January 29, 2022 • 56 mins
The death of Len Bias not only impacted the world of sports but impacted all of society. His high-profile death in the nation's capital added fuel to the fire of the War on Drugs in the ’80s. The creation of mandatory minimum sentencing and the disparity between sentences for powder and crack cocaine continue to affect Black and Latino communities to this day.
About the narrator: Jamal Williams is a University of Maryland, College Park graduate. Where he earned his master's degree in journalism. He is currently a reporter for Laurel TV in Laurel, Md.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast is based a large part on the book
Born Ready, The Mixed Legacy of Lund Bias. Some cults
are narrated by podcast producer and book author Dave Ngrady
from interviews done for the book. Recruitings for those comments
were not available.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, the crack problem has become a cracked crisis and
it's spreading nationwide.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
We must be intolerant of drugs, not because we want
to punish drug users, but because we care about them
and want to help the minute.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
In nineteen ninety six, I was sentenced to thirty five years.
This is Spara just caused my sentence to be increased
for twenty years, longer than it would have been had
it been for powder cocaine.
Speaker 5 (00:40):
In nineteen ninety five, I was simptoms to twenty years.
My eleven year old daughter was molested while I was
in prison at eleven years old.
Speaker 6 (00:48):
My sister was barely twenty three years old and a
mother of three young children.
Speaker 7 (00:52):
Fay Eugenia had been.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Sistance for powder cocaine sensors with been less than half
of the ones she received.
Speaker 8 (00:56):
Why did we do that? Because we were frightened.
Speaker 9 (00:59):
It was a reaction.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
There was a misperception that crack cocaine was something different
chemically than what powder cocaine was.
Speaker 10 (01:07):
Congress created this disparity, which was one hundred to one
between crack and powdered cocaine sentences.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
It has punished crack cocaine users far more harshly than
powder cocaine users. The disparity has placed hundreds of thousands
of young black men and women in prison for decades.
That has helped decimate mostly urban families.
Speaker 11 (01:25):
The legacy of this legislation hats to be framed in
terms of whether it made the United States safer and
healthier for its citizens, and I think the record really
shows that it has. It failed, doesn't save lives, doesn't
reduce crime. So what does it do? It protects the
status quote, and the status quo is white Britlete is passing.
Speaker 12 (01:49):
It wasn't just a tragedy that we lost one great person.
Speaker 9 (01:53):
We lost a lot of great people.
Speaker 13 (01:56):
Drugs were bad fried your brain, and drug dealers with
monsters young men like me who hustle became the soule villain,
and drug addicts lack moral for the two.
Speaker 9 (02:06):
How did this happen?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
It all started the mere months after Limbias died, it
is the most profound and troubling part of the Mixed
legacy of Limbias.
Speaker 14 (02:15):
I concluded that Limbias's death was the single most important
date in the history of drugs in the United States
since the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous in June of nineteen
thirty five.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Up next and Lembias, the Mixed Legacy, mandatory minimums and
maximum impact. How the death of Bias changed the criminal
justice system.
Speaker 9 (02:40):
The boy was.
Speaker 12 (02:44):
So You've had people for you know, minimal drug crimes
languishing in prison for years and years, uh, for no good.
The federal mandatory something saying, even to this day has
been a horrible outcome for America and for so many
(03:06):
Americans and largely African American.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
That's Jay billis prominent ESPN college basketball anamals, owner of
a law degree. He played four years at Duke, the
same four years as Biased. He knows full well about
Len's legacy as one of the best college basketball players
of all time. He also understands the impact Len's death
has had on the federal drug legislation and the criminal
justice system in the United States.
Speaker 12 (03:32):
I can't think of anything more tragic than you pile
on to a tragedy with multiple tragedies that have tentacles
that keep going out. You know, families being ruined. I mean,
it's awful. It's awful.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
One sad part is the story of Dorothy Gaines. Games
was a nurse and pta mom when police rated her
home in Mobile, Alabama, in August nineteen ninety three. Games
claimed she didn't know that her them boyfriend was involved
a carrier for a drug deal. He was living with
her at the time. No evidence was found that Gaines
herself had sold or even possessed drugs. The state of
Alabama dropped its case against her, but the federal prosecutors
(04:12):
charged her with drug conspiracy. Gains was a single mother
of three children with a steady job. The father of
her children died of a heart attack years before.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
Yeah before the rest my life was I thought was perfect.
So with Jesse a thrill, we had loved the life.
Nothing unless my cheer was involved. I never drink. I've
never been to a club in my life. Everything I
did I did it with my children, boy Scout girls,
Scout uh, going to movies. Everything involved my children. So
this was a big setback. When I left my kids,
(04:42):
and they were the only you know, I was the
only paint, not just I was the only parent of
my kids. Hey, my mother was stuff from counsel. I
was working at the hospital as a nurse, so you know,
everything just went down the draint at that moment.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
At gains of sentencing, hearing her nine year old son
Philip jump at the lap of the judge pleading for her.
Speaker 9 (05:02):
Mom to come home.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
He had written a letter to the judge asking to
set her free.
Speaker 15 (05:06):
Dear judge, would you help my mom. I have no dad,
and my grandmom have cancer. I don't have anyone to
take care of me, my sisters and my niece and nephew.
And my birthday is coming out on October the twenty fifth,
and I need my mom to be here on the
twenty fifth. And for the rest of my life, I
will cut your dish and wash your car every day.
(05:28):
Just don't send my mom off, Please, please, please don't.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
My lips plea did not work. Games received a sentence
of nineteen years and seven months. After all, the judge
was bound by the mandatory minimum requirements and could not
alter her sentence.
Speaker 5 (05:42):
And when I was twenty years too.
Speaker 7 (05:47):
And I saw every since that day.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
He's not a prisoning body.
Speaker 7 (05:57):
So my wife just been tor up ever since.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
And how much of his behavior do you figure it's
related to what happened to you?
Speaker 9 (06:07):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 5 (06:11):
By the time tried to kill himself while I was gone,
He said his simple but.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
It took all with those Gaines spent six years in
prison before her sentence was commuted by President Clinton in
two thousand.
Speaker 9 (06:26):
During that time, her oldest daughter was.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Forced to leave college to take care of her two
siblings and raise her own two children. Soon after release
from prison, Gaines became an advocate for sendency reform. She
wanted release from prison with the help of such groups
as Family Against Mandatory Minimums and the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation.
Both groups were formed after the death of Bias to
promote fair sentencing and compassion for drug offenders. Here's Kevin Ring,
(06:53):
the group's executive director.
Speaker 10 (06:54):
There's no checks of balances. Once that prosecutor decides you're
the bad person, it's over for you. And so that
really tilted the system in a way that gave the
prosecutor too much power. The prosecutor says, well, Congress gave
me this tool. I'm just using the tool they gave me,
and then the judge gives the sentence that the prosecutor
seeks and gets a conviction on it and says, I
(07:15):
can't do anything about it. I'm bound by the mandatory sentence.
The Congress past, and then Congress says, well, we didn't
intend for it to go to people like Dorothy Gaines.
We just wanted the prosecutors to use smart discretion. So
nobody takes responsibility. And what results from that is thousands
of injustices.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Because of that nineteen eighty six Anti Drug Abuse Act,
thousands of low level crack cocaine dealers, possessors, and users
received lengthy prison sentences. The legislation from mandatory minimum sentences
for certain drug offenses. It's greatly impacted those such as
Games who are simply unlucky or on wise in their
choices of association. Hundreds of thousands of lives like those
(07:54):
of Gang's children were disrupted. The federal prison population soart
from thirty six thousand and nineteen eighty six so as
much as two hundred and fifteen thousand and twenty eleven.
In twenty twenty, the population dropped to about one hundred
and seventy thousand. More than half of all federal prisoners
are there for drug offenses. Many are either a minor
criminal record before their conviction or no record at all,
(08:17):
and it can all be traced back to the death
of Lambias.
Speaker 11 (08:20):
In the nineteen eighties, I was assisted counsel to the
House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Crime. My job was to
work on federal drug laws, gun control, pornography, organized crime,
money laundering, and other issues. And in nineteen eighty six
(08:42):
I was working on drug legislation when len Bias died.
I played a central role in writing the mandatory minimum
sentences that Congress wrote after the death of len Bias,
and played a major role in many of the vision
of the in writing the Anti Drug Abuse Act of
(09:03):
nineteen eighty six. The legacy of this legislation has to
be framed in terms of whether it made the United
States safer and healthier for its citizens, and I think
the record really shows that it failed.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
That's Eric Sterling, the founder and former executive director of
the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. The group promotes a criminal
justice system that is fair, honest, and efficient. Sternly started
the foundation only a few years after he played a
prominent role in contributing to the fate of Games and
tens of thousands of others.
Speaker 9 (09:38):
It's a role still today that he regrets having played.
Speaker 11 (09:41):
But I worked for the Congress as a lawyer. They
were my clients, and my job was to do what
my clients needed to have done. I expressed reservations in
the course of the development of the legislation, but they
were not heeded, and the results of this legislation weighs
(10:04):
a great deal on me. I've met many of the
family members and when they've re released from prison. Many
people who served extremely long sentences for conduct it by
any other judgment, does not deserve decades of imprisonment.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Here's what created Sterling's concern and consternation. The Anti Drug
Abuse ac of nineteen eighty six was fast tracked through
Congress and signed by President Reagan within four months. It
was passed as a direct reaction to the death of Lambis.
The law reestablished mandatory minimum sentences for first time drug
offenders manufacturing or distributing cocaine, those working with five hundred
(10:48):
grams of powder cocaine based a five year mandatory minimum sentence,
where five thousand grams of powder cocaine a ten year
minimum sentence. Those working with five grands of crack cocaine
received a five year mandatory minimum. With fifty grams have
received the minimum of ten year sentence. For sentences longer
than the minimum, there was no hope of parole. Starlinghart
(11:10):
write the legislation establishing mandatory minimums. He blames in part
the politics within the US Congress for the problem. The
Democrats saw a chance to take control of both chambers.
Speaker 11 (11:20):
The legislation was born in the Democratic leadership's recognition that
this issue could be used in a partisan way to
retake control of the United States Senate. In nineteen eighty
(11:40):
on Ronald Reagan's coattails, the Senate went Republican after having
been in Democratic hands since the early nineteen fifties. The
Democratic leadership thought that they could kind of restore the
natural order if the tragedy of Len's death and the
drug issue were seen as the area where the Democrats
(12:06):
had the ideas, and in that sense the legislation was
a success. The Democrats took recontrol of the Senate in
the nineteen eighty six election.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Scott Green had a clear perspective about how Congress reacted
to the death of Bias. He was Special advisor on
Crime and drug issues for the Senate Judiciary Committee from
nineteen eighty to nineteen ninety. He worked closely with then
Senator Joe Biden, who became chair of the committee in
nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 9 (12:37):
He called the death of Bias a tipping point.
Speaker 12 (12:40):
Scott Green told me the attention and scare and shock
provided by somebody with that kind of talent, a young
guy at the.
Speaker 9 (12:47):
Top of the world. The fact that drugs took him
away that quickly.
Speaker 16 (12:51):
Was it an overreaction, probably, But a lot of good
things came out of it.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
For instance, the bill approved close to three hundred million
dollar to help drug and alcohol addicts. They gave special
consideration to veterans and at risk you. But those good
deeds have been mostly forgotten. More attention has been given
to how and why Congress moved so quickly on legislation
motivated heavily by politics, and what feel of the politics
(13:18):
of his death was the fact that it happened so
close to Washington, d c.
