<p>Sentencing consultants are doing a brisk business helping clients
beat the rap
</p>
<p>By ADAM ZAGORIN/WASHINGTON
</p>
<p> "My repentance is foremost in my mind in every waking moment
and its intensity increases with the passing of every day,"
writes Leona Helmsley in an uncharacteristically groveling letter
to a New York federal judge. The missive goes on to contend
that Helmsley, the prominent hotel queen who is serving a four-year
sentence for evading $1.2 million in federal income taxes, should
be released as soon as possible from the prison in Danbury,
Connecticut, where she has been studying for a high school-equivalency
diploma. An expected favorable ruling by the judge, perhaps
this week, would allow Helmsley to rejoin her ailing billionaire
husband Harry and travel, presumably by limousine, to perform
750 hours of community service as a playroom assistant or clerk
at a nearby health center.
</p>
<p> Helmsley's plea for mercy is a masterly exercise in fawning
self-promotion. It includes details of the good works she would
do during her parole, newspaper editorials calling for her release,
doctors' reports on her allegedly failing health and even letters
from well-wishers, including one man who offers to distribute
buttons, bumper stickers and lawn signs emblazoned with the
words FREE LEONA. It was presented in court by Helmsley's lawyer
with the aid of a kind of professional called a sentencing consultant,
one of a growing breed of specialists who counsel convicted
offenders on how to avoid or cut down on prison time.
</p>
<p> Sentencing consultants are poised to be the quintessential post-'80s
growth industry. Paul Bilzerian, nabbed for securities fraud
and tax evasion, hired one to help him reduce a four-year prison
sentence by performing community service at a boys' club. A
consultant was instrumental in advising Miami moneyman and convicted
tax cheat Victor Posner on his offer to establish shelters for
the homeless in lieu of prison time. Onetime Wall Street legal
eagle and insider trader Martin Siegel asked for and received
the chore of running a children's computer camp. Securities
fraudster Michael Milken is awaiting court approval for his
plan to educate inner-city youth, a proposal that appears to
have contributed to his early release from prison despite an
initial 10-year jail sentence.
</p>
<p> Celebrity felons may be charged more than $10,000 a case or
up to $200 an hour for the services of top-flight sentencing
consultants; garden-variety or indigent miscreants are asked
to pay far less. Business has been so good at all levels that
the consultants have formed their own professional body, the
National Association of Sentencing Advocates, with 100 member
firms so far. Practitioners, often criminologists or social
workers, have found themselves increasingly asked to decipher
the compendium of federal sentencing guidelines, which has grown
from paperback size to the dimensions of a metropolitan phone
book over the past five years.
</p>
<p> Faced with a federal prison population that has more than doubled
nationwide in the past decade and incarceration costs that average
$20,000 a person each year, judges often welcome the alternatives
to imprisonment that consultants are paid to contrive. Recent
efforts to loosen federal sentencing guidelines, which restrict
a judge's discretion in letting convicted offenders avoid prison,
could further this trend. Attorney General Janet Reno has announced
she will review and possibly dispense with sentencing guidelines
for minor drug offenses, and U.S. District Judge Harold Greene
declared guidelines unconstitutional in a variety of cases.
A change in the federal procedure could allow judges greater
leeway to find creative alternatives to prison terms, and thus
give consultants a larger role. "There's a lot of very talented
people in prison mowing lawns and doing laundry," says Herbert
Hoelter, an adviser to Helmsley and other well-known offenders.
"Why not put them to work on the outside at far less cost to
the taxpayer?"
</p>
<p> The most successful sentencing proposals serve clients' interests
yet avoid offending judges and prosecutors with excessive calls
for leniency. Some can be extremely innovative. When Doc McGhee,
the former manager of rock bands Motley Crue and Bon Jovi, was
convicted of marijuana smuggling in North Carolina, he faced
a tough judge and an aggressive prosecutor. He pleaded guilty
and threw himself on the mercy of the court. Consultant Hoelter,
whose nonprofit firm handles about 750 cases a year as well
as sentence reductions in capital crimes, came up with the idea
that McGhee should stage rock concerts to raise money for drug-treatment
programs. Thus was the Make a Difference Foundation born. It
has since put on major concerts in Moscow and the U.S., and
is planning a PBS documentary on drug use and other problems
faced by young people.
</p>
<p> If Helmsley is soon to be released, it may be because her consultant
is able to dramatize the harsh treatment she has received in
comparison with other tax evaders. As the judge was reminded
in Helmsley's court filing, singer Willie Nelson was allowed
to settle $15.6 million in unpaid taxes and penalties without
any jail sentence at all, partly by agreeing to produce an album--which he titled Who'll Buy My Memories: The IRS Tapes--and turn all proceeds over to the government.
