JUDGE HALVES FEDERAL MINIMUM TERM IN DRUG CASE

  FIRST-TIME OFFENDER GETS FIVE YEARS INSTEAD OF 10.

By MIRANDA EWELL
Mercury News San Francisco Bureau

SAN FRANCISCO -- Friends and supporters of 23-year-old Christian
Martensen burst into tears and applause Wednesday when the Grateful Dead
fan was sentenced to five years in federal prison -- instead of 10 -- in
a case that has helped reignite a national debate on federal drug
sentencing laws.

Martensen was arrested in 1991 after he agreed to introduce another
Deadhead to someone who could sell LSD. The fellow Deadhead, however,
turned out to be a federal undercover agent.

And under stiff sentencing laws, which give federal judges no leeway to
make distinctions based on the circumstances of a case or the background
of the defendants, Martensen faced an almost certain 10 years in prison
without parole for his offense.

But San Francisco federal Judge Vaughn Walker, who has criticized the
mandatory minimum sentencing law as irrational, has repeatedly rebuffed
prosecution attempts to lock up Martensen for the duration of his young
manhood.

Critics -- including many judges -- say the laws, which were passed by
Congress in 1986, are absurd. First time, non-violent offenders, like
Martensen, typically serve more time for drug offenses prosecuted under
federal law than violent criminals, like rapists.

''I think the drug laws are cruel and repressive,'' said Joanne Baughan,
58, a San Anselmo secretary who participated in a rally in support of
Martensen just minutes before his sentencing.

Jodi Libretti, a Palo Alto elementary school teacher also at the rally,
said she was appalled at the resources the government was spending to
jail non-violent drug offenders, typically at a cost of $20,000 per year
for each. Her 30-year-old brother recently began serving a 20-year
sentence in Phoenix for selling cocaine.

''I'm really afraid he's going to come out angry and hateful,'' Libretti
said. ''This whole experience has completely shattered my faith in the
criminal justice system.''

A Department of Justice report on mandatory minimum sentences released
last week makes no recommendations on the controversial law, but its
summary of facts support many of the critics' contentions.

The report shows that roughly 21 percent of those in federal prison, or
about 16,000 inmates, are first time non-violent offenders, said
Virginia Resner, the Bay Area director of Families Against Mandatory
Minimums (FAMM). Unlike some critics, who fear the current public
concern over crime will doom efforts to repeal the sentencing laws,
Resner believes people will make distinctions between violent criminals
and non-violent offenders.

''Is a 23-year-old Deadhead the same as Richard Allen Davis?'' Resner
asked, referring to the felon accused of kidnapping and killing Polly
Klaas. ''Is he even a drug kingpin?''

Judge Walker made it clear he did not believe so. Walker had already
refused once to sentence Martensen to 10 years, sentencing him instead
to five. In doing so, the judge ignored laws -- and a Supreme Court
ruling -- that require a judge to add in the weight of the paper or
sugar cube containing the LSD when determining the sentence.

In Martensen's case, the drug itself weighed 1.5 grams -- only enough to
draw a five-year sentence. But if the blotter paper containing the LSD
were added in, Martensen would draw a 10-year sentence.

Walker was reversed on appeal, in a ruling widely expected to force the
judge to impose a 10-year sentence.

But Wednesday, with the case back before him, Walker accepted instead a
complex and untested legal argument by defense attorneys that offered
him a way to avoid that.