Speaker 11 (13:22):
Perhaps as important to this story as the brilliance of
Land Bias as a basketball player is the fact that
he was a brilliant basketball player inside the Washington Beltway
that from high school through college, every member of Congress
who watched the evening sports wrap up and they all
(13:45):
did knew and appreciated the greatness of Land Bias and
almost identified with him. And then the fact that he
signed with the Boston Celtics, the home of the house
speaker and the NBA champion team, meant that his death
got an attention in the Washington Post and in the
(14:07):
national news media that a death of an equally gifted
athlete in a different media market would have had. There's
no question that there's no question in my mind that
had Led Bias played and died in Missouri or Kansas,
(14:30):
or Detroit, any other part of the city that was
any other part of the country that was not.
Speaker 9 (14:38):
Washington, d C.
Speaker 11 (14:41):
His death would not have been a national story. And
it is quite unlikely that there would have been the
momentum around the legislation that his death created.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Tip O'Neil was the speaker of the US House of
Representatives when Bias died. Heiled from Massachusetts, former basketball player
and a Celtics fan. He had personal interest in the
legislation as well.
Speaker 6 (15:05):
My dad was an athlete. He you know. He was
captain of his own basketball team at Saint John's High School,
played intermuneral basketball at Boston College.
Speaker 9 (15:16):
That's Tom O'Neill, tip O'Neill's son.
Speaker 6 (15:19):
Well, first of all, my dad is a It was
a sports a real sports fan, a sports fanatic. And
it didn't matter whether it was baseball, hockey, basketball, it
was all the same. He loved his sports ever since
he was a young man. And the Boston the Boston
teams ring very large, but did ring very large in
(15:41):
his life. To be very honest with you, I mean
it was not it was not obscure to see him
at a Red Sox game or a Celtics game.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Tip O'Neill's interest in anti drug abuse legislation hit close
to home. Michael O'Neill, Tom's brother, battle drug and alcohol addiction,
a factor that helped motivate Tip O'Neill to pass anti
drug abuse legislation. The impact of Bias's death was often
brought up during dinner at the Old Neil House.
Speaker 9 (16:06):
My brother.
Speaker 6 (16:08):
Of all five O'Neil children, he was probably the most successful,
but somehow a little later in life, in his late
twenties thirties, he started to drink and then take drugs,
and by his buddies, it had overwhelmed him. It was
devastating for my mother and father. My dad and mother
(16:28):
both knew the high chip of being addicted, but bringing
it back to bias, I mean that Fittaly had an
impact on my father.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Tip O'Neil knew the House and Senate needed to approve
the bill by early October for the Democrats to claim
credit in the November elections for an anti drug program.
The Anti Drug Abuse Back of nineteen eighty six was
introduced in Congress shortly after Labor Day. Congress signed off
on the bill on October twenty one. On October twenty seven,
President Reagan signed the bill into law. Democrats clearly benefited
(16:59):
from a hasty progression of the bill.
Speaker 11 (17:02):
Certainly there they're in retrospect as a census.
Speaker 9 (17:04):
This was a.
Speaker 11 (17:05):
Politically shrewd approach, but it was a terrible diagnosis of
what needed to be done. There certainly was a recognition
that crack cocaine was a dangerous drug. There were people
who were addicted to it, and we had a serious
(17:27):
crack cocaine epidemic in the late nineteen eighties and early
nineteen nineties, there was an enormous amount of violence in
the criminal drug trade. Many families were broken up by it.
But there was very much the sense in nineteen eighty
(17:47):
six and nineteen eighty eight that this was a political
issue that the Democrats, if they played it right, could win.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
And the Democrats won big. They increased their all already
large majority in the House. They also gained eight seats
in the Senate, taking the majority of both chambers for
the first time in six years. You're listening to lembis
the mixed legacy on the eighth side Network. Mandatory minimums
(18:18):
for drug offenses arose from the War on drugs that
started in the nineteen seventies with President Nixon.
Speaker 12 (18:24):
America's public enemy Number one in the United States is
drug abuse.
Speaker 6 (18:30):
It is epidemic, and it can kill.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
President Nixon dramatically increased the size and presidence of the
federal drug control agencies. He passed through measage such as
mandatory sentencing and no knock warrants. The Drug Policy Alligance
a few years ago produced a video that provides a
history lesson on the War on drugs. The group's aim,
in part is to reduce the harms of drug use
and drug prohibition. Here's how Jay Z begins the.
Speaker 13 (18:56):
Video eighty six when I was coming of age, Ronald Ray,
they can doubled down on the war on drugs that
have been started by Richard Nixon in nineteen seventy one.
Drugs were bad, fried your brain, and drug dealers with monsters,
young men like me who hustle became sole villain, and
drug addicts lack moral fort two.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
We'll have more on that video later. In the nineteen eighties,
First Lady Nancy Reagan introduced a just Say No message
as part of the war on drugs. She too used
a video to promote her message. It was released some
two months after Lembias died.
Speaker 17 (19:31):
Not long ago, in Oakland, California, I was asked by
a group of children what to do if they were
off for drugs, and I answered, just say No. Soon
after that, those children in Oakland formed a Just Say
No club, and now there are over ten thousand such
clubs all over the country.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Before Bias died, cocaine was considered a potentially addictive drug
that made you feel energruzed. Cocaine's addictive quality could be
strong in rare cases, death could occur. There were high
profile cocaine related deaths in the late nineteen seventies and
early nineteen eighties, Lowell George, the lead singer of the
rock band Little Feet, and comedian John Belushi, a Saturday
(20:12):
Night Live star.
Speaker 9 (20:14):
Still, cocaine was not considered a dangerous drug.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Cocaine was actually a recreational drug, according to The New
York Times and several other media outlets.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
That Sound Cash a former agent for the Drug Enforcement
Agency from nineteen seventy three to nineteen ninety three. Cash
focused on operations from the Caribbean and Latin America. In
his work, he saw how it was used in different venues.
One such place was a New York City nightclub infamous
for excessive drug use by its patrons in the nineteen
seventies and nineteen eighties.
Speaker 7 (20:48):
In Studio fifty four, they had instead of sugar bowls,
they had little bowls cocaine, and then everybody was The
real formula of a success was that you had a
little spoon that you wore in a necklace around your neck,
and you took this little spoon and you could spoon
(21:09):
out just the right amount, and you could cut it
up with a razor blade and so forth.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Cocaine had taken on this harmless aspect, this entertainment aspect,
this ability to use it without having any bad effects.
It wasn't heroine, it wasn't opium, It wasn't all of
(21:36):
the other difficult drugs of the time MDMA and LSD
and all the rest of it. Until the death of
lum Bias. Well, I think it was a shock to
us all, including the DEA agents. I was in Washington
at that particular point in time, and I think that
(22:00):
the the DA agents at the time, uh said, uh.
Speaker 7 (22:06):
Coke, what cocaine?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah, I mean, isn't that something that the drummers used,
didn't They didn't didn't didn't they musicians a snort a
little cocaine back in the day of Gene Krupa in
that group, or did they just uh piddle around with it?
Speaker 7 (22:27):
But it was not It was something certainly not harmless.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
And then we said, holy shit, harmless, This stuff will
kill you.
Speaker 9 (22:38):
Benal agent soon changed the way that police cocaine.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Certainly in that first year or two when anybody mentioned cocaine,
there was a approach to try to get an undercover
in there, or try to do somebody to see if
they could penetrate an organization that would distribute or sell.
Speaker 7 (23:00):
Cocaine.
Speaker 9 (23:01):
Further says Cash was a change in the perception about
athletes abusing drugs.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Of all things, an athlete of his capability, it was
just almost unheard of. Athletes don't use drugs. You know,
they don't use drugs. They don't they don't drink, they
don't smoke, they don't do this, they don't do that.
And then now you have the star of the star
dying of a cocaine overdose, which just blows all the
(23:28):
hell the theory that these guys are, let's say, less
than pure.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
One prominent athlete of the time managed to keep his
cocaine addiction quiet for years.
Speaker 9 (23:41):
Do I Gooden, a picture for the New York Mets.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Gouldn't won the nineteen eighty five Cy Young Award, given
to the top picture in the game for that year.
In nineteen eighty six, a few months after Limbi's died,
good In, the Mets won the World Series during that season,
and the throes of his cocaine addiction didn't won The
type of cocaine that killed Bias from the ESPN documentary
Once Upon a time. In Queen's in twenty twenty one,
(24:04):
twy Gooden was quoted saying, I remember when Limbias died.
You see that and like, for the first four or
five hours it hits you, Wow, that could have been me.
But then the sickest part about it, you go into
your dealer and say, give me that Limbias stuff.
Speaker 9 (24:19):
That's sick. But that's where I was at at the time.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
I would say, Hey, I want the Limbias stuff, meaning
in street terms, I want the strongest stuff you have.
That's how crazy my brain was at the time. Can
you imagine give me the Limbias stuff. So you're going
to die, your family and friends are left, and my
dad saying my son died of a drug overdose. Still,
the death of Bias changed the perception of cocaine. It
(24:44):
was now considered a killer. That perception was amplified when
Cleveland Brown safety Don Rogers died from a cocaine overdose
eight days after the death of Bias.
Speaker 14 (24:53):
When bias deaths changed the world, it took cocaine that
was a drug that was seen as quote soft like marijuana,
and made it hard like heroin, and it took away
the idea that the drug problem was uniquely poor people
(25:13):
and disadvantaged people, because here we had an American prince
at the peak of his career, with public attention rarely
seen in anything including sports on him at the time,
with a wonderful family of support that he had, and
(25:34):
he died as a result of his drug use, and
the kind of innocence about cocaine use was ripped away
at that point, and it became a pariah, became a
threat to the country.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Robert DuPont was the president of the American Council of
Drug Education when Bias died. In the nineteen seventies, he
was the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse
and a White.
Speaker 9 (25:58):
House drug Zone.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
He relates the death of Bias to another impactful moment
in the history of US substance abuse.
Speaker 14 (26:06):
Glenn Bias's death was the single most important date in
the history of drugs in the United States since the
founding of Alcoholics Anonymous in June of nineteen thirty five.
I've never seen, in my fifty years in this field
the death of any one person make a difference like
(26:26):
that in the way people thought about drugs. But it
certainly happened here, and it was very dramatic from one
extreme to the other.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
It was inevitable that pop culture would be cued into action.
In nineteen eighty seven, the White House worked with Motion
Picture Association of America to produce a series of visual
anti drug adds. The ad started running in July that year,
before feature films produced by major American studios. One featured
nineteen eighties acting icon Clint Eastwood.
Speaker 18 (27:01):
See this cute little vial here, that's crack rock cocaine
the most addictive form. You think it's the glamour drug
of the eighties. Well that's the point of this front
of the little reminder. It can kill you. And if
you've got to dine for something this, sure as hell,
ain't it.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Those anti drug abuse messages related to cocaine appeared to help.
Cocaine abuse decreased over the next decade, especially among teenagers,
but so did the number of drug cases on federal
prisons arose four hundred and fifty percent from nineteen eighty
eight to nineteen ninety six. Here's more from jay Z.
Speaker 13 (27:37):
The War on drugs exploded the US prison population, disproportionately
locking away black and Latinos. Judges hands were tied by
tough on crime laws and they were forced to hand
out mandatory life sentences for simple possession and low level
drug sales. Then the FEDS made distinctions between people who
sold powdered cocaine and crack cocaine, even though they were
(27:57):
the same drug. Only difference is how you take. And
even though white people used and sold cracked more than
black people, somehow was black people who went to prison,
the media ignored actual data. To this day, crack is
still talked about. It's a black problem.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Bernald Dwayne Betts was only six years old when Lunbais died.
