Judge Calls Drug Law Too Harsh in Case of Seller, 19

WASHINGTON — A teen-ager once accused of supplying the cocaine that President Bush displayed during a televised speech received a 10-year sentence Wednesday from a judge who said the mandatory penalty was too harsh.

U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin suggested to Keith Jackson that he ask Bush for clemency so that his sentence, the minimum for selling drugs near a schoolyard, could be reduced.

Jackson, 19, was found guilty of selling cocaine twice last year to agents who met him near a high school on Capitol Hill.

In two separate trials, jurors were deadlocked as to whether it was Jackson who sold crack cocaine to an undercover agent in Lafayette Park near the White House just four days before Bush held up the sample on television.