Evans grew up on the west side of Rockford, Illinois, and his father died when he was young. He graduated from high school and served as a medic in the U.S. Army for two years, returning to Rockford after receiving a general discharge. Evans worked at his stepfather’s gas station and for a cleaning service.

According to prosecutors, Evans joined a large drug ring in Rockford in April 1992. The drug ring sold crack and powder cocaine out of various drug houses in Rockford and was highly organized, with several levels of management, including runners, lookouts, and supervisors. The members of the operation owned guns and carried them on a regular basis. Although he had participated in the conspiracy for only a year (until his arrest in 1993 at age 21), he was convicted as part of a much larger drug conspiracy case involving 20 defendants. He was convicted of conspiracy to possess powder and crack cocaine with intent to distribute, in part on the basis of the testimony of co-defendants who received sentences ranging from 60 to 132 months in exchange for their cooperation. Evans was held accountable for the entire amount of drugs sold by the conspiracy during his one-year involvement, and the judge accordingly attributed 40 kilograms of crack cocaine to him. The judge enhanced Evans’s offense level for sentencing purposes based on his supervisory role and possession of a gun. Evans’s co-defendant was convicted of 172 using a firearm during and in relation to a drug offense, but there were no charges that the defendants committed any specific acts of violence as part of the case.

Although he had no criminal history, Evans was sentenced to mandatory life without parole in 1994, when he was 23 years old. Judge Philip Reinhard, the sentencing judge, told Evans that he “would not have faced the same penalty had this prosecution been brought in state court,” and said he thought the punishment was excessive:

I have been on the bench and participated in criminal cases in other capacities for almost 30 years, and a life sentence is generally reserved for someone who’s killed somebody else or severely injured somebody or tortured somebody or for a person who’s committed many violent acts. It just seems to me that the consequences that you face are rather severe for a boy who’s 23 years old, graduated from high school, went into the military, got out of the military, and got involved in this organization for a period of one year and now faces a sentence for the rest of his life, unless the laws change. And I am concerned over that, but I have no choice in the matter.

Evans would have been sentenced to 20 years if crack and powder cocaine were sentenced equally. Judge Reinhard, a Republican appointee, emphasized that the sentence was the result of the Sentencing Guidelines and the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, which was 100-to-1 at the time, but he had no choice as the sentence was mandatory:

[Y]ou have received a sentence that has been set by the Sentencing Guidelines. These Guidelines are mandatory. They take the discretion…from me in this case under the facts once the Guidelines are calculated…. The United States Supreme Court has upheld life imprisonment for distribution of certain amounts of crack cocaine, [y]et I believe there is some validity to the fact that crack cocaine and powder cocaine should not have that great a disparity. In this case, for the amounts that you have been found to be responsible for, if crack and powder carried the same sentence, you would be facing a 20-year sentence. That still is a long sentence. It still is a great punishment, but there is a disparity. That’s what the law is. That’s what I’m obliged to follow.

Marcus is 41 years old and has been imprisoned for 20 years. He says that he has become a different person in the two decades he has been imprisoned. “From 21 to 41 who is the same person?” he asks. “I’ve grown up in prison. This is where I matured,” he said. “I’m no threat to society… [S]eeing me die in prison benefits who? I’m a loving, caring human being. I have family and friends who love me, and this needs to end for all of us.”

Click here to view original ACLU article (Page 172).