Like Bias, he grew up in Prince George's County. Like Bias,
he showed potential for greatness. He was a part of
a Gifted and Tis of educational program since the second grade.
Speaker 19 (28:26):
Most nights out energy was youth hours out there, after
more hours out there. This was the year do the
right thing.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
That's Bets reading from his poem Knights of the Living
base Heads from his book Bastards of the Breaking the Era.
The book addresses the harsh realities of black men in
society and.
Speaker 9 (28:44):
The war on drugs.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Like Bias, Bets made a bad decision at a young
age holding a gun in his hand. He hijacked a
card when he was sixteen. It was the first time
he held a gun. He ended up spending nine years
in prison.
Speaker 19 (28:58):
So this title poem is, it's a poem narrated by
a speaker who gets locked up. And you know I
got locked up in ninety six. This speak gets locked
up in like ninety and it's somebody who was in
the middle of the drug wars, and it's somebody from
my neighbors.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Like Bias, Best attended the University of Maryland, but unlike Bias,
Bets earned his degree and achieved his ultimate greatness. He's
an accomplished poet and writer. He's won national awards, has
written for The New York Times magazine and Washington Pops.
Speaker 9 (29:29):
Here's more from the poem, Knights of the Living Base.
Speaker 19 (29:31):
Habits spike hatters on edge, near, ready to toss a
trash can through this city. Lin Bias was dead and
we was lamping stone cold, lamping pockets fat because we
were entrepreneurs, and so we figured every brother man's life
is like swinging the dice while I live so close
to caskets. After that Rockefeller Wealth, a few got crushed
(29:55):
by Rockefeller drug laws locked slam up before the money flowed,
like it's in a tenement hallway back then. It was
always winter, always cold in the street. My mind, rabbit
would want for equity, for dookie, gold change, Jordan's more.
Speaker 9 (30:11):
The hustle courted us and we were down. It'll take
you to ruin.
Speaker 19 (30:15):
Moms would say, as if disaster wasn't that damn place
those afternoons and all that Soireirns Blair. Maybe she knew
that soon five sweet and love sized packets of crack
would me in a flat nickel and a kaleidoscope of cells.
A mandatory minimum of years with home becomes God's nightmare,
our curse. And so the way you see bias come
(30:43):
up in that poem is the way bias would have
came up in my life. It's just a marker for
the tragedy. And so that's how he comes up in
that poem, just like somebody recounting how they came up
and how they got involved with drugs and bias. It's
that marker, and a complicated marker too, because people so
(31:03):
dope knowing about the tragedy of bias, and they so
dope to other folks knowing about the tragedy to bias.
And that's what I was trying to The whole poem
is trying to get at that that that that conflict
that goes on in somebody's mind where they're forced to
be in the spot in prison. So the Wayland Bias
operated in my head was was almost like a fucking ghost.
(31:25):
But I didn't really know who he was until I
went to prison, and he becomes an explanation for why
it's just like the fucking dual tragedy of drugs, right,
it's the fact that they actually do ruin our community
and the fact that, like you think that the punishment
(31:45):
that comes out of the response to bias is death
is as.
Speaker 9 (31:50):
Disastrous as as the death.
Speaker 19 (31:54):
So you know, if you say, you know, like how
did he come up in the poem, I mean, honestly,
he in a poem because he's just always there but.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Goes to bias still haunts Bets in a way, or
perhaps it's a motivating force. Bess has become an advocate
for reforming mandatory minimum sentences. He is a graduate of
Yale Law School and his license to practice law in Connecticut.
His legal work involves handling pro bono cases, trying to
win release for friends he met while incarcerated, and he's
(32:25):
begun a project to build what he calls freedom libraries
and prisons.
Speaker 19 (32:30):
And it was just really easy for most of us
in prison to tell one story about mandatory minimums that
connected the mandatory minimums that was a response to crack
cocaine to the mandatory minimums that we got, Like we
saw this fight against mandatory minimum sentences, that's also a
fight against all incosteration. I'm saying that this thing has
(32:51):
been going on for a long time. Even in my head.
Speaker 9 (32:53):
Bess has some ideas on how to fix the problem.
Speaker 19 (32:55):
Which he realizes a lot of these mandatory sentences aren't
based on science, based on the actual psychotropic effects of drugs,
but in fact based on the hysteria around it. And
so I think one of what needs to happen is
we need to have a more robust understanding of science
in this. And then the second thing is I think
(33:17):
that we just need a realistic assessment at the cost
of incarceration. You know, we have tried to assess the
cost of drug use and drug selling. I think that
we haven't, like realistically assessed the cost of incosceration, and
so when we think about incarceration, we don't think about
it in the context of the human cost of incarceration.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Families Against Mandatory Minimums has been working since nineteen ninety
to create awareness about the problems and mandatory minimums. Here's
Kevin Ring, the group's executive director.
Speaker 10 (33:45):
Congress in nineteen ninety four ended up passing what they
call a Drug Safety Valve to exempt first time offenders
that had low amounts and no violence. But early on
everybody got caught in this net. You had judges who
would hand down these sentences and say, I do not
want to do this. I don't want to give this
person this time. You had Reagan appointed judges resigning from
(34:08):
the bench because they didn't like what they were party
to do, and so crack was the one that early
on people realized these penalties were completely out of a portion.
Speaker 13 (34:19):
Again, here's Jay z and the nineteen nineties, incarceration rates
in the US blew up. Today, we imprisoned more people
than any other country in the world. Our prison population
grew more than nine hundred percent. When the War on
Drugs began in nineteen seventy one, our prison population was
two hundred thousand. Today it is over two million.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Those last numbers are from twenty fifteen. Eric Sterling offers
a more broad perspective about the criminal injustice of mandatory minimals.
Speaker 11 (34:48):
During the nineties and early two thousands, as the effort
to repeal these mandatories or reform them existed, I did
a lot of research. When you looked at the data,
you would find that perhaps one out of four of
(35:10):
the powder cocaine defendants was white, but nine out of
ten of the crack defendants were black. It was one
of the most egregious instances of structural racism, of racial
(35:30):
discrimination in the criminal law, and this involved tens of thousands.
Speaker 9 (35:36):
Of cases a year.
Speaker 7 (35:40):
What drove this.
Speaker 11 (35:43):
Was in the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Justice,
a focus on predominantly low level crack defendants, men and
women selling on the street, corner, selling out of bodegas,
selling out of abandoned houses. These were serious offenders in
(36:08):
some sense, but these were not the global level drug
traffickers that should have been the responsibility of the US
Drug Enforcement Administration in the US Department.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Of Justice as an agent of the DEA. In the
nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. Tomcash saw firsthand the injustices
related to mandatory minimums.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
If you were to have paid me a dollar for
every day I sent in a federal courtroom, I'd be
a wealthy man.
Speaker 7 (36:35):
When you start.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Interrogating somebody for eleven hours, after eleven hours, they'll tell
you anything you want about money.
Speaker 7 (36:42):
And this is just not correct.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
And then you see people, some of them doing twenty
three years, twenty four years.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
That don't seem to be fair and win that mandatory
a minimum does not give the judge, and I'm not even.
Speaker 7 (37:07):
Sure it gives the jury.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Yeah, I don't think that there's many churres that would
agree to mendiatrate.
Speaker 7 (37:14):
It's not like the death penalty.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
You know, the law allows police officers and the EA
agents at the agents to not always tell the truth.
Speaker 7 (37:25):
So they can indeed exaggerate.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
And if they tell a god, well, you know you're.
Speaker 7 (37:35):
Going to do twenty five to life.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
And many people think that.
Speaker 7 (37:41):
They are in a bind, because they are in a bind.
But the question is the.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Validity of the interrogation procedures and processes where they use
the mandatory minimum as a stick. If you will to
beat people over the head.
Speaker 7 (37:58):
I don't approve it that.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
I was not allowed in the officers that I ran,
and I ran nine officers.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
You're listening to lembis the mixed legacy On the eighth side,
network momentum has shifted toward reducing mandatory minimum sentences. The
hard work by advocates of fair sentencing paid off dramatically
in twenty ten. That's when President Obama signed the Fair
Sentencing Act into law. The law reduced the mandatory minimum
sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine from one
(38:29):
hundred and one to eighteen and one. The legislation also
eliminated a mandatory minimum for simple possession of crack cocaine,
and since twenty eleven it may have been able to
request reduce sentences. A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers supported the
Fair Sentencing Act.
Speaker 10 (38:46):
Our Congress is not one entirely responsive. Two people still
had the image of crack in their head. They knew
the horror stories cracked babies, all the media hysteria that
went into that, and so just inertia. And then even
when there was a recognition that they should eliminate the disparity,
the first proposals were to increase penalties for powder cocaine
(39:09):
to make them equal to crack. Also, the crime rate
finally started to fall. We finally had a crime decline
starting in two thousands, and people were finally open to
making changes.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
More positive change related to mandatory minimums came from the
first step back signed by President Trump in twenty eighteen.
The law gives judges more flexibility to impose sentences based
on character and circumstance. That's a change from relying only
on guidelines forced on the courts. It also improved sentencing
laws related to drug offenses. Here's Kevin Ring.
Speaker 7 (39:40):
Yeah, it was really important.
Speaker 10 (39:41):
So when the Fear Sensing Act passed, it was a
really hard pill for groups like FAM and others to
support because all the people we knew had been hurt
and impacted by this law and now weren't going to
benefit from it because it didn't apply retroactively. One of
the provisions we fought hardest for was is a provision
to make the Fair Sensing Act retroactive. So in the
(40:04):
past two to three years, we've seen thirty five hundred people,
ninety one percent of which were people of color, finally
get the sentence in sentence reductions from the Fair Sensing Act.
So they've gotten retroactive relief average of six years off
each sentence. They're all coming back to the community now.
Everybody's you know, they're doing well.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Still, many felt things should improve even more for some
convicted of cocaine related crime. The Judiciary Committee in the
US Senate in June twenty twenty one held a hearing
on sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine, the goal to wipe
out any disparity and mandatory minimum sentences between crack and
powder cocaine.
Speaker 9 (40:45):
Here Senator Dick Durbin.
Speaker 8 (40:47):
In response to a nation and panic, we passed on
a bipartisan basis, a law that imposed one hundred to
one sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses
any Drug Abuse Act of nineteen eighty six. To to
this date, it is one of the worst votes I
ever cast.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
The administration of President Biden has made it clear that
they support eliminating any disparity in sentencing between crack and
powder cocaine. Here's Regina LaBelle, the Acting Director of the
Office of National Drug Control Policy, speaking at the hearing.
Speaker 20 (41:22):
The current disparity is not based on evidence. It has
caused significant harm for decades, particularly for individuals, families, and
communities of color. The continuation of the sentencing disparity is
a significant injustice in our legal system, and it's pastime
for it to end. Higher percentage of Black Americans are
convicted in federal court for crack cocaine offenses versus powder
(41:44):
cocaine offenses, and this sentencing disparity has caused them to
receive substantially longer average sentence lengths for comparable offenses.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
One who receives such a sentence as Matthew Charles. He
testified at the Senate hearing. Here's Matthew telling his story.
Speaker 21 (42:00):
I grew up in the Cramp public housing unit in
North Carolina with a father who was both physically and
verbally abusive. At eighteen, I tried to escape home life
and joined the Army, but I was still angry and
mad at the world. For the next decade, I was
in a dark place. I sold drugs and spent about
(42:21):
five years in state prison, but I had not yet
hit rock bottom. In nineteen ninety five, I was arrested
for selling two hundred and sixteen grams of crack cocaine
to an informant and illegally possessed a firearm. Because of
my prior criminal activity and because I sold crack cocaine
instead of powder cocaine, I was given a thirty five
(42:43):
year sentence.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
In twenty sixteen, Charles was released under new sentencing guidelines,
establishing in the Fair Sentencing Act his life.
