[NYTr] An epic fight for one man's clemency

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Thanks be to the Assemblies of Gawd. ]

LA Times - Sep 15, 2007 via rick kissell
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-clemency15sep15,1,4225681.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&ctrack=4&cset=true


An epic fight for one man's clemency

Phillip Emmert, was serving 27 years for a first-time drug offense. 
He had no chance of a pardon but his supporters tried anyway.

By Richard B. Schmitt
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON --- Karen Orehowsky decided to join the Beltway lobbying 
crowd not long after getting a phone call from her mother, back home in 
Iowa. Her mother told her she had a new pen pal, a former drug dealer by 
the name of Phillip Emmert who was serving a 27-year sentence in federal 
prison.

Orehowsky was alarmed to hear that her 62-year-old mom was corresponding 
with an inmate. But her mother assured her that Emmert had reformed and 
did not deserve his long sentence. She said her rural church had begun 
writing letters to him to give him hope and support, and suggested her 
daughter do the same.

Orehowsky was skeptical. "Nobody in this great country gets 27 years 
with no possibility of parole as a nonviolent first offender," she said, 
recalling her initial doubts.

But after some research, she, too, came to believe Emmert had been the 
victim of an unjust sentence -- and heartbreaking personal misfortune. 
He had, she learned, become a model prisoner.

Orehowsky decided she would do more than write him letters: She would 
lobby the Justice Department to get President Bush to commute Emmert's 
sentence.

As an employee of the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, she 
knew people inside the federal bureaucracy. She talked up the case at 
parties attended by administration officials. She sought advice from 
government lawyers who had first-hand knowledge of the clemency process.

Early on, a former Justice Department official warned her that she was 
taking on a nearly hopeless task. Orehowsky scribbled her exact words -- 
"You have no reasonable chance of success" -- on a piece of paper and 
pinned it to a wall above her desk at work.

The Bush administration's record for granting clemency was not 
encouraging. In 2002, when Orehowsky embarked on her quixotic task, Bush 
had not commuted a single sentence.

He since has taken action in four cases, the most prominent being that 
of former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was 
convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the CIA leak case. 
Bush has also granted full pardons to more than 100 people -- but only 
after they had served their time.

Cases such as those of Libby and Marc Rich, the fugitive financier 
pardoned by President Clinton in 2001, have raised questions about the 
fairness of presidential clemency because they involved the affluent and 
politically connected.

More routinely, hundreds of the unconnected apply for clemency every 
year with little or no guidance or hope. Their petitions are filed with 
the 12-person Office of the Pardon Attorney in the Justice Department, 
whose deliberations and recommendations are never made public. 
Applicants often wait years for a response.

Yet they frequently have compelling stories of rehabilitation and steep 
punishment.

Even some prominent conservative jurists have come to believe that 
clemency is a tool of the justice system that is not used enough.

"The pardon process, of late, seems to have been drained of its moral 
force," Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy told the American Bar 
Assn. in 2003 in a speech calling on lawyers to file more petitions. 
While defendants in many cases have not served their full sentences, 
they have served long enough, Kennedy said.

Tough federal sentencing guidelines over the past two decades have made 
sentences uniform across the country -- but also uniformly harsh. Drug 
crimes bring stiff "mandatory minimum" sentences even for first-time 
offenders.

Parole, once viewed as a tool for addressing injustice, creating 
incentives for rehabilitation and accounting for special circumstances 
such as family or personal illness, was long ago abolished for inmates 
in federal prison.

In Libby's case, Bush declared the 30-month sentence "excessive," even 
though it was at the low end of the range of federal guidelines. He also 
said Libby was a first-time offender and that his family had suffered 
from his conviction.

Some inmate advocates hope the president now will take another look at 
the sentences given lesser-known defendants. Margaret Colgate Love, a 
lawyer who once headed the pardon office, said: "There are scores, 
perhaps hundreds, of people doing hard time in federal prison who are 
also worthy of the president's mercy."

