Pubdate: Fri, 29 Nov 2013
Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal (NV)
Copyright: 2013 Creators Syndicate
Contact: http://www.reviewjournal.com/about/print/press/letterstoeditor.html
Website: http://www.lvrj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/233
Author: Jacob Sullum, Creators Syndicate

RETHINK LIFE SENTENCES FOR NONVIOLENT CRIMINALS

Nine years ago, Ronald Washington swiped two Michael Jordan jerseys 
from a Foot Locker in Shreveport, La. Although the shirts were on 
sale for $45 each, they were officially priced at $60, putting their 
combined value above $100. The difference between the discounted 
price and the list price was the difference between a misdemeanor 
punishable by no more than six months in jail and a felony that 
triggered a life sentence.

Washington is one of the prisoners profiled in a new report from the 
American Civil Liberties Union on nonviolent offenders serving 
sentences of life without parole. There were at least 3,278 such 
prisoners in the U.S. at the end of 2012, an astonishing number that 
reflects decades of tough-on-crime policies unconstrained by justice, 
wisdom or compassion.

Like many of those prisoners, Washington qualified as a "habitual 
offender" under a law aimed at incorrigible criminals. But if none of 
his prior offenses - which included forgery, cocaine possession, 
theft and burglary - merited a life sentence, it is hard to see how 
the addition of shoplifting could possibly justify that penalty.

If Washington's punishment was grossly disproportionate, how should 
we describe the life sentences imposed on repeat offenders whose 
so-called crimes involved no victims? At the age of 28, James R. 
Byers Jr. was sentenced to life under South Carolina's "three 
strikes" law for a single $10 crack sale; all of his prior 
convictions involved drug offenses.

Kevin Ott was 33 when he began serving a life sentence in Oklahoma 
for possessing 31/2 ounces of methamphetamine while on parole for 
marijuana charges. Three marijuana offenses, the last involving less 
than 2 pounds, triggered a life sentence for Cornell Hood II, 35, 
under Louisiana's habitual offender law.

Nearly two-thirds of the life without parole prisoners counted by the 
ACLU are in the federal system, almost all of them for drug offenses 
that are punished according to rigid formulas based on weight and 
criminal history.

Even drug offenders without prior convictions can be sent to prison 
for the rest of their lives. When she was 26, Teresa Griffin was 
sentenced to life in federal prison for serving as a mule in her 
boyfriend's cocaine operation. Alice Marie Johnson got the same 
sentence when she was 42 for holding money and passing along messages 
as part of a cocaine distribution conspiracy. Both were first-time offenders.

The ACLU's report does not include people serving lengthy mandatory 
terms that amount to life sentences - such as Weldon Angelos, who is 
serving a 55-year sentence in federal prison for possessing a gun 
during three marijuana sales, or Morton Berger, who is serving a 
200-year sentence in Arizona for possessing child pornography. 
Prisoners such as Berger would not have been counted anyway, because 
the ACLU excluded sex offenders.

Furthermore, three states with nonviolent offenders serving life 
without parole sentences - Delaware, Nevada and Virginia - did not 
provide data. Hence the ACLU's grim tally, appalling as it is, 
understates the number of people unjustly condemned to spend the rest 
of their lives in cages.

"Today," the ACLU notes, "the United States is virtually alone in its 
willingness to sentence nonviolent offenders to die behind bars." It 
urges state and federal legislators to abolish that practice and make 
the change retroactive so that current prisoners would be eligible 
for resentencing. In the meantime, it says, governors and the 
president should use their clemency powers, which they have exercised 
in recent years with scandalous infrequency, to free people who never 
should have received life sentences.

The ACLU suggests legislators "recalibrate drug policies." Since 
four-fifths of the people serving life without parole sentences for 
nonviolent crimes are drug offenders, more than a tweak may be 
needed. But we could start by recognizing that murdering someone is 
worse than selling him drugs.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom