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 in large part on the book
Born Ready Mixed Legacy of lend Bias. Some quotes are
narrated by podcast producer and book author David and Grady
from interviews done for the book. Recordings for those comments
were not available. Yeah, the PRIP problem has become a
crack crisis and it's spreading. Letionwise, we must be intolerant
(00:22):
of drugs, not because we want to punish drug users,
but because we care about them and want to help.
In ninete six I will sentence to thirty five years.
This is just caused my sentence to be increased for
twenty years, longer than it would have been, and it
been for pounder cocaine. In nineteen nine and five I
was simped to twenty years. My loving year daughter was
(00:45):
molested while I was imprisoned at eleven years old. My
sister was barely twenty three years old and a mother
of three young children, and Eugenia had been sentenced for
powder cocaine senters. We've been less than half of the
ones she received. Why did we do that? Because we
were frightened. It was a reaction. There was a misperception
that crack cocaine was something different chemically than what powder
(01:06):
cocaine was, and Congress created this disparity, which was a
hundred to one between crack and powder cocaine sentences, and
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 at present for decades and
has helped decimate mostly urban families. The legacy of this
(01:26):
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 hasn't.
It failed, doesn't save lives, doesn't reduce crime. So what
does it do? It protects the status quote. The status
quote is white privilege. It wasn't just a tragedy that
(01:51):
we lost one great person weeds. We lost a lot
of great people. Drugs were bad, fried your brain and
drug Elizabeth Monster's young men like me who hustle became
soul villain and drug addicts la more fortitude. How did
this happen? It all started the mere months after Limbias died.
Is the most profound and troubling part of the mixed
(02:13):
legacy of Limbias. I concluded that limbias Is death was
the single most important date in the history of drugs
in the United States since the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous
uh in June, other Nex and Lembis, the mixed legacy,
mandatory minimums, and maximum impact. How the death of Bias
(02:35):
changed the criminal justice system. So You've had people for
you know, minimal drug crimes languishing in prison for years
and years, uh, for no good. Um. The federal mandatory
something saying um even to this day has been a
(03:01):
horrible outcome for for America and for for so many
Americans and largely African American. That's Jay billis prominent ESPN
college basketball and 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
(03:24):
understands the impact lens death has had on the federal
drug legislation and the criminal justice system in the United States.
I can't think of of anything more tragic than you
pile onto a tragedy with multiple tragedies that have tentacles
that uh keep going out. You know, families being ruined.
(03:46):
I mean, it's awful. It's awful. One sad part is
the story of Dorothy Gaines. Gaines was a nurse and
pete mom when police rated her home in Mobile, Alabama
in August. Gaines claimed she didn't know that her then
boyfriend was involved, a courier for a drug deal. He
was living with her at the time. No evidence was
found that Gains herself had sold or even possessed drugs.
(04:07):
The state of Alabama dropped its case against her, but
the federal prosecutors charged up 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. Yeah, before the arrest. My life was I
thought was perfectly so, but just a three We had
a lovely life. Nothing unless my cheer was involved. I've
(04:29):
never drink. I've never been to a club in my life.
Everything I did I did it with my children, boy Scout, girl,
scout uh, going to movies, Everything involved my child. So
this was a big setback. When I left my kids
and they would only you know, I was the only paint,
not just when I was the only pair of my kids. Hey,
my mother was stopped from counseling. I was working at
(04:51):
the hospital as a nurse, so you know, everything gets
went down the drain. At that moment, at gains of
sentencing here in, her nine year old son Philip jumped
at the lap of the judge, leading for her mom
to come home. He had written a letter to the
judge asking to set her free. Dear judge, would you
help my mom? I have no dad and my grandmam
(05:11):
have cancer. I don't have anyone to take care of me,
my sisters and my niece and nephew, and my both
days coming up on October and I need my mom
to be here on and for the rest of my life.
I would cut your dash and wash your car every day.
Just don't send my mom off the piece. Please don't.
Let's play did not work games received a sentence of
(05:34):
nineteen years and seven months. After all, the judge was
bound by the mandatory minimum requirements and could not alter
her sentence. And when I was still the twenty years,
every sister day, he's not a prison doing for my life,
(05:57):
just been to don't and how much of how much
of his behavior do you figure it's related to what
happened to you why hundred See what bast time I
tried to kill himself while I was gonna He said
it simple. It took her all with those oh. Gain
(06:21):
spent six years in prison before her sentence was commuted
by President Clinton in two thousands. During that time, her
oldest daughter was forced to leave college to take care
of her two siblings and raise her own two children.
Soon after, at least from prison, Gains became an advocate
for sentencing reform. She wan't release from prison with the
help of such groups as Family Against Mandatory Minimums and
(06:43):
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, the group's executive director.
There's no checks and 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
(07:04):
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 prosecutors
seeks and gets a conviction on it. Says I can't
do anything about it. I'm bound by the mandatory sentence
that Congress passed. 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
(07:26):
nobody takes responsibility. And what results from that is thousands
of injustices. Because of that 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
(07:46):
who are simply unlucky or and wise in their choices
of association. Hundreds of thousands of lives like those of
Games children were disrupted. The federal prison population soared from
thirty six thousand and so as much as two thousand.
In two thousand eleven, the population dropped to about more
(08:09):
than half of all federal prisoners are there for drug offenses,
many of either a minor criminal record before their conviction
or no record at all. And it can all be
traced back to the death of Lambias. In the eighties.
I was assisted counsel to the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee
on Crime. My job was to work on federal drug laws,
(08:32):
gun control, pornography, organized crime, money laundering, and other issues.
And 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,
(08:56):
and played a major role in many of the visions
of the in writing the Anti Drug Abuse Act. Of
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
(09:17):
shows that it has it failed. That's Eric Sternly, 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 Gains and tens of thousands of others. It's
(09:38):
a role still today that he regrets having played. 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 legislation, but they were not heated,
(10:01):
and the results of this legislation weighs a great deal
on me. I've met many of the family members and
when they re released from prison. Many people who served
extremely long sentences for conducted by any other judgment does
not deserve decades of imprisonment. Here's what created Sterling is
(10:26):
concern and consternation. The Anti Drug Abuse Act was fast
tracked through Congress and signed by President Reagan within four months.
It was passed as a direct reaction to the depth
of Lambidas. The law re established mandatory minimum sentences for
first time drug offenders manufacturing or distributing cocaine. Those working
(10:47):
with five grams of powder cocaine based a five year
mandatory minimum sentence, but five thousand grams of powder cocaine
a tenure minimum sentence. Those working with five grands of
crack cocaine received a five year of mandatory minimum. With
fifty grams have received the minimum of ten year sentence.
For sentences longer than the minimum, there was no hope
(11:08):
of parole. Stirling heart right the legislation establishing mandatory minimums.
He blames in part of politics within the U s.
Congress for the problem. The Democrats saw a chance to
take control of both chambers. The legislation was born in
the Democratic leadership's recognition that this issue could be used
(11:32):
in a partisan way to retake control of the United
States Senate 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
(11:54):
the natural order if the tragedy of Len's death and
the drug issue we're seen as the area where the
Democrats had the ideas, and in that sense the legislation
was a success. The Democrats took re control of the
(12:17):
Senate in the election. 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 to He worked closely with then
Senator Joe Biden, who became chair of the committee in
He called the death of Bias a tipping point. Scott
(12:40):
Green told me, the attention and scare and shocked provided
by somebody with that kind of talent, a young guy
at the top of the world, the fact that drugs
took him away that quickly. Was it an overreaction, probably,
But a lot of good things came out of it.
For instance, the bill approved close to three million dollar
US to have drug and alcohol addicts. They give special
(13:03):
consideration to veterans and at risk youth. 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 fuel of the politics
of his death was the fact that it happened so
close to Washington, d c. Perhaps as important to this
(13:25):
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 did new and appreciated the greatness
(13:48):
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 national news media that a death
(14:11):
of the 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 or Detroit, UH, any
(14:32):
other part of the city that was any other part
of the country that was not Washington, d c um,
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. Tip O'Neill
(14:54):
was the speaker of the U S House of Representatives
when Bias died. He held from Massachusetts. Of former basketball
player and a Celtics fan, he had personal interest in
the legislation as well. My dad was an athlete. He
you know, he was captain of his own basketball team
at St. John's High School. UH played intermunal basketball at
(15:15):
Boston College. That's Tom O'Neill, tip o'neils son. 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 Buston the Boston teams ring
(15:39):
very large or didn't ring very large in his life,
To be very honest with you, I mean it was
not It was not obscure to see him at a
x X game or a Celtics game. Tip O'Neil'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'Neil to pass anti drug abuse legislation.