Speaker 9 (42:50):
I turned around at that time.
Speaker 21 (42:53):
I moved to Nashville, got a job as a driver,
reconnected with family, volunteered weekly at a food pantry called
the Little Pantry that Could, and became deeply involved in
my church.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
But Charles was not in the clear yet. At the hearing,
Senator Corey Booker explained.
Speaker 22 (43:10):
After rebuilding his life for almost two years, an appellate
court ruled that mister Charles had been released in error.
After the First Step Act passed, mister Charles was eligible
for resentencing, and thank god, he was released again.
Speaker 21 (43:25):
I spent the last two and a half years advocating
for those left behind. I deserve to go to federal
prison for my crimes, but I didn't need a sentence
of thirty five years, especially when twenty of those years
were due to the fact that I sold one type
of crack, one type of cocaine rather than another.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Much of the testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee in
the US Congress last June focused on eliminating the crack
versus powder cocaine disparity. ASA Hutchinson is the current governor
of Alabama. He has served as the director of the
US Drug Enforcement Agency.
Speaker 16 (43:58):
We understand the science, better understand the impact. We understand
the unfairness of it. It's supported by statistics, and that
should lead us to take the final step to eliminate
completely that disparity.
Speaker 9 (44:11):
Here's Senator Corey Booker.
Speaker 22 (44:13):
The Fair Sentencing Act, the first step pack has brought
us closer to doing away with this wrong, but we
can't let another deck that go by without addressing this Injustice.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Equal Act was introduced in the Senate by Booker on
January twenty eight, twenty twenty one. The US House passed
its version of the legislation in September twenty twenty one.
Hasing the bill could take years, and at least one
person feels it may not happen at all.
Speaker 11 (44:39):
I don't think there'll be a wholesale reform of mandatory
minimums in the Biden administration unless in an upcoming Congress
there are bigger Democratic majorities.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
That's Eric Sterling, who up to write the legislation that
led to mandatory minimums in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 11 (44:56):
The Justice Department greatly value this mandatory minimum sentencing.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
As a.
Speaker 11 (45:06):
Tool that they could use to force people to plead guilty.
If you plead guilty and make a deal, you won't
get this mandatory ten years. So they're going to be
very reluctant to give up mandatory minimums. The Justice Department
position will put pressure on the White House not to
(45:31):
repeal mandatory minimums.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
And here Sterling discusses the political challenges of eliminating mandatory minimums.
Speaker 11 (45:38):
The Republicans are not interested in repealing mandatory minimums. Generally,
all of these members and senators are going to look
at this issue from the perspective of a primary opponent
or a general election opponent having a SoundBite that says
(46:00):
something like, when drug overdoses were skyrocketing in America, Senator
Smith voted to cut the sentences for high level crack dealers.
Who's Senator Smith working for you or America's dope dealing scum?
(46:22):
So how many times do you have to repeat that SoundBite?
How many times do you have to imagine that SoundBite
in your nightmares to say I'm not voting for that.
So framing the legislation is going to be key. And
I'm not sure that a term like the Equal Act
(46:42):
is going to be any more effective than the Crack
Cocaine Equitable Sentencing Act in attracting Republican voters. I don't
think it will be any more effective in attracting Republican
votes in the House and the Senate.
Speaker 9 (46:58):
And the Senate.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
The Judiciary can many hearing last summer feature concerns by
Republicans about recidivism rates for crack cocaine users.
Speaker 9 (47:06):
Here's Senator truck rasping.
Speaker 23 (47:10):
Drug sentencing laws are complex. They must be fair, and
they must be just, but prioritizing public safety is very important.
I've indicated my openness to reevaluating the sentencing disparacy between
crack and powder cocaine, but I do have some questions
(47:32):
about how the best do this. There are discrepancies between
crack and powder cocaine in terms of recidivism rates, addiction.
Speaker 9 (47:42):
And violent crime.
Speaker 23 (47:44):
These factors can't be ignored.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Still, proponents are Senate reforms for those convicted of cocaine
crimes want more.
Speaker 9 (47:52):
It involves retroactive application of the law.
Speaker 10 (47:55):
So now this new bill, a Equal Act that would
finally eliminate dispirity to one to one is also retroactive.
But we're hearing opposition to retroactivity. There even people who
support one to one. There's some senators. Senator Kornyn is
a good example who has supported reform sometimes but doesn't
support retroactivity because it feels like it undoes old convictions
(48:17):
or the sentences that people got. But it's really unjust.
If Congress is going to repudiate a sentence as being
too harsh, that should apply to all the people who
are suffering under that and whose stories we told in
order to convince them to change the law. And so
that's you know, that's going to be a fight.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
A story Ring and fam have promoted is about Doorthy Gaines,
the women we introduced you to at the beginning of
this segment. Since leaving prison in two thousand, Gaines has
struggled to rebuild her life. Her son, Philip, the one
who actually judge to free her mom when he was
nine years old, has repeatedly attempted suicide. Still, he later
became an honorall student, but then he dropped out of
(48:55):
school while his mother was still in prison. He was
later convicted of cocaine possession and robbery and is serving
two twenty year prison sentences.
Speaker 9 (49:04):
There have been quiet victories.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Her eldest daughter, Natasha quick college to care for her
siblings and her own son after Dorothy was incarcerated. She
is now a teacher. Kanes has been caring for Philip's
child and four other grandchildren. For her daughter, Charlie, Charles
still struggles from substance abuse issues related to the time
Gain spend in prison. Gain struggles to work and pay
(49:27):
her bills.
Speaker 5 (49:28):
It's been a struggle since I come home, Dave, is
I mean the work ethic thing, you know, with that
fellow thing I had on my rook because I was
I was commentated, but I wasn't partner.
Speaker 14 (49:40):
You know.
Speaker 5 (49:40):
There wasn't letting you get housed if you had a
drug fell on the record. There was a lot going
on that we had to fight through, even with voting rites.
So I had to get out fighting for voting, fight
for house, and fight for food stamping.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Four years into her Gain sentence. Lamont and Lawrence Garrison
just started their prison sentences in nineteen ninety eight. Lama
received nineteen years and Lawrence got fifteen years, both for
conspiracy to distribute cocaine. At the time of their arrest,
the identical twins were juvenile counselors. They're about to begin
school at Howard University. They both wanted to be lawyers.
(50:14):
Soon after the twins began their incarceration, their mother, Karen Garrison,
became an advocate for prison sentence reform.
Speaker 24 (50:22):
You know, what I started to do was work those
organizations or anything I saw on the news that had
something to do with this crack cocaine and you know,
mass incarceration and things like that. I started to find out,
and Dorothy's name would come up.
Speaker 9 (50:38):
A lot of times.
Speaker 24 (50:38):
I would mention Dorothy's name, you know, when I went places,
so that people would know that there are other cases
that were worse than what I was talking about, or
the same, you know, stuff like as in.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Two thousand and two, Garrison met Gains at a commutation event.
Two have been working since then the ways of awareness
about prison sentence reform. Garrison is known as Mommy Active
is for her work.
Speaker 24 (51:01):
Those draconian laws that were coming about because of them bias.
Everybody automatically wanted to lock everybody up that had anything
to do with drugs or anything like that, you know,
and that's when things got just got like off the hook.
But when Dorothy came home and people would ask for
people to speak, I had the connection. I was kind
(51:23):
of like that go to or resources or linked. I
would always make sure here being in DC when they
needed people like Darthy'll need the story to be told
or something like that.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
It's a story, as Jay BILLI says, that needs to
be told. Game's children have also struggled with drug addiction.
Speaker 5 (51:41):
I'm still suffering with these kids that got messed up
doing these drug log Bible was gone, and it's like
a recycled things.
Speaker 7 (51:49):
Dripped on down to the next generation of kids.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
The side tag of Games and many others is not
lost on Jay Billis ESPN basketball analysts who played for
Duke against Lambias look on the future of mandatory minimums
prison sentences is both gritty and grim, right.
Speaker 12 (52:05):
I think the short answer for me is, I don't.
I'm not optimistic. We're gonna we're going to make substantial
progress in the short run has been going on a
long time, and there has been uh some some progress
over the last several years. But you know, we're we're
(52:25):
a country that incarcerates. I mean, nobody incarceraates like we do.
The answer is, you know, for many is just lock
lock them up. And and I think it's profoundly wrong.
But you know, my confident that our government, both state
and federal, but especially federal with federal drug crimes, we're
going to be able to, you know, look at the
(52:46):
damage that's been done and and not not just reverse it,
but at least try to stem the tide of it.
I don't have a lot of confidence that will do
that in an efficient way.
Speaker 9 (52:57):
And the fact that we haven't.
Speaker 12 (52:58):
As a country been able to view it objectively and
say this is wrong, we need to change this. It
always sidens me thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
Ganges tries to communicate with her son Philip almost daily
while he remains in prison. His challenges extend to his
own daughter, who Dorothy is caring for.
Speaker 5 (53:22):
Well, he been gone, he was stayed fifteen times and
did another time. He got his broke cut last year.
Well then prison did me and his daughter was going
to see him and we almost got killed going to
he as one child and she's now tried to commit
suicide last month herself.
Speaker 9 (53:43):
How do you keep it together with all this? What
is your what is your foundation of what keeps you going?
Speaker 5 (53:51):
Just hope that one day is going, One day we
can have an enjoyment of seeing each other again.
Speaker 7 (53:56):
On the outside.
Speaker 5 (53:59):
It's just been like a been in prison for the
last thirty years. It's been like prison. M oh No.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Next on Lambis. The mixed legacy from Dynasty to drug Out.
The death of Lemby's affected the Celtics and the n
b A.
Speaker 9 (54:26):
Thirty five six Celtics.
Speaker 4 (54:27):
That's when they were peaking.
Speaker 22 (54:29):
That's when they were totally kicking ass every night and
it was the greatest show on basketball Earth at the time.
Speaker 9 (54:36):
Well, he was clearly physically dominant. He was he was mean.
Speaker 7 (54:43):
He had a mean mean on court the game and
that was that was important. But he had to have
the skill set to go with it. And for them
to have this monster of a player, it would have
It would.
Speaker 14 (54:58):
Have changed every thing against the Celtics, against.
Speaker 9 (55:03):
The Lakers, it would have changed it all.
Speaker 25 (55:09):
We're always thinking like, you know what, how how might
the NBA have been different had had had he been
around when I was in the NBA.
Speaker 7 (55:20):
I mean they definitely had a drug problem.
Speaker 22 (55:22):
Yeah, I think I think the NBA changed this whole
mentality about drugs.
Speaker 7 (55:28):
It changed the NBA drug policies.
Speaker 9 (55:33):
All of a sudden.
Speaker 22 (55:34):
It was like now they was brought people out looking
for people who are getting hot.
Speaker 1 (55:39):
This segment was produced by Dave Ungrady and Don Marcus.
It was written by Dave Ungrady and edited by Don Marcus.
The narrator was Jamal Williams Child. Voice over provided by
Kayden Ungrady. Technical production was provided by Octagon Entertainment. Production
assistance was produced by Kevin McNulty, Tino Quagliatta, marn Rosh,
Georgia Brown, Chasey Fair, Jamal Williams, Kelsey Mannix, and anzol
(56:03):
Al Varenwin. Matt Dewhurst is providing the social media assistance.
