A Living Death: Sentenced to Die Behind Bars for What? ( ACLU )

[Jefferson23]

For 3,278 people, it was nonviolent offenses like stealing a $159 jacket or serving as a middleman in the sale of $10 of marijuana. An estimated 65% of them are Black. Many of them were struggling with mental illness, drug dependency or financial desperation when they committed their crimes. None of them will ever come home to their parents and children. And taxpayers are spending billions to keep them behind bars.


Patrick W. Matthews: Stealing Tools from a Tool Shed

Patrick W. Matthews
Stealing Tools from a Tool Shed

Patrick Matthews was arrested while riding in the truck of a friend who pawned stolen tools and a welding machine, which he was convicted of stealing. Patrick is now 25. Since he was sentenced to die in prison three years ago, he has completed his GED, and participates in Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous. "I never in the world would've thought that could happen," he says. "Made one mistake and was treated like a murderer." Patrick had no violent criminal history and had never served a single day in a Department of Corrections facility. He desperately misses his two young children, Blayton and Hayley, who are eight and six years old. One of the judges who reviewed Patrick's appeal said he did not "believe that the ends of justice are met by a mandatory sentence for this 22-year-old," but that legislation mandated sending Patrick away for the rest of his life because of unarmed burglary convictions when he was 17.



Teresa Griffin: Carrying Drugs for an Abusive Boyfriend

Teresa Griffin was sentenced to die behind bars for her first offense. She was 26 and seven months pregnant when police apprehended her with $38,500 of her boyfriend's cash and half a pound of his cocaine. Several years before, she told her boyfriend that she was leaving him. According to Griffin, he hit her and threatened to kill her and take two of her children away if she left him. He was extremely jealous and controlling, and forbade her to go to school or work. Teresa says her boyfriend used her as a mule to transport drugs between Texas and Oklahoma, and forced her to pick up the cash proceeds of his drug sales. Griffin, now 47, has served 22 years in prison and says she feels immense remorse for her actions. "I would give anything…to be able to make different decisions," she says. "I know I did something wrong, but not enough to take away my life."



Can you imagine a mother without her oldest son? A father who will never make it home for his kids’ birthdays?

It’s not too late to give these families hope.

Watch this video and help us fight extreme sentences for nonviolent crimes – sentences that have reached absurd, tragic and costly height.

https://www.aclu.org/living-death-sentenced-die-behind-bars-what

[Tx4obama]

1. Also...

These 32 People Are Spending Their Lives In Prison For Nonviolent Crimes

-snip-

-snip-

Booker is one of more than 100 prisoners featured in an extensive new report from the American Civil Liberties Union on the rise of life sentences without the possibility of parole -- the harshest penalty faced by defendants in the American criminal justice system apart from death. Many such inmates are there "off the laws," as Booker put it, meaning they were incarcerated because of drug laws and not because they committed acts of violence. The report calculates that 3,278 prisoners were serving life without parole for drug, property and other nonviolent crimes as of 2012, comprising about 6 percent of the total life-without-parole, or LWOP, population.

The thousands of nonviolent crimes that have resulted in LWOP sentences include possession of a crack pipe, a smudge of heroin in a bottle cap, and "a trace amount of cocaine in clothes pockets that was so minute it was invisible to the naked eye and detected only in lab tests," according to the report. In each case, the defendant had previously been convicted of other crimes -- often decades-old and mostly of the non-violent variety.

Prisoners serving life without parole make up one of the fastest-growing populations in the prison system, according to the ACLU's analysis of data from the United States Sentencing Commission, the federal Bureau of Prisons and state corrections departments. The report attributes this rise partly to the prevalence of mandatory-minimum sentencing laws and other punitive drug policies embraced by lawmakers who hoped to define themselves as "tough on crime" in the '80s and '90s.

In recent years, the rhetoric that accompanied the passage of those laws has begun to shift, with legislators from both sides of the aisle introducing measures that would soften the country's approach to drug crimes. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) are just some of the more prominent figures to take up the cause in Congress, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has called for sweeping, systemic changes to a "broken" justice system, directing federal prosecutors to step away from drug cases.

-snip-

PHOTOS of the 35 people with a short summary beneath each are HERE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/13/life-without-parole_n_4256789.html

[Jefferson23]

3. Thanks for the post.

[gopiscrap]

2. that's so fucked up