(16:02):
The impact of Bias's death was often brought up during
dinner at the O'Neill house, my brother. 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 body as it had overwhelmed him. Um, you know,
(16:25):
it was devastating for my mother and father. My dad
and mother both knew the the hid hip of being addicted,
but bringing it back to Bias, I mean it certainly
had an impact on my father. 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
(16:46):
that was introduced in Congress shortly after Labor Day. Congress
signed off on the bill on October. On October, President
Reagan signed the bill into law. Democrats clearly benefited from
the hasty progression of the bill. Certainly they're they're in
retrospect as a sense that this was a politically shrewd approach,
(17:08):
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 crack cocaine epidemic
(17:29):
in the late nineteen eighties and early nine 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 this was a political issue
(17:51):
that the Democrats, if they played it right, could win,
and the Democrats want big. They increased their already large
majority of 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 lambias. The
(18:13):
mixed legacy on the eighth side network. Mandatory minimums for
drug offenses arose from the War on drugs that started
in the nineties seventies with President Nixon. America's public enemy
Number one in the United States is drug abuse. It
is epidemic, and it can kill. President Nixon dramatically increased
(18:36):
the size and president of the federal drug control agencies.
He passed through measastus as mandatory sentencing and no knock warrants.
The Drug Policy Alliance a few years ago produced a
video that provides a history lesson on the War on drugs.
The group's aim, in parties, to reduce the harms of
drug use and drug prohibition. Here's how jay Z begins
the video. Six When I was coming of age, Ronald
(19:00):
get doubled down on the worn drugs that had been
started by Richard Nixon in nine drugs were bad, fried
your brain, and drug dealers with monsters. Young men like
me who hustled became so villain, and drug addicts lack
more fortitude. We'll have more on that video later. In
the eighties, First Lady Nancy Reagan introduced a just Say
(19:22):
No message as part of the War on drugs. She
too used the video to promote her message. It was
released some two months after Lambias died. Not long ago,
in Oakland, California, I was asked by a group of
children what to do if they were all for drugs,
and I answered, just say no. Soon after that those
(19:42):
children in Oakland formed are just saying no club and
now they're over ten thousands such clubs all over the country.
Before Bias done, cocaine was considered a potentially addictive drug
that made you feel energies. Cocaine's addictive quality could be strong,
and rare cases death could occur. There were high profile
cocaine related deaths in the late nineteen seventies and early
(20:04):
nineteen eighties, Lowell George, the lead singer of the rock
band Little Feet, and comedian John Belushi, a Saturday Night
Live star. Still, cocaine was not considered a dangerous drug.
Cocaine was actually a recreational drug, according to The New
York Times and several other media outlets. That's Town Cash,
(20:28):
a former agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency from nineteen
seventy three to 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 in
New York City nightclub infamous for excessive drug use by
its patrons in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties. In
(20:48):
Studio fifty four, they had instead of sugar bowls, they
had little bowls of 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 racing blade and so forth. Cocaine had
taken on this um harmless aspect, this entertainment aspect, this
ability to use it without having any bad effects. It
(21:31):
wasn't heroin, it wasn't opium. It wasn't all of the
other difficult drugs at the time, m D, M A
and LSD and all the rest of it. Until the
depth of lum bias. Well, I think it was a
shock to us all, including the d e A agents.
(21:53):
I was in Washington at that particular point in time,
and I think that the the d A agents at
the time, Uh said, coke, what cocaine? Yeah, I mean,
isn't that something that the drummers used, didn't They didn't
(22:13):
didn't didn't the musicians the snorter a little cocaine back
in the day of Jane Crooper in that group, or
did they just uh puttle around with it. But it
was not It was something certainly not harmless. And then
we said, the holy shit harmless, This stuff will kill you.
(22:38):
That arraging soon changed the way that police cocaine. Certainly
in that first year or two, when anybody mentioned cocaine,
there was a approach 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 um cocaine
(23:01):
furtherest his cash. Was a change in the perception about
athletes abusing drugs of all things, to an athlete of
his capability, Uh, that 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
(23:23):
star of the star dying of a cocaine overdose, which
just blows all the hell the theory that these guys
are let's say, less than pure. One prominent athlete of
the time managed to keep his cocaine addiction quiet for years.
Do I Goodon a picture for the New York Mets
(23:43):
Didn't won Young Award, given to the top picture in
the game for that year in a few months after
Lambis died. Goodness the Mets won the World Series during
that season, and the throws of his cocaine addiction couldn't
want the type of cocaine that killed Bias. From the
ESPN documentary Once Upon a Time in Queens So Why,
(24:04):
Gooden was quoted saying, I remember when Lambias 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 limb Bias stuff.
That's sick. But that's where I was at at the time.
I would say, hey, I want the limb Bias stuff,
(24:25):
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 limb Bias stuff. So you're
gonna die, Your family and friends are left and my
dad's saying my son died of a drug overdose. Still,
the death of Bias changed the perception of cocaine. It
was now considered a killer. That perception was amplified when
(24:47):
Cleveland Brown safety Don Rogers died from a cocaine overdose
eight days after the death of Bias. Len Bias deaths
changed the world. Uh. It took cocaine that was a
drug that was seen as quote soft like marijuana, uh
and made it hard like heroin. Uh. And and it
took away the idea that the drug problem was uniquely
(25:11):
uh poor people and disadvantaged people. Because here we had
an American prince at the peak of his career UH,
public attention uh rarely seen uh in anything including sports
on him at the time, with a wonderful family of
support that he had. UH. And he died as a
(25:35):
result of his drug use. UH. And the the the
kind of innocence about cocaine use was ripped away at
that point, UH and it became uh briah became a
threat to the to the country. Robert DuPont was the
president of the American Council of Drug Education when Byers
died in the nineteen seventies. He was the director of
(25:56):
the National Institute on Drug Abuse and a White House
Drug Zone. He relates the death of Bias to another
impactful moment in the history of u S substance abuse,
Glenn Bias. His death was the single most important date
in the history of drugs in the United States since
the founding of Alcoholics. Anonymous, Uh in June. I've never
(26:20):
seen in my fifty years in this field, Uh, the
death of any one person make a difference like that
in the way people thought about drugs. But it certainly
happened here. Uh, And it was very dramatic from one
extreme to the other. It was inevitable that pop culture
(26:42):
would be cute into action seven. The White House worked
with Motion Picture Association of America to produce a series
of visual anti drug ads. They had started running in
July that year, before feature films produced by major American studios.
One featured eighties acting icon Clint Eastwood. See this cute
little vial here, it's crack rock cocaine, the most addictive form.
(27:06):
Do you think it's the glammer drug of the eighties. Well,
that's the point of this front, the little reminder it
can kill you. And if you've got to die for something,
this sure as hell, ain't it. Those anti drug abuse
messages related to cocaine appeared to help cocaine abuse decreased
over the next decade, especially among teenagers. Also did the
number of drug cases on federal prisons a rose four
(27:30):
hundred and from here's more from jay Z, the worn
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
senses for simple possession and low level drug sales. Then
(27:52):
the FEDS made distinctions between people who sold powdered cocaine
and crack cocaine, even though they were 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, crackers still talked about as
a black problem and all. Dwayne Betts was only six
(28:13):
years old when lun Bias 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 Antis
of educational program. Since the second grade most Knights out
of Energy was youth. I was out there after more,
I was out there. This was the year through the
(28:33):
right Thing. That's the Bets reading from his poem Knights
of the Living Bass sets from his book Bastards of
the Breaking Era. The book addresses the harsh realities of
black man in society and the war on drugs. 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
(28:55):
a gun. He ended up spending nine years in prison.
