Life Without the Possibility of Parole
Many people assume that if someone has multiple felony drug offenses on their record they have participated in conduct egregious enough to warrant such a harsh sentence. For the purpose of the federal statue, however, "felony drug offense" refers to any drug law violation that is punishable by more than 1 year imprisonment under the law of any jurisdiction. This is what we experienced in 1993 when the prosecutor requested criminal history based sentence enhancements on my husband, even though it was obvious that his criminal history is the result of cycles of drug invovlement and he poses little threat to public safety. The result of pushing his case to trial and the sentencing enhancements gave him a Life Without the Possibility of Parole in the federal system where he has served nearly 30 calendar years!!
During the past 30 years we have tried repeatedly to get the LWOP off of him. We have spent all our funds and have sold anything of value we had to have our injustices heard. Everytime they have crushed us with their rhetoric. In 2018 Congress passed and Donald Trump signed the federal "First Step Act" which reduced the enhanced mandatory minimum from LWOP to 25 years and 20 years to 15 years, however, it was not retroactive. Still since my husband is 73 years old and taking several medications we decided that we would apply for the Compassionate Release. This was before Covid19 happened and yet we were denied in April of 2020 by the District Court. Since then my husband has contracted the virus, was hospitalized, and survived the virus. But it was a real "wake up call" that time is running out on bringing him home to all of us who love him so much.
Therefore I am setting up this page and asking everyone to give whatever they can to support his legal defense on what may well be the very last chance that we have to bring him home where he belongs. It is outrageous to imprison him long past his proclivity- or even his physical ability- to commit crime and it is a poor use of resources that could be put toward drug prevention.