Some content provided by the Office of Senator Dick Durbin
and from the Drug Policy Alliance. Special thanks to the
University of Maryland and American University for providing inservice. The
Decision Education Foundation is a content and promotional partner of
this podcast series. For more information, go to gogradingmedia dot com.
(56:28):
This has been a production of go grading Media and
the Eighth Side Network
This podcast is based a large part on the book
Born Ready, The Mixed Legacy of Lund Bias. Some cults
are narrated by podcast producer and book author Dave Ngrady
from interviews done for the book. Recruitings for those comments
were not available.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, the crack problem has become a cracked crisis and
it's spreading nationwide.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
We must be intolerant of drugs, not because we want
to punish drug users, but because we care about them
and want to help the minute.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
In nineteen ninety six, I was sentenced to thirty five years.
This is Spara just caused my sentence to be increased
for twenty years, longer than it would have been had
it been for powder cocaine.
Speaker 5 (00:40):
In nineteen ninety five, I was simptoms to twenty years.
My eleven year old daughter was molested while I was
in prison at eleven years old.
Speaker 6 (00:48):
My sister was barely twenty three years old and a
mother of three young children.
Speaker 7 (00:52):
Fay Eugenia had been.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Sistance for powder cocaine sensors with been less than half
of the ones she received.
Speaker 8 (00:56):
Why did we do that? Because we were frightened.
Speaker 9 (00:59):
It was a reaction.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
There was a misperception that crack cocaine was something different
chemically than what powder cocaine was.
Speaker 10 (01:07):
Congress created this disparity, which was one hundred to one
between crack and powdered cocaine sentences.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
It has punished crack cocaine users far more harshly than
powder cocaine users. The disparity has placed hundreds of thousands
of young black men and women in prison for decades.
That has helped decimate mostly urban families.
Speaker 11 (01:25):
The legacy of this legislation hats to be framed in
terms of whether it made the United States safer and
healthier for its citizens, and I think the record really
shows that it has. It failed, doesn't save lives, doesn't
reduce crime. So what does it do? It protects the
status quote, and the status quo is white Britlete is passing.
Speaker 12 (01:49):
It wasn't just a tragedy that we lost one great person.
Speaker 9 (01:53):
We lost a lot of great people.
Speaker 13 (01:56):
Drugs were bad fried your brain, and drug dealers with
monsters young men like me who hustle became the soule villain,
and drug addicts lack moral for the two.
Speaker 9 (02:06):
How did this happen?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
It all started the mere months after Limbias died, it
is the most profound and troubling part of the Mixed
legacy of Limbias.
Speaker 14 (02:15):
I concluded that Limbias's death was the single most important
date in the history of drugs in the United States
since the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous in June of nineteen
thirty five.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Up next and Lembias, the Mixed Legacy, mandatory minimums and
maximum impact. How the death of Bias changed the criminal
justice system.
Speaker 9 (02:40):
The boy was.
Speaker 12 (02:44):
So You've had people for you know, minimal drug crimes
languishing in prison for years and years, uh, for no good.
The federal mandatory something saying, even to this day has
been a horrible outcome for America and for so many
(03:06):
Americans and largely African American.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
That's Jay billis prominent ESPN college basketball anamals, owner of
a law degree. He played four years at Duke, the
same four years as Biased. He knows full well about
Len's legacy as one of the best college basketball players
of all time. He also understands the impact Len's death
has had on the federal drug legislation and the criminal
justice system in the United States.
Speaker 12 (03:32):
I can't think of anything more tragic than you pile
on to a tragedy with multiple tragedies that have tentacles
that keep going out. You know, families being ruined. I mean,
it's awful. It's awful.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
One sad part is the story of Dorothy Gaines. Games
was a nurse and pta mom when police rated her
home in Mobile, Alabama, in August nineteen ninety three. Games
claimed she didn't know that her them boyfriend was involved
a carrier for a drug deal. He was living with
her at the time. No evidence was found that Gaines
herself had sold or even possessed drugs. The state of
Alabama dropped its case against her, but the federal prosecutors
(04:12):
charged her with drug conspiracy. Gains was a single mother
of three children with a steady job. The father of
her children died of a heart attack years before.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
Yeah before the rest my life was I thought was perfect.
So with Jesse a thrill, we had loved the life.
Nothing unless my cheer was involved. I never drink. I've
never been to a club in my life. Everything I
did I did it with my children, boy Scout girls,
Scout uh, going to movies. Everything involved my children. So
this was a big setback. When I left my kids,
(04:42):
and they were the only you know, I was the
only paint, not just I was the only parent of
my kids. Hey, my mother was stuff from counsel. I
was working at the hospital as a nurse, so you know,
everything just went down the draint at that moment.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
At gains of sentencing, hearing her nine year old son
Philip jump at the lap of the judge pleading for her.
Speaker 9 (05:02):
Mom to come home.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
He had written a letter to the judge asking to
set her free.
Speaker 15 (05:06):
Dear judge, would you help my mom. I have no dad,
and my grandmom have cancer. I don't have anyone to
take care of me, my sisters and my niece and nephew.
And my birthday is coming out on October the twenty fifth,
and I need my mom to be here on the
twenty fifth. And for the rest of my life, I
will cut your dish and wash your car every day.
(05:28):
Just don't send my mom off, Please, please, please don't.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
My lips plea did not work. Games received a sentence
of nineteen years and seven months. After all, the judge
was bound by the mandatory minimum requirements and could not
alter her sentence.
Speaker 5 (05:42):
And when I was twenty years too.
Speaker 7 (05:47):
And I saw every since that day.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
He's not a prisoning body.
Speaker 7 (05:57):
So my wife just been tor up ever since.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
And how much of his behavior do you figure it's
related to what happened to you?
Speaker 9 (06:07):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 5 (06:11):
By the time tried to kill himself while I was gone,
He said his simple but.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
It took all with those Gaines spent six years in
prison before her sentence was commuted by President Clinton in
two thousand.
Speaker 9 (06:26):
During that time, her oldest daughter was.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Forced to leave college to take care of her two
siblings and raise her own two children. Soon after release
from prison, Gaines became an advocate for sendency reform. She
wanted release from prison with the help of such groups
as Family Against Mandatory Minimums and the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation.
Both groups were formed after the death of Bias to
promote fair sentencing and compassion for drug offenders. Here's Kevin Ring,
(06:53):
the group's executive director.
Speaker 10 (06:54):
There's no checks of balances. Once that prosecutor decides you're
the bad person, it's over for you. And so that
really tilted the system in a way that gave the
prosecutor too much power. The prosecutor says, well, Congress gave
me this tool. I'm just using the tool they gave me,
and then the judge gives the sentence that the prosecutor
seeks and gets a conviction on it and says, I
(07:15):
can't do anything about it. I'm bound by the mandatory sentence.
The Congress past, and then Congress says, well, we didn't
intend for it to go to people like Dorothy Gaines.
We just wanted the prosecutors to use smart discretion. So
nobody takes responsibility. And what results from that is thousands
of injustices.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Because of that nineteen eighty six Anti Drug Abuse Act,
thousands of low level crack cocaine dealers, possessors, and users
received lengthy prison sentences. The legislation from mandatory minimum sentences
for certain drug offenses. It's greatly impacted those such as
Games who are simply unlucky or on wise in their
choices of association. Hundreds of thousands of lives like those
(07:54):
of Gang's children were disrupted. The federal prison population soart
from thirty six thousand and nineteen eighty six so as
much as two hundred and fifteen thousand and twenty eleven.
In twenty twenty, the population dropped to about one hundred
and seventy thousand. More than half of all federal prisoners
are there for drug offenses. Many are either a minor
criminal record before their conviction or no record at all,
(08:17):
and it can all be traced back to the death
of Lambias.
Speaker 11 (08:20):
In the nineteen eighties, I was assisted counsel to the
House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Crime. My job was to
work on federal drug laws, gun control, pornography, organized crime,
money laundering, and other issues. And in nineteen eighty six
(08:42):
I was working on drug legislation when len Bias died.
I played a central role in writing the mandatory minimum
sentences that Congress wrote after the death of len Bias,
and played a major role in many of the vision
of the in writing the Anti Drug Abuse Act of
(09:03):
nineteen eighty six. The legacy of this legislation has to
be framed in terms of whether it made the United
States safer and healthier for its citizens, and I think
the record really shows that it failed.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
That's Eric Sterling, the founder and former executive director of
the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. The group promotes a criminal
justice system that is fair, honest, and efficient. Sternly started
the foundation only a few years after he played a
prominent role in contributing to the fate of Games and
tens of thousands of others.
Speaker 9 (09:38):
It's a role still today that he regrets having played.
Speaker 11 (09:41):
But I worked for the Congress as a lawyer. They
were my clients, and my job was to do what
my clients needed to have done. I expressed reservations in
the course of the development of the legislation, but they
were not heeded, and the results of this legislation weighs
(10:04):
a great deal on me. I've met many of the
family members and when they've re released from prison. Many
people who served extremely long sentences for conduct it by
any other judgment, does not deserve decades of imprisonment.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Here's what created Sterling's concern and consternation. The Anti Drug
Abuse ac of nineteen eighty six was fast tracked through
Congress and signed by President Reagan within four months. It
was passed as a direct reaction to the death of Lambis.
The law reestablished mandatory minimum sentences for first time drug
offenders manufacturing or distributing cocaine, those working with five hundred
(10:48):
grams of powder cocaine based a five year mandatory minimum sentence,
where five thousand grams of powder cocaine a ten year
minimum sentence. Those working with five grands of crack cocaine
received a five year mandatory minimum. With fifty grams have
received the minimum of ten year sentence. For sentences longer
than the minimum, there was no hope of parole. Starlinghart
(11:10):
write the legislation establishing mandatory minimums. He blames in part
the politics within the US Congress for the problem. The
Democrats saw a chance to take control of both chambers.
Speaker 11 (11:20):
The legislation was born in the Democratic leadership's recognition that
this issue could be used in a partisan way to
retake control of the United States Senate. In nineteen eighty
(11:40):
on Ronald Reagan's coattails, the Senate went Republican after having
been in Democratic hands since the early nineteen fifties. The
Democratic leadership thought that they could kind of restore the
natural order if the tragedy of Len's death and the
drug issue were seen as the area where the Democrats
(12:06):
had the ideas, and in that sense the legislation was
a success. The Democrats took recontrol of the Senate in
the nineteen eighty six election.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Scott Green had a clear perspective about how Congress reacted
to the death of Bias. He was Special advisor on
Crime and drug issues for the Senate Judiciary Committee from
nineteen eighty to nineteen ninety. He worked closely with then
Senator Joe Biden, who became chair of the committee in
nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 9 (12:37):
He called the death of Bias a tipping point.
Speaker 12 (12:40):
Scott Green told me the attention and scare and shock
provided by somebody with that kind of talent, a young
guy at the.
Speaker 9 (12:47):
Top of the world. The fact that drugs took him
away that quickly.
Speaker 16 (12:51):
Was it an overreaction, probably, But a lot of good
things came out of it.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
For instance, the bill approved close to three hundred million
dollar to help drug and alcohol addicts. They gave special
consideration to veterans and at risk you. But those good
deeds have been mostly forgotten. More attention has been given
to how and why Congress moved so quickly on legislation
motivated heavily by politics, and what feel of the politics
(13:18):
of his death was the fact that it happened so
close to Washington, d c.