So this title poem is is um. It's a poem
narrated by 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. Like Bias, Bests attended the University of Maryland,
(29:17):
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 Post. Here's more from the poem, Nights of
the Living Base has Spike had us on edge near
ready to toss a trash can through this city. Lynn
(29:37):
Bias was dead and we was lamping stone colde lamping
pockets fat because we were entrepreneurs, and so we figured
every brother man's life is like swinging the dice. While
I lived so close to caskets. After that rocketfeller wealth,
a few got crushed by Rockefeller truck loads, lock slam
(29:58):
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
dukey gold change Jordan's more. The hustle corded us and
we were down. It'll take you to ruin. Moms would say,
as if disaster wasn't that damn place those afternoons and
(30:20):
all that siren's blair. Maybe she knew that soon five
sweet and love sized packs of crack with me and
a flat nickel and the Kalaido scope of sales, a
mandatory minimum of years with home becomes God's nightmare, our curse,
(30:40):
and so the way you see bias come up in
that poem is the way um bias would have came
up in my life. It's it's just a marker for
the tragedy, and so that's how it comes up in
that poem, just like somebody for counting how they came
up and how they got involved with drugs and buy
It's it's that marker and a complicated marker too, because
(31:03):
people so dope knowing about the tragedy to bias, and
they're 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 prison. So the way
lym Bias operated in my head was was almost like
(31:24):
a fucking ghost, 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 is the fact that they actually
do ruin our community and the fact that, like um,
(31:44):
you think that the punishment that comes out of the
response to bias is death is as disastrous as as
the deaf. So you know, if you say, you know,
like how did he come up in the poem? I mean, honestly,
he comes up in a poem because he's just always there.
The ghost to bias still haunts Bets in a way,
(32:06):
or perhaps it's a motivating force. Best has become an
advocate for reforming mandatory minimum sentences. He has 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 begun a project to build what he calls
(32:27):
freedom libraries and prisons. 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 as also a fight against um Alan constoration. I'm
(32:50):
saying that, like this, this thing has been going on
for a long time. Even in my head. Best has
some ideas on how to fix the problem, which he
realizes a lot of these mandatory sentences aren't based on science,
based on the actual um psychotropic effects of drugs, but
on in fact, based on hysteria around it. And so
I think one of what needs to happen is we
(33:10):
need to have a more robust understand it of science
in this. And then the second thing is I think
that we just need a realistic assessment of um the
cost of inconceerration. You know, we have tried to assess
the cost of drug use and drugs selling. I think
that we haven't like realistically assessed the cost of incosperration,
and so when we think about incoceerration, we don't think
(33:32):
about it in the context of the human cost of incoserration.
Families Against Mandatory Minimums has been working since create awareness
about the problems in mandatory minimals. Here's Kevin Ring, the
group's executive director. Congress in ended up passing what they
call a Drug Safety Valve to exempt first time offenders
(33:53):
that had low amounts and now violence. But early on
everybody got caught in this NAT. 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
the bench because they didn't like what they were party
into doing, and so Crack was the one that early
(34:15):
on people realized these penalties were completely out of a portion. Again,
here's Jay z And in nineteen nineties and conceration rates
in the US blew up. Today, we imprisoned more people
in any other country in the world. Our prison population
grew more than nine hundred percent. When the one Drugs
began in nineteen seventy one, our prison population was two
(34:36):
hundred thousand. Today it is over two millions. Those last
numbers are from two thousand fifteen. Eric Sterling offers a
more broad perspective about the criminal injustice of mandatory minimums
during the nineties and early two thousand's, as the effort
to repeal these mandatories or reform them existed. I did
(34:57):
a lot of research. When you looked at the data,
you would find it, perhaps, uh one out of four
of the powder cocaine defendants was white, but nine out
of ten of the crack defendants were black. It was
(35:24):
one of the most egregious instances of structural racism, of
racial discrimination in the criminal law, and this involved tens
of thousands of cases a year. What drove this was
in the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Justice,
(35:48):
a focus on predominantly low level crack defendants, men and
women selling on the street, corner, selling out bodegas, selling
out of abandoned houses. These were serious offenders in some sense,
(36:10):
but these were not the global level drug traffickers that
should have been the responsibility of the US Drug Enforcement
Administration and the US Department of Justice. As an agent
of the d A. In THEES and ES, Tom Cash
saw firsthand the injustices related to mandatory minimums. If you
were to paid me a dollar for every day I
(36:32):
asked in a federal courtroom, I'd be a wealthy man.
When you started interrogating somebody for eleven hours. After eleven hours,
they will tell you anything more about this. This is
just not correct. And then you see people, some of
them doing twenty three years, twenty four years that don't
(36:54):
seem to be fair and win. That mandatory a minimum
does not give the judge um and I'm not even
sure it gives the jury. I don't think that there's
there's many jurors that would agree to mandatrate. It's not
(37:14):
like the death penalty. You know, the law allows police
officers and the ages ABI agents to not always tell
the truth, so they can indeed exaggerate and if they
tell a guy, well, you know you're gonna do twenty
(37:36):
five to life. And many people think that, uh, they're
in a in a bind, because they are in a bind.
But the question is the 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.
(37:58):
I don't approve of that. I was not allowed in
the offices that I ran, and I ran down opposite
you're listening to lembis the mixed legacy on the eighth
side network well mendium has shifted towards reducing mandatory minimum sentences.
The hard work by advocates of fair sentencing paid off
dramatically in two thousand ten. That's when President Obama signed
(38:21):
the Fair Sentencing Acting to law. The law reduced the
mandatory minimum sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cookine
from a hundred of one to eighteen and one. The
legislation also eliminated a mandatory minimum for simple possession of
crack cocaine, and since two thousand eleven it might have
been able to request reduced sentences. Bipartisan coalition of lawmakers
(38:44):
supported the Fairst Sentencing Act. Our Congress is not one
entirely responsive. Two people still had the image of crack
in their head. They knew the horror stories, crack babies,
all the media hysteria that went into that, and so
it just inertia. And then even when there was a
recognition that they should eliminate the disparity, the first proposals
(39:06):
were to increase penalties for powder cocaine 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. More positive
change related to mandatory minimums came from the first step back,
signed by President Shumpionship thousand and eighteen. The law gives
(39:27):
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 improves sentencing and laws related to
drug offenses. Here's Kevin ring. Yeah, it was really important.
So when the Fear Sentencing Act passed. It was a
really hard pill for groups like Famine others to support
(39:49):
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 past
two to three years, we've seen thirty five hundred people,
(40:09):
of which were people of color, finally get the sentences
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. Still, many felt things should improve even
more for some convicted of cocaine related crime. The Judiciary
(40:31):
Committee in the US Senate in June two 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. Here, Senator Dick Durbin, in response
to a nation and panic, we passed, on a bipartisan
basis a law that imposed a hundred to one sentencing
(40:55):
disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses the Any
Drug Abuse Act of to day. To this date, it
is one of the worst votes I ever cast. The
administration of President Biden has made it clear that they
support eliminating any disparity and sentencing between crack and powder cocaine.
(41:15):
Here's Regina LaBelle, the acting director of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy, speaking at the hearing. The current
disparity is not based on evidence. He 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 past time for it
(41:37):
to end. Higher percentage of Black Americans are convicted in
federal court for crack cocaine offenses versus powder cocaine offenses,
and this sentencing disparity has caused them to receive substantially
longer average sentence lengths for comparable offenses. One who receives
such a sentence as Matthew Charles. He testified at the
Senate hearing. Here's Matthew telling his story. I grew up
(42:00):
in the cramped public housing unit in North Carolina with
a father 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.
But the next decade I was in a dark place.
I sold drugs and spent about five years in state prison,
(42:23):
but I had not yet hit rock bottom. In I
was arrested for selling two d sixteen grams a 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
or five years sentence. In two thousand sixteen, Charles was
(42:46):
released under new sentencing guidelines, establishing in the fair sentencing
that his life had turned around. At that time. I
moved to Nashville, got a job as a driver, reconnected
with family, volunteered weekly at a food pantry called The
Little Panther that Could, and became deeply involved in my church.