Phillip Emmert grew up in rural Arkansas, one of seven children. He was 
5 when his father left home; his mother worked as a waitress to support 
the family. That left the kids to raise themselves, and as Emmert 
readily concedes, they did not do a very good job.

He started using drugs at 13. Later, when he was convicted of breaking 
into a car and stealing a watch and sunglasses, a judge offered him the 
chance to avoid prison by joining the Army.

After his discharge from the service, he got married, had a daughter -- 
and got hooked on methamphetamine.

In 1992, he was implicated in a conspiracy to distribute more than 25 
pounds of meth with a group of motorcycle friends. Emmert claimed he was 
in on the deal simply to support his own habit. Under the law, however, 
he was held responsible for the entire stockpile of drugs. At age 36, he 
was sentenced to 324 months -- 27 years -- even though he was a 
first-time drug offender. The ringleader got life.

Initially, Emmert had problems as a prisoner. Eighteen months into his 
sentence, he was busted for drinking alcohol and sent to an isolated 
unit known as "the hole."

That's where he got the news that his wife and daughter had been in a 
horrific car accident. His wife was left a paraplegic. His daughter was 
then 8.

He said the tragedy motivated him to turn his life around. He prayed and 
began reading the Bible. "Change didn't happen overnight," he said, "but 
change did come."

Over the ensuing decade, he learned a trade: servicing heating, 
ventilation and air-conditioning systems. He completed a ministerial 
studies program endorsed by the Assemblies of God Church and became 
qualified to be a licensed pastor. He served as a hospice volunteer and 
mental health companion, attending to terminally ill inmates and 
counseling suicidal prisoners.

"I met many inmates who 'found God' but immediately lost Him when it 
became evident that God was not going to get them out of prison," said 
Robert Williams, an inmate who served time with Emmert. "But Phillip was 
different."

In 1996, Emmert caught a break. After Congress had modified the 
sentencing guidelines, the judge shaved five years off his prison time, 
leaving him with only 18 more years to serve.

The lobbying team that took up his cause did not look to be a K Street 
juggernaut.

There was a small-town church -- First Assembly of God in Washington, 
Iowa, whose members included farmers, plumbers, and electricians but 
"not a single professional among them," said Orehowsky. Her own 
credentials consisted of running an office at the EPA that regulates 
vehicle emissions.

It was clear the group would need some political muscle, but that would 
not be easy.

Iowa's senior U.S. senator, Charles E. Grassley, was a tough-on-crime 
conservative who supported the sort of lengthy sentence that Emmert got. 
And the scourge of methamphetamine addiction was becoming a major 
concern in the heartland. Aides signaled Grassley would have trouble 
supporting clemency for Emmert.

"The statistics were unbelievably against them," said James A. Leach, 
then a member of the Iowa congressional delegation and another lawmaker 
the group approached.

As a first step, Orehowsky found a major Washington law firm willing to 
take on Emmert's case as a public service. The firm, Crowell & Moring, 
filed an eloquent brief with the Justice Department. But the firm's 
lawyers found the assignment frustrating because communications were so 
one-sided.

"It is a black hole," said Thomas Means, one of the lawyers involved. 
"They don't tell you anything at the pardon office. You can't get 
anything out of them."

Means and Orehowsky decided to step up the offensive.

"You take every opportunity to tell the story to somebody. You never 
know who might get through," Means said. "That seems to be the essence 
of the process -- somehow rising above the pack."

Orehowsky began working the bureaucracy. She found out that her boss at 
EPA once worked in the auto industry with Andrew H. Card Jr., Bush's 
first chief of staff. The boss agreed to write a letter to Card about 
Emmert.

"Every time I went to a dinner party, every time I met someone who said, 
'Oh, I work for the Justice Department,' they got my [Emmert] story," 
Orehowsky said.

She turned friends -- and friends of friends -- into lobbying partners. 
When one got to play a round of golf with a cousin of the president, she 
made sure he took along a "one-pager" on Emmert.