Speaker 11 (13:22):
Perhaps as important to this story as the brilliance of
Land Bias as a basketball player is the fact that
he was a brilliant basketball player inside the Washington Beltway
that from high school through college, every member of Congress
who watched the evening sports wrap up and they all
(13:45):
did knew and appreciated the greatness of Land Bias and
almost identified with him. And then the fact that he
signed with the Boston Celtics, the home of the house
speaker and the NBA champion team, meant that his death
got an attention in the Washington Post and in the
(14:07):
national news media that a death of an equally gifted
athlete in a different media market would have had. There's
no question that there's no question in my mind that
had Led Bias played and died in Missouri or Kansas,
(14:30):
or Detroit, any other part of the city that was
any other part of the country that was not.
Speaker 9 (14:38):
Washington, d C.
Speaker 11 (14:41):
His death would not have been a national story. And
it is quite unlikely that there would have been the
momentum around the legislation that his death created.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Tip O'Neil was the speaker of the US House of
Representatives when Bias died. Heiled from Massachusetts, former basketball player
and a Celtics fan. He had personal interest in the
legislation as well.
Speaker 6 (15:05):
My dad was an athlete. He you know. He was
captain of his own basketball team at Saint John's High School,
played intermuneral basketball at Boston College.
Speaker 9 (15:16):
That's Tom O'Neill, tip O'Neill's son.
Speaker 6 (15:19):
Well, first of all, my dad is a It was
a sports a real sports fan, a sports fanatic. And
it didn't matter whether it was baseball, hockey, basketball, it
was all the same. He loved his sports ever since
he was a young man. And the Boston the Boston
teams ring very large, but did ring very large in
(15:41):
his life. To be very honest with you, I mean
it was not it was not obscure to see him
at a Red Sox game or a Celtics game.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Tip O'Neill's interest in anti drug abuse legislation hit close
to home. Michael O'Neill, Tom's brother, battle drug and alcohol addiction,
a factor that helped motivate Tip O'Neill to pass anti
drug abuse legislation. The impact of Bias's death was often
brought up during dinner at the Old Neil House.
Speaker 9 (16:06):
My brother.
Speaker 6 (16:08):
Of all five O'Neil children, he was probably the most successful,
but somehow a little later in life, in his late
twenties thirties, he started to drink and then take drugs,
and by his buddies, it had overwhelmed him. It was
devastating for my mother and father. My dad and mother
(16:28):
both knew the high chip of being addicted, but bringing
it back to bias, I mean that Fittaly had an
impact on my father.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Tip O'Neil knew the House and Senate needed to approve
the bill by early October for the Democrats to claim
credit in the November elections for an anti drug program.
The Anti Drug Abuse Back of nineteen eighty six was
introduced in Congress shortly after Labor Day. Congress signed off
on the bill on October twenty one. On October twenty seven,
President Reagan signed the bill into law. Democrats clearly benefited
(16:59):
from a hasty progression of the bill.
Speaker 11 (17:02):
Certainly there they're in retrospect as a census.
Speaker 9 (17:04):
This was a.
Speaker 11 (17:05):
Politically shrewd approach, but it was a terrible diagnosis of
what needed to be done. There certainly was a recognition
that crack cocaine was a dangerous drug. There were people
who were addicted to it, and we had a serious
(17:27):
crack cocaine epidemic in the late nineteen eighties and early
nineteen nineties, there was an enormous amount of violence in
the criminal drug trade. Many families were broken up by it.
But there was very much the sense in nineteen eighty
(17:47):
six and nineteen eighty eight that this was a political
issue that the Democrats, if they played it right, could win.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
And the Democrats won big. They increased their all already
large majority in the House. They also gained eight seats
in the Senate, taking the majority of both chambers for
the first time in six years. You're listening to lembis
the mixed legacy on the eighth side Network. Mandatory minimums
(18:18):
for drug offenses arose from the War on drugs that
started in the nineteen seventies with President Nixon.
Speaker 12 (18:24):
America's public enemy Number one in the United States is
drug abuse.
Speaker 6 (18:30):
It is epidemic, and it can kill.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
President Nixon dramatically increased the size and presidence of the
federal drug control agencies. He passed through measage such as
mandatory sentencing and no knock warrants. The Drug Policy Alligance
a few years ago produced a video that provides a
history lesson on the War on drugs. The group's aim,
in part is to reduce the harms of drug use
and drug prohibition. Here's how Jay Z begins the.
Speaker 13 (18:56):
Video eighty six when I was coming of age, Ronald Ray,
they can doubled down on the war on drugs that
have been started by Richard Nixon in nineteen seventy one.
Drugs were bad, fried your brain, and drug dealers with monsters,
young men like me who hustle became sole villain, and
drug addicts lack moral fort two.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
We'll have more on that video later. In the nineteen eighties,
First Lady Nancy Reagan introduced a just Say No message
as part of the war on drugs. She too used
a video to promote her message. It was released some
two months after Lembias died.
Speaker 17 (19:31):
Not long ago, in Oakland, California, I was asked by
a group of children what to do if they were
off for drugs, and I answered, just say No. Soon
after that, those children in Oakland formed a Just Say
No club, and now there are over ten thousand such
clubs all over the country.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Before Bias died, cocaine was considered a potentially addictive drug
that made you feel energruzed. Cocaine's addictive quality could be
strong in rare cases, death could occur. There were high
profile cocaine related deaths in the late nineteen seventies and
early nineteen eighties, Lowell George, the lead singer of the
rock band Little Feet, and comedian John Belushi, a Saturday
(20:12):
Night Live star.
Speaker 9 (20:14):
Still, cocaine was not considered a dangerous drug.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Cocaine was actually a recreational drug, according to The New
York Times and several other media outlets.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
That Sound Cash a former agent for the Drug Enforcement
Agency from nineteen seventy three to nineteen ninety three. Cash
focused on operations from the Caribbean and Latin America. In
his work, he saw how it was used in different venues.
One such place was a New York City nightclub infamous
for excessive drug use by its patrons in the nineteen
seventies and nineteen eighties.
Speaker 7 (20:48):
In Studio fifty four, they had instead of sugar bowls,
they had little bowls cocaine, and then everybody was The
real formula of a success was that you had a
little spoon that you wore in a necklace around your neck,
and you took this little spoon and you could spoon
(21:09):
out just the right amount, and you could cut it
up with a razor blade and so forth.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Cocaine had taken on this harmless aspect, this entertainment aspect,
this ability to use it without having any bad effects.
It wasn't heroine, it wasn't opium, It wasn't all of
(21:36):
the other difficult drugs of the time MDMA and LSD
and all the rest of it. Until the death of
lum Bias. Well, I think it was a shock to
us all, including the DEA agents. I was in Washington
at that particular point in time, and I think that
(22:00):
the the DA agents at the time, uh said, uh.
Speaker 7 (22:06):
Coke, what cocaine?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah, I mean, isn't that something that the drummers used,
didn't They didn't didn't didn't they musicians a snort a
little cocaine back in the day of Gene Krupa in
that group, or did they just uh piddle around with it?
Speaker 7 (22:27):
But it was not It was something certainly not harmless.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
And then we said, holy shit, harmless, This stuff will
kill you.
Speaker 9 (22:38):
Benal agent soon changed the way that police cocaine.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Certainly in that first year or two when anybody mentioned cocaine,
there was a approach to try to get an undercover
in there, or try to do somebody to see if
they could penetrate an organization that would distribute or sell.
Speaker 7 (23:00):
Cocaine.
Speaker 9 (23:01):
Further says Cash was a change in the perception about
athletes abusing drugs.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Of all things, an athlete of his capability, it was
just almost unheard of. Athletes don't use drugs. You know,
they don't use drugs. They don't they don't drink, they
don't smoke, they don't do this, they don't do that.
And then now you have the star of the star
dying of a cocaine overdose, which just blows all the
(23:28):
hell the theory that these guys are, let's say, less
than pure.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
One prominent athlete of the time managed to keep his
cocaine addiction quiet for years.
Speaker 9 (23:41):
Do I Gooden, a picture for the New York Mets.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Gouldn't won the nineteen eighty five Cy Young Award, given
to the top picture in the game for that year.
In nineteen eighty six, a few months after Limbi's died,
good In, the Mets won the World Series during that season,
and the throes of his cocaine addiction didn't won The
type of cocaine that killed Bias from the ESPN documentary
Once Upon a time. In Queen's in twenty twenty one,
(24:04):
twy Gooden was quoted saying, I remember when Limbias died.
You see that and like, for the first four or
five hours it hits you, Wow, that could have been me.
But then the sickest part about it, you go into
your dealer and say, give me that Limbias stuff.
Speaker 9 (24:19):
That's sick. But that's where I was at at the time.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
I would say, Hey, I want the Limbias stuff, meaning
in street terms, I want the strongest stuff you have.
That's how crazy my brain was at the time. Can
you imagine give me the Limbias stuff. So you're going
to die, your family and friends are left, and my
dad saying my son died of a drug overdose. Still,
the death of Bias changed the perception of cocaine. It
(24:44):
was now considered a killer. That perception was amplified when
Cleveland Brown safety Don Rogers died from a cocaine overdose
eight days after the death of Bias.
Speaker 14 (24:53):
When bias deaths changed the world, it took cocaine that
was a drug that was seen as quote soft like marijuana,
and made it hard like heroin, and it took away
the idea that the drug problem was uniquely poor people
(25:13):
and disadvantaged people, because here we had an American prince
at the peak of his career, with public attention rarely
seen in anything including sports on him at the time,
with a wonderful family of support that he had, and
(25:34):
he died as a result of his drug use, and
the kind of innocence about cocaine use was ripped away
at that point, and it became a pariah, became a
threat to the country.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Robert DuPont was the president of the American Council of
Drug Education when Bias died. In the nineteen seventies, he
was the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse
and a White.
Speaker 9 (25:58):
House drug Zone.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
He relates the death of Bias to another impactful moment
in the history of US substance abuse.
Speaker 14 (26:06):
Glenn Bias's death was the single most important date in
the history of drugs in the United States since the
founding of Alcoholics Anonymous in June of nineteen thirty five.
I've never seen, in my fifty years in this field
the death of any one person make a difference like
(26:26):
that in the way people thought about drugs. But it
certainly happened here, and it was very dramatic from one
extreme to the other.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
It was inevitable that pop culture would be cued into action.
In nineteen eighty seven, the White House worked with Motion
Picture Association of America to produce a series of visual
anti drug adds. The ad started running in July that year,
before feature films produced by major American studios. One featured
nineteen eighties acting icon Clint Eastwood.
Speaker 18 (27:01):
See this cute little vial here, that's crack rock cocaine
the most addictive form. You think it's the glamour drug
of the eighties. Well that's the point of this front
of the little reminder. It can kill you. And if
you've got to dine for something this, sure as hell,
ain't it.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Those anti drug abuse messages related to cocaine appeared to help.
Cocaine abuse decreased over the next decade, especially among teenagers,
but so did the number of drug cases on federal
prisons arose four hundred and fifty percent from nineteen eighty
eight to nineteen ninety six. Here's more from jay Z.
Speaker 13 (27:37):
The War on drugs exploded the US prison population, disproportionately
locking away black and Latinos. Judges hands were tied by
tough on crime laws and they were forced to hand
out mandatory life sentences for simple possession and low level
drug sales. Then the FEDS made distinctions between people who
sold powdered cocaine and crack cocaine, even though they were
(27:57):
the same drug. Only difference is how you take. And
even though white people used and sold cracked more than
black people, somehow was black people who went to prison,
the media ignored actual data. To this day, crack is
still talked about. It's a black problem.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Bernald Dwayne Betts was only six years old when Lunbais died.
Like Bias, he grew up in Prince George's County. Like Bias,
he showed potential for greatness. He was a part of
a Gifted and Tis of educational program since the second grade.