But Charles was not in the clear yet. At the hearing,
(43:07):
Senator Corey Booker explained, after rebuilding his life for almost
two years, in appellate court rule that Mr Charles had
been released in error. Um after the First Step Act passed,
Mr Charles was eligible for resentencing, and thank god he
was released again. I spent the last two and a
half years advocating for those left behind. I desire to
(43:30):
go to federal prison for my crimes, but I didn't
need a sentence of third or 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. Much of the testimony at the Senate
Judiciary Committee in the U. S. Congress last June focused
on eliminating the crack versus powder cocaine disparity. ASA Hutchinson
(43:52):
is the current governor of Alabama. He has served as
the director of the U. S. Drug Enforcement Agency. We
understand the science, better understand the impact. We understand the
unfairness of its supported by statistics, and that should lead
us to take the final step to eliminate completely that disparity. Here.
Senator Corey Booker did the Fair Sentencing Act. The First
(44:14):
Step Pack has brought us closer to doing a way
with this wrong. But we can't let another decade go
by without addressing uh this injustice. The Equal Act was
introduced in the Senate by Booker on January. The U.
S House passed its version of the legislation in September
two one. Having the bill could take years, and at
(44:36):
least one person feels it may not happen at all.
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. That's Eric Sterling well throughout
the legislation that led to mandatory minimums in the the
(44:56):
Justice Department greatly value this mandatory minimum sentencing as a
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
(45:21):
very reluctant to give up mandatory minimums. The Justice Department
position will put pressure on the White House not too
repeal mandatory minimums, and here Sterling discusses the political challenges
of eliminating mandatory minimums. The Republicans are not interested in
repealing mandatory minimums generally. Um all of these members and
(45:48):
senators are going to look at this issue from the
perspective of a primary opponent or a general election opponent
having a sound bite that says something like when drug
overdoses were skyrocketing in America, Senator Smith voted to cut
(46:10):
the sentences for high level crack dealers, who Senator Smith
working for you or America's dope dealing scum. So how
many times do you have to repeat that sound bite?
How many times do you have to imagine that sound
bite in your nightmares to say, I'm not voting for that.
(46:34):
So framing the legislation is going to be key. And
I'm not sure that a term like the Equal Act
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 and attracting Republican
votes in the House and the Senate and the Senate,
(46:59):
the judiciary can many hearing the last Summer feature concerns
about Republicans about recidivism rates for crack cocaine users. Here,
Senator Truck grasping drug sentencing laws are complex, they must
be fair, and they must be just, But prioritizing public
(47:19):
safety is very important. I've indicated my openness to reevaluating
the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, but I
do have some questions about how to best do this.
There are discrepancies between crack and powder cocaine in terms
of recentivism rates, addiction, and violent crime. These factors can't
(47:46):
be ignored. Still, proponents are senate reformance for those convictive
cocaine crimes want more. It involves retroactive application of the law.
So now this new build, the Equal Act that would
finally eliminate disparity to one to one, is also retroactive.
But we're hearing opposition of retro activity. There even people
who support one to one. There's some senators. Senator Cornyn
(48:08):
is a good example who has supported reforms sometimes but
doesn't support retroactivity because he feels like it undoes old
convictions or the sentences that people got. But it's really unjust.
If Congress is going to repudiate the sentences 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,
(48:32):
that's going to be a Fight. A story Ring and
Fan have promoted is about Georgi Games women we introduced
you to at the beginning of this segment. Since Lavery,
president in two thousand Games, has struggled to rebuild her life.
Her son, Philip, the one who locks the judgment to
free her mom when he was nine years old, has
repeatedly attempted suicide. Still, he later became an honorable student,
(48:54):
but then he dropped out of 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.
There have been quiet victories. Her eldest daughter, Natasha quick
college to care for her siblings and her own son
after Dorothy was incarcerated. She is now a teacher. Jangs
(49:14):
has been caring for Philip's child and four other grandchildren.
For her daughter, charl Charge still struggles from substance abuse
issues related to the time gain spending prison gain, struggles
to work and pay her bills. It's been a struggle
since I come home, Davis. I mean the work ethic
thing with you know, with that fellow thing I had
(49:35):
on my rook because I was I was commentatd but
I wasn't partner, you know, there wasn't then you get
house if you had a drug belting the record. There
was a lot going on that we had to fight through,
even with voting rights, so we I had to get
out fighting for voting, fighting behind and fighting for foodstamping.
Four years into her gain sentence, Lamont and Lawrence Garrison
just started their prison sentences in Lama received nineteen years
(50:00):
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, so en after the
twins begin their incarceration, their mother, Karen Garrison, became an
advocate for prison sentence reform. You know, what I started
(50:23):
to do was work those organizations or anything I saw
on the news that has something to do with uh
this uh crack cocaine and you know, mass incarceration and
things like that. I started to find out and Dorothy's
name would come up a lot of times. I would
mention Dorothy's name, you know, when I went places, so
that people would know that there are other cases that
(50:44):
were worse than what I was talking about or the same,
you know, stuff like in two thousand two, Garrison met
Gains at a commusation event to have been working since
then the layers of awareness about prison sentence reform. Garrison
is known as Mommy Active is for her work those
draconian laws that were coming about because of lambias. Everybody
(51:06):
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
of like that go to or resources or linked. I
(51:26):
would always make sure here being in d C when
they needed people like Darthy'll need the story to be
told or something like that. It's a story, as Jay
Billis says, that needs to be told. Games children have
also struggled with drug addiction. I'm still a suffer with
these kids that that got messed up doing these drugls
while I was going. And it's like a recycled thing.
(51:48):
It's because dripped on down to the next generation of kids.
The sad talk of games and many others is not
lost on Jay Billis ESPN basketball analysts who played for
Duke against lam Bias. Here's how look on the future
of mandatory minimums prison sentences is both gritty and grim.
But I think the short answer for me is, I
don't I'm not optimistic we're gonna we're gonna make substantial
(52:12):
progress in the short run. Um, it's been going on
a long time, and there has been uh, some some
progress over the last several years. But um, you know,
we're we're a country that incarcerates. I mean, nobody incarce
rates like we do. Uh. The answer is, you know,
for many is just lock them up and um and
(52:35):
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 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 a in
(52:56):
an efficient way. In the fact that we haven't as
a country been able to, um view it objectively and
say this is wrong. We need to change this um it.
It always saddens me thinking about it. Games tries to
communicate with her son Philip almost daily while he remains
(53:16):
in prison. His challenges extend to his own daughter, who
Dorothy is caring for. Why he's been going. He was
stay up, puilty to have the dinner no time. He
got his broke cut last year. Well in prison, Dad,
men his daughter was going to see him and we
are both got killed going to kids one child and
she's now trying to commit suicide last month herself. How
(53:43):
do you keep it together with all this? What is
your what is your foundation of what keeps you going?
I just hope that one day is going one day
we can have an enjoyment of seeing each other again
on the outside. It's just been like I been in
prison for the last thirty years. It's been like prison.
(54:13):
Oh I understand. Next on them by the mixed legacy
from Dynasty to Drop at the death of Lambis affected
the Celtics and the NBA six Celtics. That's when they
were peaking. That's when they were totally kicking ass every
night and it was the greatest show on basketball Earth
(54:34):
at the time. Well, he was clearly physically U dominant.
He was, he was mean. He had a mean, mean
en court game, and that was that was important. But
he had to have the skill set to go with it.
For to have this monster of a player, it would
(54:58):
have It would have changed every thing against the Celtics,
against the the Lakers, it would have changed it all.
We're always thinking, like, you know what, how how might
the NBA have been differently had had had he been
around when I was in the NBA. I mean, they
(55:20):
definitely had a drug problem. Yeah, I think I think
the NBA changed this whole mentality about drug It changed
the n B a drug policy all of a sudden.
It was like now that was brought people out looking
for people who were getting high. This segment was produced
by Dave Grady and Don Marcus. Like it was written
(55:43):
by Davon Grady and edited by Don Marcus. The narrator
was Jamal Williams Child. Voiceover provided by Kayden and Grady.
Technical production was provided by Octagon Entertainment. Production assistance was
produced by Kevin McNaughty, Tina Quagliarda Laren Rosh, Georgia brun
Casey Fair, Jamal Williams Kelsey Mannix and Enzo al Varano.
(56:05):
Matt Dewhurst is providing the social media assistance. Some content
provided by the Office of Senator Dick Durbin and from
the Droll 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.
More information go to go graded media dot com. This
(56:29):
has been a production of Go Graded Media and the
eight Side Network.
