Drug Dealer Begins New Freedom Bid

Nearly seven years ago, a crack cocaine dealer convicted of drug charges four times in 12 years embarked on the toughest task of his life: to transform himself from neighborhood leech to local hero.

By all accounts, Bobbie Marshall’s turnaround succeeded.

Now, Marshall may be facing even longer odds. He will try to convince the nation’s top law enforcement officials, including Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, that his nine-year prison sentence should be commuted.

The chances are slim, but no one who knows Marshall has ruled it out yet.

“To know Bobby is to know hope,” said Rose Casteneda, a longtime community activist in Pacoima who has worked closely with Marshall.

Said his attorney, Denise Meyer: “One thing I have found out in this case is that it is never over.”

Marshall, 44, was reluctantly sentenced to nine years in prison last week by U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr., who believes Marshall has changed for the better. Hatter has frequently decried federal guidelines that limit judges’ sentencing discretion.

From the bench, Hatter called on President Clinton to commute Marshall’s sentence, and added that the convicted drug dealer was “the vehicle for providing the president with true moral leadership” on the issue of curtailing gang violence.

Marshall’s long and strange trip through the judicial system did not become unusual until 1991, when Hatter granted bail to the unemployed trash hauler and cook after Marshall pleaded guilty to possessing 53 grams of crack near a Pacoima elementary school.

Marshall began volunteering time with troubled kids, including gang members, and during the 1992 riots stood guard outside a store with a group of youngsters to protect it from looters.

Marshall slowly won the trust and respect of community leaders, including Casteneda; U.S. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Panorama City); Connie Taylor-Broadous, executive director of Pacoima Community Youth Culture Center; and Larry Gonzales, principal of Pacoima Elementary School.

In court this week, Rick Drooyan, chief of the criminal division of the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, said the community’s push for leniency on Marshall’s behalf eventually led prosecutors to agree to a nine-year term for Marshall instead of a possible life sentence.

Nine years was still too long for Hatter, however, who in 1994 reduced it to 4 1/2 years. An appeals court overturned the decision.

Of the nine-year sentence, Marshall has served 3 1/2 years, and with credit for good behavior could see his sentence reduced by 16 months. Now, a presidential commutation is Marshall’s last hope of avoiding serving the remainder of the prison sentence. But such actions are exceedingly rare.

The Clinton administration acted favorably on only three of 1,518 requests from 1993 through 1995. President Bush granted just three of 1,698 applications.

Since Lyndon Johnson took office in 1963, only 2% of 17,916 commutation requests have been granted, according to the Department of Justice.

“It’s such a rare act because the standards that are required to be met” are so high, said Joe Krovisky, a spokesman for the Department of Justice. “It’s something that rises above ordinary behavior.”

Typical reasons for a commutation, Krovisky said, is the terminal illness of a prisoner, an inmate who cooperates in the prosecution of a major crime figure or performs an extraordinary act, such as helping quell a prison riot or rescuing someone from a fire.

Meyer, the attorney for Marshall, says that while the odds of success are “bleak,” she argues that her client’s work in persuading gang members to turn the other cheek might meet the Justice Department’s criteria.

“I think Bobbie Marshall has pulled a couple of people out of the fire,” Meyer said. “He has saved lives in his own way. It is just more subtle than stopping a prison riot or [literally] pulling someone out of a fire.”

The commutation process is slow and sometimes takes more than a year to resolve if the commutation is granted.

Meyer said she hoped to send Marshall’s paperwork--which includes information about his criminal history and the reasons he should be granted clemency--to U.S. Pardon Atty. Magaret Love by mid-March.

There, Love’s staff will speak with Hatter and the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles before deciding whether to recommend a commutation of Marshall’s sentence to the attorney general. If Reno approves the commutation, she will forward it to the president, who will make the ultimate decision.

Of the three sentences commuted by Clinton, Meyer said, community support helped free a 70-year-old Nebraska hog farmer convicted of perjury five days before his sentence ended, and prosecutors who agreed to a defense request for clemency helped free a Tampa, Fla., man convicted of drug smuggling.

Both cases involved extraordinary circumstances: The farmer had lied about selling hogs in order to feed his family and the smuggler had cooperated with the government.

Meyer said Marshall’s community support combined with backing she hopes will come from the U.S. attorney office would make her client’s commutation proceedings easier.

So far, Drooyan has said only that federal prosecutors will not block the clemency request. The office has not yet decided whether to support it.

“It is an extraordinary case,” he said. “That much is certain.”