Speaker 19 (28:26):
Most nights out energy was youth hours out there, after
more hours out there. This was the year do the
right thing.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
That's Bets reading from his poem Knights of the Living
base Heads from his book Bastards of the Breaking the Era.
The book addresses the harsh realities of black men in
society and.
Speaker 9 (28:44):
The war on drugs.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Like Bias, Bets made a bad decision at a young
age holding a gun in his hand. He hijacked a
card when he was sixteen. It was the first time
he held a gun. He ended up spending nine years
in prison.
Speaker 19 (28:58):
So this title poem is, it's a poem narrated by
a speaker who gets locked up. And you know I
got locked up in ninety six. This speak gets locked
up in like ninety and it's somebody who was in
the middle of the drug wars, and it's somebody from
my neighbors.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Like Bias, Best attended the University of Maryland, but unlike Bias,
Bets earned his degree and achieved his ultimate greatness. He's
an accomplished poet and writer. He's won national awards, has
written for The New York Times magazine and Washington Pops.
Speaker 9 (29:29):
Here's more from the poem, Knights of the Living Base.
Speaker 19 (29:31):
Habits spike hatters on edge, near, ready to toss a
trash can through this city. Lin Bias was dead and
we was lamping stone cold, lamping pockets fat because we
were entrepreneurs, and so we figured every brother man's life
is like swinging the dice while I live so close
to caskets. After that Rockefeller Wealth, a few got crushed
(29:55):
by Rockefeller drug laws locked slam up before the money flowed,
like it's in a tenement hallway back then. It was
always winter, always cold in the street. My mind, rabbit
would want for equity, for dookie, gold change, Jordan's more.
Speaker 9 (30:11):
The hustle courted us and we were down. It'll take
you to ruin.
Speaker 19 (30:15):
Moms would say, as if disaster wasn't that damn place
those afternoons and all that Soireirns Blair. Maybe she knew
that soon five sweet and love sized packets of crack
would me in a flat nickel and a kaleidoscope of cells.
A mandatory minimum of years with home becomes God's nightmare,
our curse. And so the way you see bias come
(30:43):
up in that poem is the way bias would have
came up in my life. It's just a marker for
the tragedy. And so that's how he comes up in
that poem, just like somebody recounting how they came up
and how they got involved with drugs and bias. It's
that marker, and a complicated marker too, because people so
(31:03):
dope knowing about the tragedy of bias, and they so
dope to other folks knowing about the tragedy to bias.
And that's what I was trying to The whole poem
is trying to get at that that that that conflict
that goes on in somebody's mind where they're forced to
be in the spot in prison. So the Wayland Bias
operated in my head was was almost like a fucking ghost.
(31:25):
But I didn't really know who he was until I
went to prison, and he becomes an explanation for why
it's just like the fucking dual tragedy of drugs, right,
it's the fact that they actually do ruin our community
and the fact that, like you think that the punishment
(31:45):
that comes out of the response to bias is death
is as.
Speaker 9 (31:50):
Disastrous as as the death.
Speaker 19 (31:54):
So you know, if you say, you know, like how
did he come up in the poem, I mean, honestly,
he in a poem because he's just always there but.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Goes to bias still haunts Bets in a way, or
perhaps it's a motivating force. Bess has become an advocate
for reforming mandatory minimum sentences. He is a graduate of
Yale Law School and his license to practice law in Connecticut.
His legal work involves handling pro bono cases, trying to
win release for friends he met while incarcerated, and he's
(32:25):
begun a project to build what he calls freedom libraries
and prisons.
Speaker 19 (32:30):
And it was just really easy for most of us
in prison to tell one story about mandatory minimums that
connected the mandatory minimums that was a response to crack
cocaine to the mandatory minimums that we got, Like we
saw this fight against mandatory minimum sentences, that's also a
fight against all incosteration. I'm saying that this thing has
(32:51):
been going on for a long time. Even in my head.
Speaker 9 (32:53):
Bess has some ideas on how to fix the problem.
Speaker 19 (32:55):
Which he realizes a lot of these mandatory sentences aren't
based on science, based on the actual psychotropic effects of drugs,
but in fact based on the hysteria around it. And
so I think one of what needs to happen is
we need to have a more robust understanding of science
in this. And then the second thing is I think
(33:17):
that we just need a realistic assessment at the cost
of incarceration. You know, we have tried to assess the
cost of drug use and drug selling. I think that
we haven't, like realistically assessed the cost of incosceration, and
so when we think about incarceration, we don't think about
it in the context of the human cost of incarceration.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Families Against Mandatory Minimums has been working since nineteen ninety
to create awareness about the problems and mandatory minimums. Here's
Kevin Ring, the group's executive director.
Speaker 10 (33:45):
Congress in nineteen ninety four ended up passing what they
call a Drug Safety Valve to exempt first time offenders
that had low amounts and no violence. But early on
everybody got caught in this net. You had judges who
would hand down these sentences and say, I do not
want to do this. I don't want to give this
person this time. You had Reagan appointed judges resigning from
(34:08):
the bench because they didn't like what they were party
to do, and so crack was the one that early
on people realized these penalties were completely out of a portion.
Speaker 13 (34:19):
Again, here's Jay z and the nineteen nineties, incarceration rates
in the US blew up. Today, we imprisoned more people
than any other country in the world. Our prison population
grew more than nine hundred percent. When the War on
Drugs began in nineteen seventy one, our prison population was
two hundred thousand. Today it is over two million.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Those last numbers are from twenty fifteen. Eric Sterling offers
a more broad perspective about the criminal injustice of mandatory minimals.
Speaker 11 (34:48):
During the nineties and early two thousands, as the effort
to repeal these mandatories or reform them existed, I did
a lot of research. When you looked at the data,
you would find that perhaps one out of four of
(35:10):
the powder cocaine defendants was white, but nine out of
ten of the crack defendants were black. It was one
of the most egregious instances of structural racism, of racial
(35:30):
discrimination in the criminal law, and this involved tens of thousands.
Speaker 9 (35:36):
Of cases a year.
Speaker 7 (35:40):
What drove this.
Speaker 11 (35:43):
Was in the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Justice,
a focus on predominantly low level crack defendants, men and
women selling on the street, corner, selling out of bodegas,
selling out of abandoned houses. These were serious offenders in
(36:08):
some sense, but these were not the global level drug
traffickers that should have been the responsibility of the US
Drug Enforcement Administration in the US Department.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Of Justice as an agent of the DEA. In the
nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. Tomcash saw firsthand the injustices
related to mandatory minimums.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
If you were to have paid me a dollar for
every day I sent in a federal courtroom, I'd be
a wealthy man.
Speaker 7 (36:35):
When you start.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Interrogating somebody for eleven hours, after eleven hours, they'll tell
you anything you want about money.
Speaker 7 (36:42):
And this is just not correct.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
And then you see people, some of them doing twenty
three years, twenty four years.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
That don't seem to be fair and win that mandatory
a minimum does not give the judge, and I'm not even.
Speaker 7 (37:07):
Sure it gives the jury.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Yeah, I don't think that there's many churres that would
agree to mendiatrate.
Speaker 7 (37:14):
It's not like the death penalty.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
You know, the law allows police officers and the EA
agents at the agents to not always tell the truth.
Speaker 7 (37:25):
So they can indeed exaggerate.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
And if they tell a god, well, you know you're.
Speaker 7 (37:35):
Going to do twenty five to life.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
And many people think that.
Speaker 7 (37:41):
They are in a bind, because they are in a bind.
But the question is the.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Validity of the interrogation procedures and processes where they use
the mandatory minimum as a stick. If you will to
beat people over the head.
Speaker 7 (37:58):
I don't approve it that.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
I was not allowed in the officers that I ran,
and I ran nine officers.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
You're listening to lembis the mixed legacy On the eighth side,
network momentum has shifted toward reducing mandatory minimum sentences. The
hard work by advocates of fair sentencing paid off dramatically
in twenty ten. That's when President Obama signed the Fair
Sentencing Act into law. The law reduced the mandatory minimum
sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine from one
(38:29):
hundred and one to eighteen and one. The legislation also
eliminated a mandatory minimum for simple possession of crack cocaine,
and since twenty eleven it may have been able to
request reduce sentences. A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers supported the
Fair Sentencing Act.
Speaker 10 (38:46):
Our Congress is not one entirely responsive. Two people still
had the image of crack in their head. They knew
the horror stories cracked babies, all the media hysteria that
went into that, and so just inertia. And then even
when there was a recognition that they should eliminate the disparity,
the first proposals were to increase penalties for powder cocaine
(39:09):
to make them equal to crack. Also, the crime rate
finally started to fall. We finally had a crime decline
starting in two thousands, and people were finally open to
making changes.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
More positive change related to mandatory minimums came from the
first step back signed by President Trump in twenty eighteen.
The law gives judges more flexibility to impose sentences based
on character and circumstance. That's a change from relying only
on guidelines forced on the courts. It also improved sentencing
laws related to drug offenses. Here's Kevin Ring.
Speaker 7 (39:40):
Yeah, it was really important.
Speaker 10 (39:41):
So when the Fear Sensing Act passed, it was a
really hard pill for groups like FAM and others to
support because all the people we knew had been hurt
and impacted by this law and now weren't going to
benefit from it because it didn't apply retroactively. One of
the provisions we fought hardest for was is a provision
to make the Fair Sensing Act retroactive. So in the
(40:04):
past two to three years, we've seen thirty five hundred people,
ninety one percent of which were people of color, finally
get the sentence in sentence reductions from the Fair Sensing Act.
So they've gotten retroactive relief average of six years off
each sentence. They're all coming back to the community now.
Everybody's you know, they're doing well.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Still, many felt things should improve even more for some
convicted of cocaine related crime. The Judiciary Committee in the
US Senate in June twenty twenty one held a hearing
on sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine, the goal to wipe
out any disparity and mandatory minimum sentences between crack and
powder cocaine.
Speaker 9 (40:45):
Here Senator Dick Durbin.
Speaker 8 (40:47):
In response to a nation and panic, we passed on
a bipartisan basis, a law that imposed one hundred to
one sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses
any Drug Abuse Act of nineteen eighty six. To to
this date, it is one of the worst votes I
ever cast.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
The administration of President Biden has made it clear that
they support eliminating any disparity in sentencing between crack and
powder cocaine. Here's Regina LaBelle, the Acting Director of the
Office of National Drug Control Policy, speaking at the hearing.
Speaker 20 (41:22):
The current disparity is not based on evidence. It has
caused significant harm for decades, particularly for individuals, families, and
communities of color. The continuation of the sentencing disparity is
a significant injustice in our legal system, and it's pastime
for it to end. Higher percentage of Black Americans are
convicted in federal court for crack cocaine offenses versus powder
(41:44):
cocaine offenses, and this sentencing disparity has caused them to
receive substantially longer average sentence lengths for comparable offenses.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
One who receives such a sentence as Matthew Charles. He
testified at the Senate hearing. Here's Matthew telling his story.
Speaker 21 (42:00):
I grew up in the Cramp public housing unit in
North Carolina with a father who was both physically and
verbally abusive. At eighteen, I tried to escape home life
and joined the Army, but I was still angry and
mad at the world. For the next decade, I was
in a dark place. I sold drugs and spent about
(42:21):
five years in state prison, but I had not yet
hit rock bottom. In nineteen ninety five, I was arrested
for selling two hundred and sixteen grams of crack cocaine
to an informant and illegally possessed a firearm. Because of
my prior criminal activity and because I sold crack cocaine
instead of powder cocaine, I was given a thirty five
(42:43):
year sentence.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
In twenty sixteen, Charles was released under new sentencing guidelines,
establishing in the Fair Sentencing Act his life.