This podcast is based in large part on the book
Born Ready Mixed Legacy of lend Bias. Some quotes are
narrated by podcast producer and book author David and Grady
from interviews done for the book. Recordings for those comments
were not available. Yeah, the PRIP problem has become a
crack crisis and it's spreading. Letionwise, we must be intolerant
(00:22):
of drugs, not because we want to punish drug users,
but because we care about them and want to help.
In ninete six I will sentence to thirty five years.
This is just caused my sentence to be increased for
twenty years, longer than it would have been, and it
been for pounder cocaine. In nineteen nine and five I
was simped to twenty years. My loving year daughter was
(00:45):
molested while I was imprisoned at eleven years old. My
sister was barely twenty three years old and a mother
of three young children, and Eugenia had been sentenced for
powder cocaine senters. We've been less than half of the
ones she received. Why did we do that? Because we
were frightened. It was a reaction. There was a misperception
that crack cocaine was something different chemically than what powder
(01:06):
cocaine was, and Congress created this disparity, which was a
hundred to one between crack and powder cocaine sentences, and
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 at present for decades and
has helped decimate mostly urban families. The legacy of this
(01:26):
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 hasn't.
It failed, doesn't save lives, doesn't reduce crime. So what
does it do? It protects the status quote. The status
quote is white privilege. It wasn't just a tragedy that
(01:51):
we lost one great person weeds. We lost a lot
of great people. Drugs were bad, fried your brain and
drug Elizabeth Monster's young men like me who hustle became
soul villain and drug addicts la more fortitude. How did
this happen? It all started the mere months after Limbias died.
Is the most profound and troubling part of the mixed
(02:13):
legacy of Limbias. I concluded that limbias Is death was
the single most important date in the history of drugs
in the United States since the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous
uh in June, other Nex and Lembis, the mixed legacy,
mandatory minimums, and maximum impact. How the death of Bias
(02:35):
changed the criminal justice system. So You've had people for
you know, minimal drug crimes languishing in prison for years
and years, uh, for no good. Um. The federal mandatory
something saying um even to this day has been a
(03:01):
horrible outcome for for America and for for so many
Americans and largely African American. That's Jay billis prominent ESPN
college basketball and 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
(03:24):
understands the impact lens death has had on the federal
drug legislation and the criminal justice system in the United States.
I can't think of of anything more tragic than you
pile onto a tragedy with multiple tragedies that have tentacles
that uh keep going out. You know, families being ruined.
(03:46):
I mean, it's awful. It's awful. One sad part is
the story of Dorothy Gaines. Gaines was a nurse and
pete mom when police rated her home in Mobile, Alabama
in August. Gaines claimed she didn't know that her then
boyfriend was involved, a courier for a drug deal. He
was living with her at the time. No evidence was
found that Gains herself had sold or even possessed drugs.
(04:07):
The state of Alabama dropped its case against her, but
the federal prosecutors charged up 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. Yeah, before the arrest. My life was I
thought was perfectly so, but just a three We had
a lovely life. Nothing unless my cheer was involved. I've
(04:29):
never drink. I've never been to a club in my life.
Everything I did I did it with my children, boy Scout, girl,
scout uh, going to movies, Everything involved my child. So
this was a big setback. When I left my kids
and they would only you know, I was the only paint,
not just when I was the only pair of my kids. Hey,
my mother was stopped from counseling. I was working at
(04:51):
the hospital as a nurse, so you know, everything gets
went down the drain. At that moment, at gains of
sentencing here in, her nine year old son Philip jumped
at the lap of the judge, leading for her mom
to come home. He had written a letter to the
judge asking to set her free. Dear judge, would you
help my mom? I have no dad and my grandmam
(05:11):
have cancer. I don't have anyone to take care of me,
my sisters and my niece and nephew, and my both
days coming up on October and I need my mom
to be here on and for the rest of my life.
I would cut your dash and wash your car every day.
Just don't send my mom off the piece. Please don't.
Let's play did not work games received a sentence of
(05:34):
nineteen years and seven months. After all, the judge was
bound by the mandatory minimum requirements and could not alter
her sentence. And when I was still the twenty years,
every sister day, he's not a prison doing for my life,
(05:57):
just been to don't and how much of how much
of his behavior do you figure it's related to what
happened to you why hundred See what bast time I
tried to kill himself while I was gonna He said
it simple. It took her all with those oh. Gain
(06:21):
spent six years in prison before her sentence was commuted
by President Clinton in two thousands. During that time, her
oldest daughter was forced to leave college to take care
of her two siblings and raise her own two children.
Soon after, at least from prison, Gains became an advocate
for sentencing reform. She wan't release from prison with the
help of such groups as Family Against Mandatory Minimums and
(06:43):
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, the group's executive director.
There's no checks and 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
(07:04):
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 prosecutors
seeks and gets a conviction on it. Says I can't
do anything about it. I'm bound by the mandatory sentence
that Congress passed. 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
(07:26):
nobody takes responsibility. And what results from that is thousands
of injustices. Because of that 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
(07:46):
who are simply unlucky or and wise in their choices
of association. Hundreds of thousands of lives like those of
Games children were disrupted. The federal prison population soared from
thirty six thousand and so as much as two thousand.
In two thousand eleven, the population dropped to about more
(08:09):
than half of all federal prisoners are there for drug offenses,
many of either a minor criminal record before their conviction
or no record at all. And it can all be
traced back to the death of Lambias. In the eighties.
I was assisted counsel to the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee
on Crime. My job was to work on federal drug laws,
(08:32):
gun control, pornography, organized crime, money laundering, and other issues.
And 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,
(08:56):
and played a major role in many of the visions
of the in writing the Anti Drug Abuse Act. Of
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
(09:17):
shows that it has it failed. That's Eric Sternly, 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 Gains and tens of thousands of others. It's
(09:38):
a role still today that he regrets having played. 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 legislation, but they were not heated,
(10:01):
and the results of this legislation weighs a great deal
on me. I've met many of the family members and
when they re released from prison. Many people who served
extremely long sentences for conducted by any other judgment does
not deserve decades of imprisonment. Here's what created Sterling is
(10:26):
concern and consternation. The Anti Drug Abuse Act was fast
tracked through Congress and signed by President Reagan within four months.
It was passed as a direct reaction to the depth
of Lambidas. The law re established mandatory minimum sentences for
first time drug offenders manufacturing or distributing cocaine. Those working
(10:47):
with five grams of powder cocaine based a five year
mandatory minimum sentence, but five thousand grams of powder cocaine
a tenure minimum sentence. Those working with five grands of
crack cocaine received a five year of mandatory minimum. With
fifty grams have received the minimum of ten year sentence.
For sentences longer than the minimum, there was no hope
(11:08):
of parole. Stirling heart right the legislation establishing mandatory minimums.
He blames in part of politics within the U s.
Congress for the problem. The Democrats saw a chance to
take control of both chambers. The legislation was born in
the Democratic leadership's recognition that this issue could be used
(11:32):
in a partisan way to retake control of the United
States Senate 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
(11:54):
the natural order if the tragedy of Len's death and
the drug issue we're seen as the area where the
Democrats had the ideas, and in that sense the legislation
was a success. The Democrats took re control of the
(12:17):
Senate in the election. 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 to He worked closely with then
Senator Joe Biden, who became chair of the committee in
He called the death of Bias a tipping point. Scott
(12:40):
Green told me, the attention and scare and shocked provided
by somebody with that kind of talent, a young guy
at the top of the world, the fact that drugs
took him away that quickly. Was it an overreaction, probably,
But a lot of good things came out of it.
For instance, the bill approved close to three million dollar
US to have drug and alcohol addicts. They give special
(13:03):
consideration to veterans and at risk youth. 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 fuel of the politics
of his death was the fact that it happened so
close to Washington, d c. Perhaps as important to this
(13:25):
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 did new and appreciated the greatness
(13:48):
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 national news media that a death
(14:11):
of the 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 or Detroit, UH, any
(14:32):
other part of the city that was any other part
of the country that was not Washington, d c um,
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. Tip O'Neill
(14:54):
was the speaker of the U S House of Representatives
when Bias died. He held from Massachusetts. Of former basketball
player and a Celtics fan, he had personal interest in
the legislation as well. My dad was an athlete. He
you know, he was captain of his own basketball team
at St. John's High School. UH played intermunal basketball at
(15:15):
Boston College. That's Tom O'Neill, tip o'neils son. 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 Buston the Boston teams ring
(15:39):
very large or didn't ring very large in his life,
To be very honest with you, I mean it was
not It was not obscure to see him at a
x X game or a Celtics game. Tip O'Neil'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'Neil to pass anti drug abuse legislation.
