TIME AND PUNISHMENT
Life Without Parole: Four Inmates’ Stories
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By John Tierney
- Dec. 12, 2012
Of the 140,000 prisoners serving life sentences in the United States,
about 41,000 have no chance at parole, a result of laws that eliminated parole
in the federal system and for many state prisoners. These rules, along with the
mandatory sentences decreed for some crimes and some repeat offenders, were
intended to make punishment both stricter and fairer, but judges complain
that the rigid formulas too often result in injustice. Here are four prisoners sentenced to life
without parole by judges who did not believe the punishment fit the crime.
KENNETH HARVEY
The first two times Kenneth Harvey was caught with drugs in California,
he was given probation. Then, to earn $300, at the age of 24 he took a flight
in 1989 from Los Angeles to Kansas City to deliver a vial of cocaine strapped
to his leg. This time he went to prison for good.
When Judge Howard Sachs
imposed the mandatory sentence of life without parole in federal court in
Missouri, he said he was troubled by the disproportionate punishment.
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“I do not think it was fully understood or intended by Congress in cases
of this nature,” the judge said, “but there is no authority that I know of that
would permit a different sentence by me.”
Image
Kenneth
Harvey
The judge recommended that Mr. Harvey be considered for clemency after
he served 15 years in prison — a recommendation that was later seconded by the
appeals court, which urged prosecutors to deliver the recommendation to the
federal office in charge of clemency. But his 15th anniversary passed, and his
clemency petition was denied.
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“I do not like my current
situation, but I got myself here,” Mr. Harvey, now 47, wrote in a recent e-mail
from his prison in Beaumont, Tex. While saying he did not want to blame anyone
else, he judged his life sentence unfair, “especially when compared with child
molesters, rapists, murderers and those along that line.” After more than 22
years behind bars, he wrote, “I feel very strongly that I’ve been
rehabilitated.”
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SCOTT WALKER
In his early 20s, Scott Walker became addicted to methamphetamine and
paid for his habit by selling drugs along with friends in Carbondale, Ill. When
he was found guilty of being part of a conspiracy to distribute marijuana and
meth, it was his first felony conviction, but federal law required Judge J.
Phil Gilbert to impose a sentence he considered “excessive and
disproportionate.”
Image
Scott
Walker
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“Maybe somewhere down the line Congress will relieve the people in your
position,” he said to Mr. Walker, then 26, at the sentencing hearing in 1998.
Today Mr. Walker is 41, and Judge Gilbert looks back on the sentencing as “one
of the most difficult moments in my judicial career.” The judge, a former
prosecutor, has written a letter toPresident Obamasupporting a commutation of
the sentence, and praising Mr. Walker’s record as a model prisoner.
“His unbroken spirit in the face of a life sentence is an example of the
human spirit at its strongest,” Judge Gilbert wrote. “As a judge, as a citizen
and as a taxpayer, I see no reason that this individual should spend the rest
of his natural life incarcerated.”
REYNOLDS WINTERSMITH
After the drug-related death of his mother, a heroin addict, Reynolds
Wintersmith moved to his grandmother’s home, which was a brothel and a crack
house. There, as a teenager, he was taught to cook crack by his aunts. He spent
a little more than a year in a drug ring selling crack in Rockford, Ill., until
being locked up shortly after his 19th birthday on drug-conspiracy charges.
Image
Reynolds
Wintersmith
“You were 17 years old when you got involved in this thing,” Judge
Philip G. Reinhard said to Mr. Wintersmith when he imposed the mandatory
sentence in federal court. “This is your first conviction, and here you face
life imprisonment. I think it gives me pause to think that was the intent of
the Congress.” He urged Mr. Wintersmith to “hope something will change in the
law.”
Mr. Wintersmith is now 38
and has spent half his life in prison, becoming a highly regarded tutor and
counselor who helps other prisoners prepare to return to society. He looks back
on his teenage self as a social menace but also as someone quite foreign. “I am
no longer that person,” he said. “I ask only for a chance to contribute as a
positive, productive human being in society.”
ROBERT RILEY
Robert Riley was a follower
of the Grateful Dead who sometimes sold drugs to fellow Deadheads in the 1970s
and ‘80s. Convicted several times for possession of small amounts of marijuana
and amphetamines, he spent short periods in county jails in California and
Wisconsin. In 1993, he was convicted in a federal court in Iowa of conspiring
to distribute hits of LSD dissolved on pieces of blotter paper.
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Image
Robert
Riley
The weight of the LSD was minuscule, but prosecutors also counted the blotter
paper’s weight, putting it over a 10-gram threshold that — with the previous
convictions — meant a mandatory life sentence without parole.
At the sentencing hearing, his lawyer complained that Mr. Riley was
being punished more severely than most violent criminals, even murderers. Mr.
Riley described mandatory drug sentences as “governmentally sanctioned,
personalized terrorism” and said, “Hopefully after my death, someone will want
to read this.” The judge, Ronald E. Longstaff, listened sympathetically.
“It’s an unfair sentence,” Judge Longstaff said as he imposed it. Nine
years later, in 2002, he wrote a letter supporting a petition for presidential
clemency.
“There was no evidence presented in Mr. Riley’s case to indicate that he
was a violent offender or would be in the future,” the judge wrote. “It gives
me no satisfaction that a gentle person such as Mr. Riley will remain in prison
the rest of his life.”
The petition was not
granted. Mr. Riley, now 60, has been behind bars for 19 years.