She had Pastor James E. Cluney, of First Assembly of God church in Iowa, 
write to former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, a member of the same 
denomination, which had also given Emmert his divinity papers. Ashcroft 
wrote a letter of support -- he sent Orehowsky a signed copy -- but it 
was unclear whether he ever sent it to the Justice Department. Orehowsky 
urged Cluney and his flock to write their own letters.

Initially skeptical, Leach agreed to host a meeting in his Washington 
office with representatives from the pardon division and his Iowa 
constituents. Cluney and Emmert's wife, Dixie, who uses a wheelchair, 
flew in to help make the case.

The Justice lawyers were polite but poker-faced as they listened.

A formal clemency petition had been filed in February 2004, and for 
nearly three years, hopes ebbed and flowed.

At one point, Means also appealed to U.S. District Judge Charles R. 
Wolle in Des Moines, who had given Emmert the hefty sentence.

Wolle initially was not interested in helping arrange an early release. 
But the judge had an unexplained change of heart. He decided that, while 
the sentence was legally correct, Emmert had been rehabilitated and 
deserved a break. "The purpose of the sentence I imposed has fully been 
served," Wolle wrote the Justice Department in June 2004.

Six months later, Grassley came around, writing a passionate letter on 
behalf of Emmert two days before Christmas. Hopes were high. But the 
holiday passed without word from Bush.

"Every year Christmas time rolls around and you think that would be a 
great Christmas present," Cluney said, "and it would come and go, and 
other things would happen."

Last December, Means received a phone call from the Justice Department: 
Bush had granted clemency.

Emmert was summoned to the office of a corrections official at the 
federal prison camp in Duluth, Minn., and told to contact his attorney. 
He was not prepared for the news he was about to receive.

" 'You are going home a free man,' " he recalls Means telling him over 
the phone.

"I cried like a little girl. I pretty much lost it." He still chokes up 
at the memory.

Emmert was released Jan. 19, and, on a Sunday night in February, had an 
emotional homecoming at the First Assembly of God church in Iowa, where 
he preached about his journey to a packed congregation that included 
some former biker friends. He had served 14 years, four months. The 
lobbying campaign had taken more than four years, including 300 hours of 
attorney time. More than 100 people were involved, including 70 from 
Washington, Iowa, who wrote letters. Throughout the process, Emmert, who 
had received copies of the letters that were being sent on his behalf, 
knew that unusual influence was being brought to bear. "Karen was just 
tenacious," he said. "I thought, 'Boy, if this doesn't happen, this is 
going to crush her.' "

But he also recognized the odds were against him, and he tried not to 
get his hopes up.

Orehowsky's mother, whose August 2002 phone call launched the drive to 
free Emmert, was diagnosed with cancer in 2004 and died five weeks 
later. She did not live to see her pen pal released.

Today, Emmert works the night shift as a housekeeper at the Veterans 
Administration hospital in Iowa City. He is hoping to get day hours so 
he can preach and counsel drug users. The local sheriff has a standing 
offer for him to speak with youth groups.

He is rebuilding a small house that Dixie's father bought her after she 
became paralyzed. She works part time as a clerk at a farm implements 
store. His daughter, now 22, has her own apartment in Iowa City.

In July, Emmert was eating dinner, watching a TV news report about 
Libby's sentence being commuted, when he saw his name flash across the 
screen. "I stopped with my mouth full," he said. "There was Scooter 
Libby, me and two other people."

The report noted that Emmert was part of an exclusive club: four people 
granted clemency by Bush.

"I know why I am on that list. It is because of the prayers of many, 
many people," he said. "But there are a lot more deserving people, if 
you take the time to look."

Orehowsky said she has no idea what compelled the president to act; the 
White House declined to provide an explanation. "It will always be an 
amazing mystery to me why it had the outcome it did," she said.

"I am not one who believes a drug dealer should go free. A decade in 
federal prison is just what Phillip Emmert needed."

But, she added, "he is really an example of how mercy and second chances 
are so important."