(16:02):
The impact of Bias's death was often brought up during
dinner at the O'Neill house, my brother. 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 body as it had overwhelmed him. Um, you know,
(16:25):
it was devastating for my mother and father. My dad
and mother both knew the the hid hip of being addicted,
but bringing it back to Bias, I mean it certainly
had an impact on my father. 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
(16:46):
that was introduced in Congress shortly after Labor Day. Congress
signed off on the bill on October. On October, President
Reagan signed the bill into law. Democrats clearly benefited from
the hasty progression of the bill. Certainly they're they're in
retrospect as a sense that this was a politically shrewd approach,
(17:08):
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 crack cocaine epidemic
(17:29):
in the late nineteen eighties and early nine 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 this was a political issue
(17:51):
that the Democrats, if they played it right, could win,
and the Democrats want big. They increased their already large
majority of 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 lambias. The
(18:13):
mixed legacy on the eighth side network. Mandatory minimums for
drug offenses arose from the War on drugs that started
in the nineties seventies with President Nixon. America's public enemy
Number one in the United States is drug abuse. It
is epidemic, and it can kill. President Nixon dramatically increased
(18:36):
the size and president of the federal drug control agencies.
He passed through measastus as mandatory sentencing and no knock warrants.
The Drug Policy Alliance a few years ago produced a
video that provides a history lesson on the War on drugs.
The group's aim, in parties, to reduce the harms of
drug use and drug prohibition. Here's how jay Z begins
the video. Six When I was coming of age, Ronald
(19:00):
get doubled down on the worn drugs that had been
started by Richard Nixon in nine drugs were bad, fried
your brain, and drug dealers with monsters. Young men like
me who hustled became so villain, and drug addicts lack
more fortitude. We'll have more on that video later. In
the eighties, First Lady Nancy Reagan introduced a just Say
(19:22):
No message as part of the War on drugs. She
too used the video to promote her message. It was
released some two months after Lambias died. Not long ago,
in Oakland, California, I was asked by a group of
children what to do if they were all for drugs,
and I answered, just say no. Soon after that those
(19:42):
children in Oakland formed are just saying no club and
now they're over ten thousands such clubs all over the country.
Before Bias done, cocaine was considered a potentially addictive drug
that made you feel energies. Cocaine's addictive quality could be strong,
and rare cases death could occur. There were high profile
cocaine related deaths in the late nineteen seventies and early
(20:04):
nineteen eighties, Lowell George, the lead singer of the rock
band Little Feet, and comedian John Belushi, a Saturday Night
Live star. Still, cocaine was not considered a dangerous drug.
Cocaine was actually a recreational drug, according to The New
York Times and several other media outlets. That's Town Cash,
(20:28):
a former agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency from nineteen
seventy three to 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 in
New York City nightclub infamous for excessive drug use by
its patrons in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties. In
(20:48):
Studio fifty four, they had instead of sugar bowls, they
had little bowls of 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 racing blade and so forth. Cocaine had
taken on this um harmless aspect, this entertainment aspect, this
ability to use it without having any bad effects. It
(21:31):
wasn't heroin, it wasn't opium. It wasn't all of the
other difficult drugs at the time, m D, M A
and LSD and all the rest of it. Until the
depth of lum bias. Well, I think it was a
shock to us all, including the d e A agents.
(21:53):
I was in Washington at that particular point in time,
and I think that the the d A agents at
the time, Uh said, coke, what cocaine? Yeah, I mean,
isn't that something that the drummers used, didn't They didn't
(22:13):
didn't didn't the musicians the snorter a little cocaine back
in the day of Jane Crooper in that group, or
did they just uh puttle around with it. But it
was not It was something certainly not harmless. And then
we said, the holy shit harmless, This stuff will kill you.
(22:38):
That arraging soon changed the way that police cocaine. Certainly
in that first year or two, when anybody mentioned cocaine,
there was a approach 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 um cocaine
(23:01):
furtherest his cash. Was a change in the perception about
athletes abusing drugs of all things, to an athlete of
his capability, Uh, that 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
(23:23):
star of the star dying of a cocaine overdose, which
just blows all the hell the theory that these guys
are let's say, less than pure. One prominent athlete of
the time managed to keep his cocaine addiction quiet for years.
Do I Goodon a picture for the New York Mets
(23:43):
Didn't won Young Award, given to the top picture in
the game for that year in a few months after
Lambis died. Goodness the Mets won the World Series during
that season, and the throws of his cocaine addiction couldn't
want the type of cocaine that killed Bias. From the
ESPN documentary Once Upon a Time in Queens So Why,
(24:04):
Gooden was quoted saying, I remember when Lambias 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 limb Bias stuff.
That's sick. But that's where I was at at the time.
I would say, hey, I want the limb Bias stuff,
(24:25):
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 limb Bias stuff. So you're
gonna die, Your family and friends are left and my
dad's saying my son died of a drug overdose. Still,
the death of Bias changed the perception of cocaine. It
was now considered a killer. That perception was amplified when
(24:47):
Cleveland Brown safety Don Rogers died from a cocaine overdose
eight days after the death of Bias. Len Bias deaths
changed the world. Uh. It took cocaine that was a
drug that was seen as quote soft like marijuana, uh
and made it hard like heroin. Uh. And and it
took away the idea that the drug problem was uniquely
(25:11):
uh poor people and disadvantaged people. Because here we had
an American prince at the peak of his career UH,
public attention uh rarely seen uh in anything including sports
on him at the time, with a wonderful family of
support that he had. UH. And he died as a
(25:35):
result of his drug use. UH. And the the the
kind of innocence about cocaine use was ripped away at
that point, UH and it became uh briah became a
threat to the to the country. Robert DuPont was the
president of the American Council of Drug Education when Byers
died in the nineteen seventies. He was the director of
(25:56):
the National Institute on Drug Abuse and a White House
Drug Zone. He relates the death of Bias to another
impactful moment in the history of u S substance abuse,
Glenn Bias. His death was the single most important date
in the history of drugs in the United States since
the founding of Alcoholics. Anonymous, Uh in June. I've never
(26:20):
seen in my fifty years in this field, Uh, the
death of any one person make a difference like that
in the way people thought about drugs. But it certainly
happened here. Uh, And it was very dramatic from one
extreme to the other. It was inevitable that pop culture
(26:42):
would be cute into action seven. The White House worked
with Motion Picture Association of America to produce a series
of visual anti drug ads. They had started running in
July that year, before feature films produced by major American studios.
One featured eighties acting icon Clint Eastwood. See this cute
little vial here, it's crack rock cocaine, the most addictive form.
(27:06):
Do you think it's the glammer drug of the eighties. Well,
that's the point of this front, the little reminder it
can kill you. And if you've got to die for something,
this sure as hell, ain't it. Those anti drug abuse
messages related to cocaine appeared to help cocaine abuse decreased
over the next decade, especially among teenagers. Also did the
number of drug cases on federal prisons a rose four
(27:30):
hundred and from here's more from jay Z, the worn
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
senses for simple possession and low level drug sales. Then
(27:52):
the FEDS made distinctions between people who sold powdered cocaine
and crack cocaine, even though they were 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, crackers still talked about as
a black problem and all. Dwayne Betts was only six
(28:13):
years old when lun Bias 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 Antis
of educational program. Since the second grade most Knights out
of Energy was youth. I was out there after more,
I was out there. This was the year through the
(28:33):
right Thing. That's the Bets reading from his poem Knights
of the Living Bass sets from his book Bastards of
the Breaking Era. The book addresses the harsh realities of
black man in society and the war on drugs. 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
(28:55):
a gun. He ended up spending nine years in prison.
