Adjusted Penalties for Crack May Aid Ex-Ballplayer's Case

Over two months, Aikens bought powder and cooked it into crack when asked. "He was encouraged in a manner that was calculated to maximize his prison sentence," said his attorney, Margaret Colgate Love.

Cook, of the assistant U.S. attorneys association, said he is not aware of such tactics. "It's not something I've seen in my experience. . . . There's no shortage of crack dealers for us to prosecute," he said.

But during the last drug buy in February 1994, Love said the officer, Ginger Locke, made her intentions clear. Locke said in court testimony that she asked for drugs, and Aikens returned from his supplier with a bag of powder.

"I thought you said that you were going to get crack," Locke said, according to transcripts of her testimony.

Aikens tried to return the drug, but his dealer would not accept it, so he purchased a glass beaker at a toy store and cooked the powder into crack.

"If she hadn't asked me to cook it up for her, I probably never would have done that," Aikens said from prison. "If all she wanted was cocaine, she would have taken the powder and left."

The next month, officers kicked down the door of Aikens's Kansas City home and arrested him. Aikens was charged with six counts of distributing "cocaine base," or crack.

In prison, Aikens went through three rehabilitation programs to overcome his drug addiction and now calls his incarceration a godsend.

"Before, I used to blame this undercover cop," he said. "Yes, I do believe she entrapped me, but . . . Ginger Locke wasn't the foundation of my problem. My drug use is the foundation of my problem."

But, his lawyers said, the prison time Aikens received was excessive, and he should no longer be behind bars.

"I think he got a raw deal," Love said. "There are murderers who get less time. Now we've changed our minds and we've decided that we were too hard on people. All you can say is, it's about time."