Pubdate: Sat, 03 Jun 2017
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Weldon Angelos
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v17/n180/a09.html
Note: Headline by newshawk

SMALL-TIME DEALERS GET LONG SENTENCES TOO

In Heather Mac Donald's "Mandatory Minimums Don't Deserve Your Ire"
(op-ed, May 26) about mandatory minimum sentences (MMS), she writes
that 10-year mandatory minimum prison sentences are only given to
large-scale traffickers. In 2004 I was sentenced to 55 years in
federal prison for selling $1,000 worth of marijuana while possessing
a firearm. The judge who sentenced me called my punishment "unjust,
cruel and even irrational" and compared it to the much shorter federal
sentences given to repeat child rapists, murderers and even some terrorists.

A year ago, thanks to a bipartisan campaign to secure my freedom, a
federal court granted a highly unusual sentence reduction that allowed
me to go home to my sons. I was not a "large-scale" drug trafficker or
violent, and I met a lot of other guys in prison serving lengthy
sentencing terms who didn't fit that description either.

Weldon Angelos

Salt Lake City
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