24-Year-Old Gets 3 Life Terms in Prison for Witnessing a Drug Deal: The Ugly Truth of Mandatory Drug [View all]

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http://www.alternet.org/drugs/155794/24-year-old_gets_3_life_terms_in_prison_for_witnessing_a_drug_deal%3A_the_ugly_truth_of_mandatory_drug_sentencing/

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Clarence Aaron is serving three life terms for a small-time college cocaine deal, another victim of heinous mandatory drug sentencing laws.


This is a simple truth: the United States is the only country in the first world that imposes life sentences to teenagers for small-time, non-violent drug offenses. In fact, the American legal system does so with alarming regularity, spending $40 billion a year to lock up hundreds of thousands of low-level dealers. The practice began when Ronald Reagan declared a "War on Drugs" in 1986, and has spread steadily since then. The following year, Congress enacted its federal mandatory sentencing guidelines, which automatically buried tens of thousands of low-level, non-violent drug offenders in the belly of the beast for decades—even for multiple life terms. Just ask Clarence Aaron, inmate number 05070-003.

At the age of 24, Aaron was sentenced to three life terms for his role in a cocaine deal. That's effectively three times the sentence imposed upon Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square in 2010. Aaron was a student and football player at Southern University in Baton Rouge. He'd never been arrested. In 1992, he made the mistake of being present for the sale of nine kilograms of cocaine and the conversion of one kilo of coke to crack. Aaron would have earned $1,500 for introducing the buyer and seller. He never actually touched the drugs.

Though his role was minor, Aaron received the longest sentence of anyone involved in the conspiracy when he refused to cooperate with authorities. His case gained national attention in 1999, when he appeared in "Snitch," a PBS Frontline documentary about prisoners serving long sentences after refusing to turn informant. Since then, a loose, bipartisan coalition of lawmakers and civil rights activists have championed efforts to have President Obama commute his sentence. But it’s now 2012 and Clarence Aaron is still locked up, despite the fact that the Federal Prosecutor’s Office that tried the case and the sentencing judge have supported immediate commutation. US District Court Judge Charles Butler, who sentenced Aaron, recently wrote, "Looking through the prism of hindsight, and considering the many factors argued by the defendant that were not present at the time of his initial sentencing, one can argue that a less harsh sentence might have been more equitable."