Speaker 9 (42:50):
I turned around at that time.
Speaker 21 (42:53):
I moved to Nashville, got a job as a driver,
reconnected with family, volunteered weekly at a food pantry called
the Little Pantry that Could, and became deeply involved in
my church.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
But Charles was not in the clear yet. At the hearing,
Senator Corey Booker explained.
Speaker 22 (43:10):
After rebuilding his life for almost two years, an appellate
court ruled that mister Charles had been released in error.
After the First Step Act passed, mister Charles was eligible
for resentencing, and thank god, he was released again.
Speaker 21 (43:25):
I spent the last two and a half years advocating
for those left behind. I deserve to go to federal
prison for my crimes, but I didn't need a sentence
of thirty five years, especially when twenty of those years
were due to the fact that I sold one type
of crack, one type of cocaine rather than another.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Much of the testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee in
the US Congress last June focused on eliminating the crack
versus powder cocaine disparity. ASA Hutchinson is the current governor
of Alabama. He has served as the director of the
US Drug Enforcement Agency.
Speaker 16 (43:58):
We understand the science, better understand the impact. We understand
the unfairness of it. It's supported by statistics, and that
should lead us to take the final step to eliminate
completely that disparity.
Speaker 9 (44:11):
Here's Senator Corey Booker.
Speaker 22 (44:13):
The Fair Sentencing Act, the first step pack has brought
us closer to doing away with this wrong, but we
can't let another deck that go by without addressing this Injustice.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Equal Act was introduced in the Senate by Booker on
January twenty eight, twenty twenty one. The US House passed
its version of the legislation in September twenty twenty one.
Hasing the bill could take years, and at least one
person feels it may not happen at all.
Speaker 11 (44:39):
I don't think there'll be a wholesale reform of mandatory
minimums in the Biden administration unless in an upcoming Congress
there are bigger Democratic majorities.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
That's Eric Sterling, who up to write the legislation that
led to mandatory minimums in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 11 (44:56):
The Justice Department greatly value this mandatory minimum sentencing.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
As a.
Speaker 11 (45:06):
Tool that they could use to force people to plead guilty.
If you plead guilty and make a deal, you won't
get this mandatory ten years. So they're going to be
very reluctant to give up mandatory minimums. The Justice Department
position will put pressure on the White House not to
(45:31):
repeal mandatory minimums.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
And here Sterling discusses the political challenges of eliminating mandatory minimums.
Speaker 11 (45:38):
The Republicans are not interested in repealing mandatory minimums. Generally,
all of these members and senators are going to look
at this issue from the perspective of a primary opponent
or a general election opponent having a SoundBite that says
(46:00):
something like, when drug overdoses were skyrocketing in America, Senator
Smith voted to cut the sentences for high level crack dealers.
Who's Senator Smith working for you or America's dope dealing scum?
(46:22):
So how many times do you have to repeat that SoundBite?
How many times do you have to imagine that SoundBite
in your nightmares to say I'm not voting for that.
So framing the legislation is going to be key. And
I'm not sure that a term like the Equal Act
(46:42):
is going to be any more effective than the Crack
Cocaine Equitable Sentencing Act in attracting Republican voters. I don't
think it will be any more effective in attracting Republican
votes in the House and the Senate.
Speaker 9 (46:58):
And the Senate.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
The Judiciary can many hearing last summer feature concerns by
Republicans about recidivism rates for crack cocaine users.
Speaker 9 (47:06):
Here's Senator truck rasping.
Speaker 23 (47:10):
Drug sentencing laws are complex. They must be fair, and
they must be just, but prioritizing public safety is very important.
I've indicated my openness to reevaluating the sentencing disparacy between
crack and powder cocaine, but I do have some questions
(47:32):
about how the best do this. There are discrepancies between
crack and powder cocaine in terms of recidivism rates, addiction.
Speaker 9 (47:42):
And violent crime.
Speaker 23 (47:44):
These factors can't be ignored.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Still, proponents are Senate reforms for those convicted of cocaine
crimes want more.
Speaker 9 (47:52):
It involves retroactive application of the law.
Speaker 10 (47:55):
So now this new bill, a Equal Act that would
finally eliminate dispirity to one to one is also retroactive.
But we're hearing opposition to retroactivity. There even people who
support one to one. There's some senators. Senator Kornyn is
a good example who has supported reform sometimes but doesn't
support retroactivity because it feels like it undoes old convictions
(48:17):
or the sentences that people got. But it's really unjust.
If Congress is going to repudiate a sentence as being
too harsh, that should apply to all the people who
are suffering under that and whose stories we told in
order to convince them to change the law. And so
that's you know, that's going to be a fight.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
A story Ring and fam have promoted is about Doorthy Gaines,
the women we introduced you to at the beginning of
this segment. Since leaving prison in two thousand, Gaines has
struggled to rebuild her life. Her son, Philip, the one
who actually judge to free her mom when he was
nine years old, has repeatedly attempted suicide. Still, he later
became an honorall student, but then he dropped out of
(48:55):
school while his mother was still in prison. He was
later convicted of cocaine possession and robbery and is serving
two twenty year prison sentences.
Speaker 9 (49:04):
There have been quiet victories.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Her eldest daughter, Natasha quick college to care for her
siblings and her own son after Dorothy was incarcerated. She
is now a teacher. Kanes has been caring for Philip's
child and four other grandchildren. For her daughter, Charlie, Charles
still struggles from substance abuse issues related to the time
Gain spend in prison. Gain struggles to work and pay
(49:27):
her bills.
Speaker 5 (49:28):
It's been a struggle since I come home, Dave, is
I mean the work ethic thing, you know, with that
fellow thing I had on my rook because I was
I was commentated, but I wasn't partner.
Speaker 14 (49:40):
You know.
Speaker 5 (49:40):
There wasn't letting you get housed if you had a
drug fell on the record. There was a lot going
on that we had to fight through, even with voting rites.
So I had to get out fighting for voting, fight
for house, and fight for food stamping.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Four years into her Gain sentence. Lamont and Lawrence Garrison
just started their prison sentences in nineteen ninety eight. Lama
received nineteen years and Lawrence got fifteen years, both for
conspiracy to distribute cocaine. At the time of their arrest,
the identical twins were juvenile counselors. They're about to begin
school at Howard University. They both wanted to be lawyers.
(50:14):
Soon after the twins began their incarceration, their mother, Karen Garrison,
became an advocate for prison sentence reform.
Speaker 24 (50:22):
You know, what I started to do was work those
organizations or anything I saw on the news that had
something to do with this crack cocaine and you know,
mass incarceration and things like that. I started to find out,
and Dorothy's name would come up.
Speaker 9 (50:38):
A lot of times.
Speaker 24 (50:38):
I would mention Dorothy's name, you know, when I went places,
so that people would know that there are other cases
that were worse than what I was talking about, or
the same, you know, stuff like as in.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Two thousand and two, Garrison met Gains at a commutation event.
Two have been working since then the ways of awareness
about prison sentence reform. Garrison is known as Mommy Active
is for her work.
Speaker 24 (51:01):
Those draconian laws that were coming about because of them bias.
Everybody automatically wanted to lock everybody up that had anything
to do with drugs or anything like that, you know,
and that's when things got just got like off the hook.
But when Dorothy came home and people would ask for
people to speak, I had the connection. I was kind
(51:23):
of like that go to or resources or linked. I
would always make sure here being in DC when they
needed people like Darthy'll need the story to be told
or something like that.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
It's a story, as Jay BILLI says, that needs to
be told. Game's children have also struggled with drug addiction.
Speaker 5 (51:41):
I'm still suffering with these kids that got messed up
doing these drug log Bible was gone, and it's like
a recycled things.
Speaker 7 (51:49):
Dripped on down to the next generation of kids.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
The side tag of Games and many others is not
lost on Jay Billis ESPN basketball analysts who played for
Duke against Lambias look on the future of mandatory minimums
prison sentences is both gritty and grim, right.
Speaker 12 (52:05):
I think the short answer for me is, I don't.
I'm not optimistic. We're gonna we're going to make substantial
progress in the short run has been going on a
long time, and there has been uh some some progress
over the last several years. But you know, we're we're
(52:25):
a country that incarcerates. I mean, nobody incarceraates like we do.
The answer is, you know, for many is just lock
lock them up. And and I think it's profoundly wrong.
But you know, my confident that our government, both state
and federal, but especially federal with federal drug crimes, we're
going to be able to, you know, look at the
(52:46):
damage that's been done and and not not just reverse it,
but at least try to stem the tide of it.
I don't have a lot of confidence that will do
that in an efficient way.
Speaker 9 (52:57):
And the fact that we haven't.
Speaker 12 (52:58):
As a country been able to view it objectively and
say this is wrong, we need to change this. It
always sidens me thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
Ganges tries to communicate with her son Philip almost daily
while he remains in prison. His challenges extend to his
own daughter, who Dorothy is caring for.
Speaker 5 (53:22):
Well, he been gone, he was stayed fifteen times and
did another time. He got his broke cut last year.
Well then prison did me and his daughter was going
to see him and we almost got killed going to
he as one child and she's now tried to commit
suicide last month herself.
Speaker 9 (53:43):
How do you keep it together with all this? What
is your what is your foundation of what keeps you going?
Speaker 5 (53:51):
Just hope that one day is going, One day we
can have an enjoyment of seeing each other again.
Speaker 7 (53:56):
On the outside.
Speaker 5 (53:59):
It's just been like a been in prison for the
last thirty years. It's been like prison. M oh No.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Next on Lambis. The mixed legacy from Dynasty to drug Out.
The death of Lemby's affected the Celtics and the n
b A.
Speaker 9 (54:26):
Thirty five six Celtics.
Speaker 4 (54:27):
That's when they were peaking.
Speaker 22 (54:29):
That's when they were totally kicking ass every night and
it was the greatest show on basketball Earth at the time.
Speaker 9 (54:36):
Well, he was clearly physically dominant. He was he was mean.
Speaker 7 (54:43):
He had a mean mean on court the game and
that was that was important. But he had to have
the skill set to go with it. And for them
to have this monster of a player, it would have
It would.
Speaker 14 (54:58):
Have changed every thing against the Celtics, against.
Speaker 9 (55:03):
The Lakers, it would have changed it all.
Speaker 25 (55:09):
We're always thinking like, you know what, how how might
the NBA have been different had had had he been
around when I was in the NBA.
Speaker 7 (55:20):
I mean they definitely had a drug problem.
Speaker 22 (55:22):
Yeah, I think I think the NBA changed this whole
mentality about drugs.
Speaker 7 (55:28):
It changed the NBA drug policies.
Speaker 9 (55:33):
All of a sudden.
Speaker 22 (55:34):
It was like now they was brought people out looking
for people who are getting hot.
Speaker 1 (55:39):
This segment was produced by Dave Ungrady and Don Marcus.
It was written by Dave Ungrady and edited by Don Marcus.
The narrator was Jamal Williams Child. Voice over provided by
Kayden Ungrady. Technical production was provided by Octagon Entertainment. Production
assistance was produced by Kevin McNulty, Tino Quagliatta, marn Rosh,
Georgia Brown, Chasey Fair, Jamal Williams, Kelsey Mannix, and anzol
(56:03):
Al Varenwin. Matt Dewhurst is providing the social media assistance.
Some content provided by the Office of Senator Dick Durbin
and from the Drug Policy Alliance. Special thanks to the
University of Maryland and American University for providing inservice. The
Decision Education Foundation is a content and promotional partner of
this podcast series. For more information, go to gogradingmedia dot com.
(56:28):
This has been a production of go grading Media and
the Eighth Side Network
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