On April 25, Christian Martensen, a 25-year-old San Francisco man, finally received a reduced prison sentence for the crime to which he pleaded guilty in 1991. His offense: introducing an undercover cop to two drug sellers. His sentence: 10 years, according to the prosecution; five years, according to the judge.

Although Martensen pleaded guilty, the dispute over sentencing required three separate hearings over three years. During that time, Martensen became a symbol in the national media of mandatory minimum sentencing injustices. "I was just trying to stand up and be visible for everybody' s sake,"Martensen recalls.

The case began at a Grateful Dead concert in 1991, where Martensen reluctantly introduced an insistent fellow "Deadhead" to a couple of friends who were selling LSD. The "Deadhead," an informant, brought along an undercover DEA agent, who arrested Martensen and the sellers, seizing about 20,000 doses of LSD.

Under federal law, possessing LSD weighing more than 10 grams carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years; between one and 10 grams nets at least a five-year sentence.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, a Reagan appointee who has criticized mandatory minimum sentences, gave Martensen five years at his first two sentencing hearings, since there were about 1.5 grams of LSD in the blotter paper. But the government appealed both times. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Walker on each occasion because he did not include the full weight of the carrier medium (in this case, blotter paper weighing over 124grams) with the weight of the LSD.

Martensen' s ultimate salvation was the so-called "safety valve" that Congress passed in the 1994 Crime Act. The safety valve exempts first-time, nonviolent drug offenders from mandatory minimum sentences if they meet certain, very specific criteria, such as not being an organizer/manager of the offense (see the Fall 1994 Drug Policy Letter, p. 20). On April 25, Judge Walker finally gave Martensen his sentence: four years, nine months. Martensen has already served virtually the entire sentence, and he will be free on June 3.

Martensen can be reached through the Northern California chapter of FamiliesAgainstMandatoryMinimums, P.O. Box 170375, San Francisco, CA 94117; phone: (415) 380-9103.