Life sentence devastated defendant, judge
Granted clemency by Obama, former inmate speaks out against mandatory minimums
When Evans Ray Jr. stood in a U.S. federal courtroom in 2007 after arranging a drug sale, a judge explained, at length, that he didn’t want to hand down the mandatory life sentence required by law.
“It is my desire not to sentence you to life,” Judge Alexander Williams Jr. said in his Greenbelt, Md., courtroom, according to transcripts. “I believe that the circumstances justify a sentence shorter than life. I further believe that there is some disproportionality between what you’ve done and the sentence of life.”
Ray, then 47, a barber with a wife, four children and two prior drug convictions, initially refused to arrange the sale. He was a middleman pushed into the transaction by a friend who turned out to be a government informant, and didn’t profit from the deal. The other defendants involved in the sale received lighter sentences. Williams tried to sentence Ray to a shorter term of 27 years, but prosecutors appealed.
The conviction was what is commonly called a “third strike,” which can trigger a mandatory minimum sentence. In Ray’s case, a life sentence it would be. After his sentencing, Ray thanked the man who ensured he would die behind bars.
“I have to own up to my own responsibility. The law says life. I’m not in agreement with it, not at all, and I know you weren’t,” Ray said, according to transcripts. “But I just want to thank you and the courts for at least trying.” Ray now considers himself “blessed,” he said — he was granted clemency in 2016 by former U.S. president Barack Obama. After 12 years, he is out, and he and the judge who gave him life are joining forces to condemn mandatory-minimum sentences.
“It had to be said,” Williams, now retired, said of his comments from the bench during a recent meeting with Ray at his office. “It didn’t sit right in my stomach.”
Ray, meanwhile, is adjusting to a life he thought he would never return to. Now in his 50s, he is living with his parents in Prince George’s County,
“It is my desire not to sentence you to life.” JUDGE ALEXANDER WILLIAMS JR.
Md., getting to know his children, holding down a job and speaking out against the law that sought to keep him behind bars for life. Mandatory minimum sentences have long troubled drug-reform advocates. First instituted by Congress during the war on drugs in the 1980s, they prevent judges from considering other factors, such as past behaviour, when handing out prison time.
Some judges don’t like them, either. Kevin Sharp, a former federal court judge in Tennessee who recently stepped down after six years, said he “didn’t sleep for several nights” in 2014 when he sentenced a minor player in a drug deal to life.
In Maryland, Williams said he presided over about 1,000 criminal cases before stepping down, and “certainly a couple hundred” involved mandatory minimums.
“None of the judges like having their hands tied,” he said.
The Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Ray, declined to comment on the case. But Del Wright Jr., a prosecutor in Ray’s case who is now a law professor at Valparaiso University in Indiana, said he didn’t think Ray’s sentence was fair — even though Wright worked for the office that asked for it.
After Ray declined a plea agreement and was convicted at trial, Wright said, prosecutors had no choice but to ask for a mandatory life sentence. The threat of a mandatory minimum is what can induce people to accept plea bargains to lesser charges, he said.
Obama made it clear that he was no friend of mandatory minimums, eventually granting clemency to more than 1,700 people. Ray was the type of candidate the Obama administration had in mind: He had limited criminal history and arguably was pulled into a conspiracy.
Sapna Mirchandani, a Maryland federal public defender, said she learned of Ray’s case during a review of hundreds of mandatory minimum sentences while searching for possible clemency applicants. “His jumped out at me,” she said. Mirchandani helped put together Ray’s clemency petition. Among the letters submitted on his behalf were some from prison officials, and one from Williams, the judge in Ray’s case.
“As I stated at the time of sentencing, and as I believe even more strongly today, imposing a life sentence on Mr. Ray for the single sale of 60 grams of cocaine base . . . amounted to cruel and unusual punishment,” the judge wrote in April 2016.
Ray was granted clemency in August.
“I am granting your application because you have demonstrated the potential to turn your life around,” Obama wrote. “Now it is up to you to make the most of this opportunity.”
It’s not clear whether U.S. President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions embrace mandatory minimums. The Justice Department didn’t respond to requests for comment.