Life in Prison for Stealing Candy? Thousands of Prisoners Sentenced to Die Behind Bars for Nonviolen

[unhappycamper]

http://www.alternet.org/life-prison-stealing-candy-thousands-prisoners-sentenced-die-behind-bars-nonviolent-crimes?paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark



The number of prisoners serving life for nonviolent crimes is truly staggering.

Life in Prison for Stealing Candy? Thousands of Prisoners Sentenced to Die Behind Bars for Nonviolent Crimes
The Nation / By Liliana Segura
November 15, 2013

This past August, the Lafayette-based IND Monthly published a story about a 54-year-old man named Bill Winters, incarcerated at a medium-security prison in Epps, Louisiana. Winters, who is black, was arrested in June 2009, after he drunkenly entered an unlocked oncologist’s office on a Sunday morning, setting off a security alarm. When police arrived, he had rummaged through a desk drawer, and was in possession of a box of Gobstoppers candy. Winters was convicted of simple burglary a week before Thanksgiving, and given a seven-year prison sentence—hardly a slap on the wrist. But a few days later, the prosecutor in his case, Assistant District Attorney Alan Haney, sought additional punishment for Winters, under the state’s habitual offender law. Based on his record of nonviolent offenses, which went back to 1991 and ranged from cocaine possession to burglary, the trial court resentenced Winters to twelve years without any chance of parole. But Haney was still not satisfied. He appealed the ruling, arguing that the court had imposed an “illegally lenient sentence” and that the rightful punishment was life without the possibility of parole.

At a subsequent hearing, Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft estimated that Winters had been arrested more than twenty times, calling him a “career criminal who victimized a lot of citizens in our city.” But it seemed clear that he was more of a thorn in the side of law enforcement than a looming threat to society. His brothers, Dennis and James, testified that Winters had been homeless at the time of his offense and that he had a history of addiction; James had overcome his own drug problems and said that he would be willing to “take [Winters] in and work with him.” A former Lafayette police officer who had once worked at a correctional facility where Winters was held, said that although he did not know him well, Winters “didn’t cause problems” and had potential for rehabilitation. But this past summer, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals issued its decision: “The state asserts that because of the defendant’s particular multiple offender status, the law mandates a minimum sentence of life in prison without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence. We agree.”

Dennis Winters was incredulous when he heard the news about his brother. “What? This makes no sense,” he told IND Monthly. “I don’t understand what these people are trying to do. He’s not a violent person. He’s fragile. He wouldn’t hurt anybody, except maybe for himself. I just don’t get how they’re going to give him life for some Gobstopper candy.”

Today, Winters joins hundreds of Louisiana prisoners sent to die in prison after committing similarly nonviolent offenses, from drug possession to property crimes. The national numbers are tallied in a major new study released today by the American Civil Liberties Union, titled “A Living Death: Life without Parole For Nonviolent Offenses,” which documents scores of cases with echoes of Winters’s story. Across the country, defendants have been given life without parole for such crimes as having a crack pipe, “siphoning gasoline from a truck” and, inanother Louisiana case, shoplifting a $159 jacket.

[bemildred]

1. Gotta keep those prisons full. Real good money in that. nt

[unhappycamper]

2. Another article today: Louisiana parish votes to save library fund after commissioner’s rant about ‘

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/16/louisiana-parish-votes-to-save-library-fund-after-commissioners-rant-about-teaching-mexicans-how-to-speak-english-there/

Louisiana parish votes to save library fund after commissioner’s rant about ‘teaching Mexicans how to speak English’ there
By George Chidi
Saturday, November 16, 2013 23:11 EST

John Chrastka’s brigade of pissed-off librarians came into the game late in the Louisiana parish ballot referendum defunding libraries for jail money.

But the social media blitz appears to have paid dividends, both for library funding in Lafourche parish (Louisiana’s term for a county) and for the profile of his political action committee, EveryLibrary. Voters on Saturday rejected by about a five to four margin a ballot initiative to cut library funding to finance the construction of a new jail, a move that would have quickly sent the libraries into deficit.

“It really woke us up when we realized that the library would be defunded to build a jail,” Chrastka, the executive director of EveryLibrary, told Raw Story. The referendum came across their radar after news reports surfaced of inflammatory comments by Lafourche Parish council chairman Lindel Toups.

“They’re teaching Mexicans how to speak English,” Toups told the local Tri-Parish Times, referring to a Spanish-language segment of one library branch. “Let that son of a bitch go back to Mexico. There’s just so many things they’re doing that I don’t agree with. … Them junkies and hippies and food stamps (recipients) and all, they use the library to look at drugs and food stamps (on the Internet). I see them do it.”