STUDENTS GET TASTE OF HARSH PUNISHMENT FOR METH

Seventy high school students from Big Timber watched Thursday morning
as a woman only a few years older than they are was hammered with a
mandatory 10-year sentence in a methamphetamine conspiracy case.

Erin Zindler, 21, former star volleyball player for Laurel and mother
of a 6-month-old daughter, dabbed her eyes as U.S. District Judge
Richard Cebull said he had no choice but to hand her a sentence that
will keep her in an out-of-state federal facility until she is nearly 30.

Family members sobbed in the first rows of the cavernous Billings
courtroom as Zindler was taken into custody and escorted through
doors to a holding cell beyond.

Students in the courtroom as part of The Montana Project sat quietly
as they learned that Zindler had helped distribute between 1 1/2 and
2 pounds of the highly addictive drug. Because that much was
involved, Zindler's crime was under a federal law that set the
penalty at a minimum, mandatory 10 years.

Zindler cooperated with investigators and turned her life around,
defense attorney Jock West said. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Seykora
said he believed that to be true.

Cebull also said her transformation was obvious, but he said he was
bound by the law to impose a 10-year sentence.

"This shows the evils of methamphetamine, the addiction to it and
especially the distribution of it," the judge said.

It's a lesson the Montana Project, initiated three years ago by
Montana's Chief U.S. District Judge Don Molloy, has been instilling
in high school students around the state.

It's an informational program using the combined talents of
prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and probation officers to
explain to teenagers what happens once they are arrested on a federal
methamphetamine charge.

A probation officer visits classrooms explaining how federal sentencing works.

Then students attend drug sentencings in federal court.
Representatives of the U.S. Attorney's Office and Federal Defenders
of Montana, along with the judge, explain the processes and penalties.

Cebull opened the discussion with his observations from his nearly
five years on the federal bench.

"First, the majority of people standing behind that podium have
dropped out of high school - the majority of them around the 10th
grade," he said.

About 90 percent of the methamphetamine defendants who appear before
him started young using "gateway drugs," primarily marijuana and
alcohol, he said. Almost 100 percent are addicted to methamphetamine,
Cebull said.

"As you've just observed, it's a horrible waste of life," he said.

Cebull told the students that the federal system has no suspended or
deferred sentences and no parole. The only break prisoners get is 54
days of good time a year after serving the first year.

Montana U.S. Attorney Bill Mercer said federal prisons are full of
20- and 21-year-olds severing long drug sentences. Montana defendants
do their time far from home because the state has no federal prison, he said.

"Our charge is to reduce the flow of drugs to Montana," he said. "We
tend to be able to catch these people. There are a lot of informants
and agents out there."

Ernie Weyand, special agent in charge of the Billings FBI office,
also warned of the likelihood of getting caught.

"I can almost guarantee, if you do it for any amount of time, there
will be a knock at your door," he said. "We have some very savvy
investigators out there."

Mark Werner, assistant federal defender for Montana, told the
students that "not guilty" verdicts for meth cases are harder to
obtain than in any other type of case.

"These cases are fraught with pitfalls," he said. "It's a very messy
crime. It leaves trails everywhere."

The person who sold the drug to you and anybody you sold it to know
who you are, Werner said. Anyone around when the sale went down
knows, and all these people can talk to each other, he said. The next
sale may be to an informant or to an undercover agent.

Nobody wants to be called a snitch, Werner said, but sometimes that's
the only way out of a long prison sentence. He said he's heard
advocates both for and against "snitching" and found both have good
arguments. Defendants in drug cases often have to make that
unpleasant decision, he said.

Later that afternoon, after the students had returned to class, a
second defendant in the conspiracy case that included Zindler was
sentenced to 46 months in prison.

Nate Miller, 23, pleaded guilty to possession with intent to
distribute more than 50 grams of methamphetamine in July 2003. He
received a lighter sentence because the amount of drugs attributed to
him was substantially less than that linked to Zindler.