The same people who were screaming for government to do something about drugs are now facing the costs of their ignorance.
From Drudge;
The painful price of aging in prison
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/nat...ing-in-prison/
Twenty-one years into his nearly 50-year sentence, the graying man steps inside his stark cell in the largest federal prison complex in America. He wears special medical boots because of a foot condition that makes walking feel as if he’s “stepping on a needle.” He has undergone tests for a suspected heart condition and sometimes experiences vertigo.
“I get dizzy sometimes when I’m walking,” says the 63-year-old inmate, Bruce Harrison. “One time, I just couldn’t get up.”
In 1994, Harrison and other members of the motorcycle group he belonged to were caught up in a drug sting by undercover federal agents, who asked them to move huge volumes of cocaine and marijuana. After taking the job, making several runs and each collecting $1,000, Harrison and the others were arrested and later convicted. When their sentences were handed down, however, jurors objected.
“I am sincerely disheartened by the fact that these defendants, who participated in the staged off-loads and transports . . . are looking at life in prison or decades at best,” said one of several who wrote letters to the judge and prosecutor.
In recent years, federal sentencing guidelines have been revised, resulting in less severe prison terms for low-level drug offenders. But Harrison, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, remains one of tens of thousands of inmates who were convicted in the “war on drugs” of the 1980s and 1990s and who are still behind bars.
Harsh sentencing policies, including mandatory minimums, continue to have lasting consequences for inmates and the nation’s prison system. Today, prisoners 50 and older represent the fastest-growing population in crowded federal correctional facilities, their ranks having swelled by 25 percent to nearly 31,000 from 2009 to 2013.
This is a long article but well worth the read!
I only copied the first paragraph...
[edit]
Harrison’s crammed cell at the Federal Correctional Complex Coleman in Florida near Orlando is devoid of the clutter of life on the outside. The space he shares with another inmate has only a sink, a toilet, a bunk bed with cots, a steel cabinet, two plastic gray chairs, a desk and a bulletin board with a postcard of a Florida waterspout.
From a tiny window, he can see Spanish moss draped over trees in the distance.
Forty-five years ago, Harrison served with the Marines in Vietnam. A machine gunner, he was shot twice and was awarded two Purple Hearts. When he came back, he felt as though he had nowhere to turn. He later joined a motorcycle group known as the Outlaws.
Harrison was approached by an undercover agent who was part of a law enforcement team trying to bring down the group, which had been suspected of illegal activity. He and fellow members of the club were offered a kilogram of cocaine to offload and transport drugs. He declined, saying none of them wanted to be paid in drugs.
“I didn’t want drugs, because I really wouldn’t have known what to do with them,” Harrison said in an interview. “We didn’t sell them.”
But Harrison and the others took the job because the agents offered cash, and they needed the money. Over a period of several months, they would move what they believed to be real drugs — more than 1,400 kilos of cocaine and about 3,200 pounds of marijuana.
Harrison carried a gun for protection during two of the offloads. He didn’t use it, but after authorities arrested him and fellow members of his group, he was charged with possessing a firearm while committing a drug offense.
His 1995 trial in Tampa lasted four months. His lawyer at the time argued that “this was a government operation from beginning to end. . . . Everything was orchestrated by the government. . . . He was not a leader. The only leaders in this case, the only organizers in this case was the United States government.”
The jury, nonetheless, found Harrison and the others guilty of transporting the drugs.
Harrison was sentenced to roughly 24 years for possessing cocaine and marijuana with the intent to distribute. The conviction on the firearms charge carried a 25-year penalty, meaning he is effectively serving a life sentence.
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Originally Posted by BuddyRey
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