In early April, news emerged that 46-year-old fast food restaurant worker John Horner was sentenced to 25 years in prison for selling $1,800 worth of painkillers.
Sadly, the father of three is just one example of a drug addict put away for decades because of a mandatory minimum sentence.
A lot of drug crimes like Horner's carry mandatory minimum sentences that force judges to give harsh punishments even if they want to show mercy to vulnerable defendants.
There's been a push to do away with mandatory minimums, which critics call both unethical and expensive. Recently, a group of celebrities including the Kardashians, Demi Moore, and Jim Carrey called on President Obama to rethink the nation's "enforcement-only War on Drugs."
The advocacy group Families Against Mandatory Minimums is trying to reform these Kafkaesque drug laws by telling the stories of families impacted by them. We asked FAMM to share some of the most outrageous sentences handed down.
Scott Earle got 25 years in prison for selling painkillers to a beautiful woman.
Scott Earle got addicted to painkillers after a high school sports injury. As an adult, he was still an addict but managed to hold a full-time job at an auto dealership in Florida.
Earle went his local emergency room in 1995 for a painful diverticulitis attack and was given Vicodin. Days later, Earle met a beautiful woman at a bar who turned out to be a police informant.
She asked him to give her Vicodin for her back pain, and he eventually hooked her up with a friend of his who gave her 100 pills at a time.
The state of Florida initially passed mandatory minimums to target violent drug trafficking operations, FAMM's Florida director Gregory Newburn told Business Insider. This law has an unfair impact on people who sell painkillers, which come in pill form and weigh more than drugs like cocaine.
"What happens is it's almost universally the law of unintended consequences," Newburn says.
The judge in Earle's case, Mark Speiser, seemed to agree his sentence was unfair. "I have to express my deep concern about this particular situation," Speiser said at sentencing, according to FAMM. "This punishment does not fit the crime."
When he was just 19, Ronald Evans got life in prison without the possibility of parole.
When he was still a teenager in 1993, Ronald Evans got life in prison without parole after being dubbed a "leader" of a conspiracy to distribute heroin and cocaine.
Evans was raised by a single mom in Norfolk, Va. and joined the drug conspiracy when he was just 15.
He started out as a "lookout" who made $50 a day and later moved on to distributing drugs.
Prosecutors estimated the amount of drugs he was responsible for based on testimony from his co-defendants, and gave him the life sentence based on that amount and the assertion that he was the "organizer" of the conspiracy. Evans, who's 39 now, has already spent the majority of his life behind bars.
Telisha Watkins got 20 years in prison for setting up a single sale of crack cocaine.
When Telisha Watkins was 33 years old in 2007, she got a 20-year prison sentence for arranging a cocaine deal for an old neighbor who was actually a police informant.
Watkins thought the deal she was arranging just involved cocaine, but it turned out there was also crack in the package.
She was then given a sentence that was three times as severe as it would have been if she'd only arranged a cocaine sale, according to FAMM. Watkins also got a severe sentence because she had three prior drug convictions.
Watkins had a troubled life. She was addicted to drugs by the age of 14 and dropped out of high school after her freshman year because she was pregnant. Her brother was murdered in 1994, and she appears to have spent most of her life struggling with drug addiction.
Her projected release date is 2024. The dealer who actually sold the drugs was released from prison in March 2008.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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