So this title poem is is um. It's a poem
narrated by 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. Like Bias, Bests attended the University of Maryland,
(29:17):
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 Post. Here's more from the poem, Nights of
the Living Base has Spike had us on edge near
ready to toss a trash can through this city. Lynn
(29:37):
Bias was dead and we was lamping stone colde lamping
pockets fat because we were entrepreneurs, and so we figured
every brother man's life is like swinging the dice. While
I lived so close to caskets. After that rocketfeller wealth,
a few got crushed by Rockefeller truck loads, lock slam
(29:58):
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
dukey gold change Jordan's more. The hustle corded us and
we were down. It'll take you to ruin. Moms would say,
as if disaster wasn't that damn place those afternoons and
(30:20):
all that siren's blair. Maybe she knew that soon five
sweet and love sized packs of crack with me and
a flat nickel and the Kalaido scope of sales, a
mandatory minimum of years with home becomes God's nightmare, our curse,
(30:40):
and so the way you see bias come up in
that poem is the way um bias would have came
up in my life. It's it's just a marker for
the tragedy, and so that's how it comes up in
that poem, just like somebody for counting how they came
up and how they got involved with drugs and buy
It's it's that marker and a complicated marker too, because
(31:03):
people so dope knowing about the tragedy to bias, and
they're 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 prison. So the way
lym Bias operated in my head was was almost like
(31:24):
a fucking ghost, 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 is the fact that they actually
do ruin our community and the fact that, like um,
(31:44):
you think that the punishment that comes out of the
response to bias is death is as disastrous as as
the deaf. So you know, if you say, you know,
like how did he come up in the poem? I mean, honestly,
he comes up in a poem because he's just always there.
The ghost to bias still haunts Bets in a way,
(32:06):
or perhaps it's a motivating force. Best has become an
advocate for reforming mandatory minimum sentences. He has 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 begun a project to build what he calls
(32:27):
freedom libraries and prisons. 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 as also a fight against um Alan constoration. I'm
(32:50):
saying that, like this, this thing has been going on
for a long time. Even in my head. Best has
some ideas on how to fix the problem, which he
realizes a lot of these mandatory sentences aren't based on science,
based on the actual um psychotropic effects of drugs, but
on in fact, based on hysteria around it. And so
I think one of what needs to happen is we
(33:10):
need to have a more robust understand it of science
in this. And then the second thing is I think
that we just need a realistic assessment of um the
cost of inconceerration. You know, we have tried to assess
the cost of drug use and drugs selling. I think
that we haven't like realistically assessed the cost of incosperration,
and so when we think about incoceerration, we don't think
(33:32):
about it in the context of the human cost of incoserration.
Families Against Mandatory Minimums has been working since create awareness
about the problems in mandatory minimals. Here's Kevin Ring, the
group's executive director. Congress in ended up passing what they
call a Drug Safety Valve to exempt first time offenders
(33:53):
that had low amounts and now violence. But early on
everybody got caught in this NAT. 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
the bench because they didn't like what they were party
into doing, and so Crack was the one that early
(34:15):
on people realized these penalties were completely out of a portion. Again,
here's Jay z And in nineteen nineties and conceration rates
in the US blew up. Today, we imprisoned more people
in any other country in the world. Our prison population
grew more than nine hundred percent. When the one Drugs
began in nineteen seventy one, our prison population was two
(34:36):
hundred thousand. Today it is over two millions. Those last
numbers are from two thousand fifteen. Eric Sterling offers a
more broad perspective about the criminal injustice of mandatory minimums
during the nineties and early two thousand's, as the effort
to repeal these mandatories or reform them existed. I did
(34:57):
a lot of research. When you looked at the data,
you would find it, perhaps, uh one out of four
of the powder cocaine defendants was white, but nine out
of ten of the crack defendants were black. It was
(35:24):
one of the most egregious instances of structural racism, of
racial discrimination in the criminal law, and this involved tens
of thousands of cases a year. What drove this was
in the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Justice,
(35:48):
a focus on predominantly low level crack defendants, men and
women selling on the street, corner, selling out bodegas, selling
out of abandoned houses. These were serious offenders in some sense,
(36:10):
but these were not the global level drug traffickers that
should have been the responsibility of the US Drug Enforcement
Administration and the US Department of Justice. As an agent
of the d A. In THEES and ES, Tom Cash
saw firsthand the injustices related to mandatory minimums. If you
were to paid me a dollar for every day I
(36:32):
asked in a federal courtroom, I'd be a wealthy man.
When you started interrogating somebody for eleven hours. After eleven hours,
they will tell you anything more about this. This is
just not correct. And then you see people, some of
them doing twenty three years, twenty four years that don't
(36:54):
seem to be fair and win. That mandatory a minimum
does not give the judge um and I'm not even
sure it gives the jury. I don't think that there's
there's many jurors that would agree to mandatrate. It's not
(37:14):
like the death penalty. You know, the law allows police
officers and the ages ABI agents to not always tell
the truth, so they can indeed exaggerate and if they
tell a guy, well, you know you're gonna do twenty
(37:36):
five to life. And many people think that, uh, they're
in a in a bind, because they are in a bind.
But the question is the 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.
(37:58):
I don't approve of that. I was not allowed in
the offices that I ran, and I ran down opposite
you're listening to lembis the mixed legacy on the eighth
side network well mendium has shifted towards reducing mandatory minimum sentences.
The hard work by advocates of fair sentencing paid off
dramatically in two thousand ten. That's when President Obama signed
(38:21):
the Fair Sentencing Acting to law. The law reduced the
mandatory minimum sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cookine
from a hundred of one to eighteen and one. The
legislation also eliminated a mandatory minimum for simple possession of
crack cocaine, and since two thousand eleven it might have
been able to request reduced sentences. Bipartisan coalition of lawmakers
(38:44):
supported the Fairst Sentencing Act. Our Congress is not one
entirely responsive. Two people still had the image of crack
in their head. They knew the horror stories, crack babies,
all the media hysteria that went into that, and so
it just inertia. And then even when there was a
recognition that they should eliminate the disparity, the first proposals
(39:06):
were to increase penalties for powder cocaine 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. More positive
change related to mandatory minimums came from the first step back,
signed by President Shumpionship thousand and eighteen. The law gives
(39:27):
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 improves sentencing and laws related to
drug offenses. Here's Kevin ring. Yeah, it was really important.
So when the Fear Sentencing Act passed. It was a
really hard pill for groups like Famine others to support
(39:49):
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 past
two to three years, we've seen thirty five hundred people,
(40:09):
of which were people of color, finally get the sentences
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. Still, many felt things should improve even
more for some convicted of cocaine related crime. The Judiciary
(40:31):
Committee in the US Senate in June two 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. Here, Senator Dick Durbin, in response
to a nation and panic, we passed, on a bipartisan
basis a law that imposed a hundred to one sentencing
(40:55):
disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses the Any
Drug Abuse Act of to day. To this date, it
is one of the worst votes I ever cast. The
administration of President Biden has made it clear that they
support eliminating any disparity and sentencing between crack and powder cocaine.
(41:15):
Here's Regina LaBelle, the acting director of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy, speaking at the hearing. The current
disparity is not based on evidence. He 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 past time for it
(41:37):
to end. Higher percentage of Black Americans are convicted in
federal court for crack cocaine offenses versus powder cocaine offenses,
and this sentencing disparity has caused them to receive substantially
longer average sentence lengths for comparable offenses. One who receives
such a sentence as Matthew Charles. He testified at the
Senate hearing. Here's Matthew telling his story. I grew up
(42:00):
in the cramped public housing unit in North Carolina with
a father 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.
But the next decade I was in a dark place.
I sold drugs and spent about five years in state prison,
(42:23):
but I had not yet hit rock bottom. In I
was arrested for selling two d sixteen grams a 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
or five years sentence. In two thousand sixteen, Charles was
(42:46):
released under new sentencing guidelines, establishing in the fair sentencing
that his life had turned around. At that time. I
moved to Nashville, got a job as a driver, reconnected
with family, volunteered weekly at a food pantry called The
Little Panther that Could, and became deeply involved in my church.
