindictiveness in taking Williams to federal court. Instead, the case was accepted according to standards applied to all other cases, prosecutors said.
In February 1995, a three-judge panel of the appeals court ruled unanimously that Cummings did not violate Williams' rights.
They wrote that when a defendant wins an appeal, a prosecutor cannot retaliate by reindicting him on more severe charges.
But in a pretrial setting, ``the Supreme Court has allowed prosecutors to threaten criminal defendants with harsher prosecution during plea negotiations and to carry out those threats if the defendants refuse to accept the prosecution's plea offers,'' Judge Donald S. Russell wrote. ``A prosecutor's threats to seek a harsher indictment are constitutionally legitimate . . .''
In September 1995, a grand jury reindicted Williams on two crack-distribution charges. Williams was arrested soon afterward and put in jail.
On Oct. 26, Williams pleaded guilty to one count of crack distribution. He faced a maximum sentence of life in prison and a maximum fine of $4 million.
KEYWORDS: DRUG TRIAL SENTENCING DRUGS ILLEGAL by CNB