But Charles was not in the clear yet. At the hearing,
(43:07):
Senator Corey Booker explained, after rebuilding his life for almost
two years, in appellate court rule that Mr Charles had
been released in error. Um after the First Step Act passed,
Mr Charles was eligible for resentencing, and thank god he
was released again. I spent the last two and a
half years advocating for those left behind. I desire to
(43:30):
go to federal prison for my crimes, but I didn't
need a sentence of third or 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. Much of the testimony at the Senate
Judiciary Committee in the U. S. Congress last June focused
on eliminating the crack versus powder cocaine disparity. ASA Hutchinson
(43:52):
is the current governor of Alabama. He has served as
the director of the U. S. Drug Enforcement Agency. We
understand the science, better understand the impact. We understand the
unfairness of its supported by statistics, and that should lead
us to take the final step to eliminate completely that disparity. Here.
Senator Corey Booker did the Fair Sentencing Act. The First
(44:14):
Step Pack has brought us closer to doing a way
with this wrong. But we can't let another decade go
by without addressing uh this injustice. The Equal Act was
introduced in the Senate by Booker on January. The U.
S House passed its version of the legislation in September
two one. Having the bill could take years, and at
(44:36):
least one person feels it may not happen at all.
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. That's Eric Sterling well throughout
the legislation that led to mandatory minimums in the the
(44:56):
Justice Department greatly value this mandatory minimum sentencing as a
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
(45:21):
very reluctant to give up mandatory minimums. The Justice Department
position will put pressure on the White House not too
repeal mandatory minimums, and here Sterling discusses the political challenges
of eliminating mandatory minimums. The Republicans are not interested in
repealing mandatory minimums generally. Um all of these members and
(45:48):
senators are going to look at this issue from the
perspective of a primary opponent or a general election opponent
having a sound bite that says something like when drug
overdoses were skyrocketing in America, Senator Smith voted to cut
(46:10):
the sentences for high level crack dealers, who Senator Smith
working for you or America's dope dealing scum. So how
many times do you have to repeat that sound bite?
How many times do you have to imagine that sound
bite in your nightmares to say, I'm not voting for that.
(46:34):
So framing the legislation is going to be key. And
I'm not sure that a term like the Equal Act
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 and attracting Republican
votes in the House and the Senate and the Senate,
(46:59):
the judiciary can many hearing the last Summer feature concerns
about Republicans about recidivism rates for crack cocaine users. Here,
Senator Truck grasping drug sentencing laws are complex, they must
be fair, and they must be just, But prioritizing public
(47:19):
safety is very important. I've indicated my openness to reevaluating
the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, but I
do have some questions about how to best do this.
There are discrepancies between crack and powder cocaine in terms
of recentivism rates, addiction, and violent crime. These factors can't
(47:46):
be ignored. Still, proponents are senate reformance for those convictive
cocaine crimes want more. It involves retroactive application of the law.
So now this new build, the Equal Act that would
finally eliminate disparity to one to one, is also retroactive.
But we're hearing opposition of retro activity. There even people
who support one to one. There's some senators. Senator Cornyn
(48:08):
is a good example who has supported reforms sometimes but
doesn't support retroactivity because he feels like it undoes old
convictions or the sentences that people got. But it's really unjust.
If Congress is going to repudiate the sentences 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,
(48:32):
that's going to be a Fight. A story Ring and
Fan have promoted is about Georgi Games women we introduced
you to at the beginning of this segment. Since Lavery,
president in two thousand Games, has struggled to rebuild her life.
Her son, Philip, the one who locks the judgment to
free her mom when he was nine years old, has
repeatedly attempted suicide. Still, he later became an honorable student,
(48:54):
but then he dropped out of 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.
There have been quiet victories. Her eldest daughter, Natasha quick
college to care for her siblings and her own son
after Dorothy was incarcerated. She is now a teacher. Jangs
(49:14):
has been caring for Philip's child and four other grandchildren.
For her daughter, charl Charge still struggles from substance abuse
issues related to the time gain spending prison gain, struggles
to work and pay her bills. It's been a struggle
since I come home, Davis. I mean the work ethic
thing with you know, with that fellow thing I had
(49:35):
on my rook because I was I was commentatd but
I wasn't partner, you know, there wasn't then you get
house if you had a drug belting the record. There
was a lot going on that we had to fight through,
even with voting rights, so we I had to get
out fighting for voting, fighting behind and fighting for foodstamping.
Four years into her gain sentence, Lamont and Lawrence Garrison
just started their prison sentences in Lama received nineteen years
(50:00):
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, so en after the
twins begin their incarceration, their mother, Karen Garrison, became an
advocate for prison sentence reform. You know, what I started
(50:23):
to do was work those organizations or anything I saw
on the news that has something to do with uh
this uh crack cocaine and you know, mass incarceration and
things like that. I started to find out and Dorothy's
name would come up a lot of times. I would
mention Dorothy's name, you know, when I went places, so
that people would know that there are other cases that
(50:44):
were worse than what I was talking about or the same,
you know, stuff like in two thousand two, Garrison met
Gains at a commusation event to have been working since
then the layers of awareness about prison sentence reform. Garrison
is known as Mommy Active is for her work those
draconian laws that were coming about because of lambias. Everybody
(51:06):
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
of like that go to or resources or linked. I
(51:26):
would always make sure here being in d C when
they needed people like Darthy'll need the story to be
told or something like that. It's a story, as Jay
Billis says, that needs to be told. Games children have
also struggled with drug addiction. I'm still a suffer with
these kids that that got messed up doing these drugls
while I was going. And it's like a recycled thing.
(51:48):
It's because dripped on down to the next generation of kids.
The sad talk of games and many others is not
lost on Jay Billis ESPN basketball analysts who played for
Duke against lam Bias. Here's how look on the future
of mandatory minimums prison sentences is both gritty and grim.
But I think the short answer for me is, I
don't I'm not optimistic we're gonna we're gonna make substantial
(52:12):
progress in the short run. Um, it's been going on
a long time, and there has been uh, some some
progress over the last several years. But um, you know,
we're we're a country that incarcerates. I mean, nobody incarce
rates like we do. Uh. The answer is, you know,
for many is just lock them up and um and
(52:35):
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 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 a in
(52:56):
an efficient way. In the fact that we haven't as
a country been able to, um view it objectively and
say this is wrong. We need to change this um it.
It always saddens me thinking about it. Games tries to
communicate with her son Philip almost daily while he remains
(53:16):
in prison. His challenges extend to his own daughter, who
Dorothy is caring for. Why he's been going. He was
stay up, puilty to have the dinner no time. He
got his broke cut last year. Well in prison, Dad,
men his daughter was going to see him and we
are both got killed going to kids one child and
she's now trying to commit suicide last month herself. How
(53:43):
do you keep it together with all this? What is
your what is your foundation of what keeps you going?
I just hope that one day is going one day
we can have an enjoyment of seeing each other again
on the outside. It's just been like I been in
prison for the last thirty years. It's been like prison.
(54:13):
Oh I understand. Next on them by the mixed legacy
from Dynasty to Drop at the death of Lambis affected
the Celtics and the NBA six Celtics. That's when they
were peaking. That's when they were totally kicking ass every
night and it was the greatest show on basketball Earth
(54:34):
at the time. Well, he was clearly physically U dominant.
He was, he was mean. He had a mean, mean
en court game, and that was that was important. But
he had to have the skill set to go with it.
For to have this monster of a player, it would
(54:58):
have It would have changed every thing against the Celtics,
against the the Lakers, it would have changed it all.
We're always thinking, like, you know what, how how might
the NBA have been differently had had had he been
around when I was in the NBA. I mean, they
(55:20):
definitely had a drug problem. Yeah, I think I think
the NBA changed this whole mentality about drug It changed
the n B a drug policy all of a sudden.
It was like now that was brought people out looking
for people who were getting high. This segment was produced
by Dave Grady and Don Marcus. Like it was written
(55:43):
by Davon Grady and edited by Don Marcus. The narrator
was Jamal Williams Child. Voiceover provided by Kayden and Grady.
Technical production was provided by Octagon Entertainment. Production assistance was
produced by Kevin McNaughty, Tina Quagliarda Laren Rosh, Georgia brun
Casey Fair, Jamal Williams Kelsey Mannix and Enzo al Varano.
(56:05):
Matt Dewhurst is providing the social media assistance. Some content
provided by the Office of Senator Dick Durbin and from
the Droll 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.
More information go to go graded media dot com. This
(56:29):
has been a production of Go Graded Media and the
eight Side Network.
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