Equal Justice Matters Wall (F)
Free, Paul
Leroy Fields
LEROY FIELDS
An unemployed 30-year-old father of three, Fields was arrested in October 1999 when he was pulled over in New Orleans for a traffic violation and found to be driving a Dodge Intrepid that had recently been reported stolen. Fields says that he did not know the car was stolen and had borrowed the car from a friend named Michael Fairly, whom his state-appointed attorney failed to call as a witness at trial. Fields was never accused of stealing the car and was charged only with possession of a stolen vehicle worth over $500. The jury could not reach a verdict in his first trial, which ended in a mistrial. According to court records, his attorney called no witnesses and introduced no evidence in his one-day retrial, and the jury returned a guilty verdict after deliberating for 25 minutes.
In June 2000, Fields was sentenced to mandatory LWOP as a third-strike habitual offender because of his prior convictions for possession of crack cocaine in 1993 and simple robbery in 1986 for stealing a $90 pair of shoes from a shoe store when he was 17 years old. Fields had also been convicted of simple burglary of an inhabited dwelling in 1989, but this conviction was not used to enhance his sentence because he had not been properly advised of his rights. Fields had pleaded guilty to all three prior charges and says his prior crimes were directly related to his drug addiction and efforts to provide for his wife and young children when he was unable to find work. He tried to challenge the juvenile robbery conviction used to sentence him to LWOP, but his habeas petitions were rejected as untimely. “The court wrongfully took my life from me,” Fields said. “I felt like there was no help for me, and I was expected to die here in prison. And I still feel that…I’ll die here in Angola.”
Now 45, Fields has been incarcerated for 14 years. He describes prison as a “living hell” and says that earlier during his imprisonment, “I really wanted to give up on myself and my life…I saw no hope.” He has committed a number of disciplinary infractions in prison and reports that he has spent 12 of his 14 years in solitary confinement. Fields explains, “When I first got life, I really felt my life was over and I would die here in prison, so I really act[ed] out a lot.”
Fields says that now that he has gotten clean and developed some hope that Louisiana’s sentencing laws will change, he is a completely different person. He wishes he could have the opportunity to appear before a parole board, “to meet Mr. Leroy Fields now instead of the drug addict I once was.” If released from prison, he says, “I would work, I’ll go home and be with my family and enjoy what little life I have left in me, crime-free.”
Click here to view original ACLU article (Page 130).
RAYVELL FINCH
Finch, who is Black, was sitting with a friend on the steps of an abandoned residence next door to his grandmother and aunt’s house in February 1997. A New Orleans police officer and a DEA agent patrolling the area as part of a joint initiative to target violent crime in New Orleans arrested the young men for trespassing. Finch was visiting his aunt and grandmother, who lived next door. The officers searched Finch, a self-described heroin addict, and found eight aluminum foil packets in his sock that tested positive for heroin. A dissenting appellate judge concluded that Finch’s arrest “is more than suspect,” noting that Finch “was not issued a summons for this questionable municipal violation, because to do so would not allow arresting officers to empty his pockets.”
Finch was charged with heroin possession but was never accused of distributing the drug. He was sentenced to mandatory LWOP as a third-strike offender because of his prior convictions for possession of stolen property worth over $500 in 1993 and possession with intent to distribute 24 rocks of crack cocaine in 1994. Finch had no violent criminal history, and the court noted that “there is no indication that the defendant is a violent person.” He was 19 years old at the time of his first conviction and only 23 years old when he was sentenced to die in prison. In dissenting to the affirmation of Finch’s LWOP sentence, appellate Judge William H. Byrnes declared the sentence “clearly excessive, and designed to cause needless suffering.”
Now 39, Finch has been incarcerated for 16 years. In prison he has completed four levels of substance abuse treatment, as well as anger management, literary, and Christian ministry programs. He remains close with his mother, aunt, uncle, and cousins, and says that being separated from family “feel[s] like my soul has been pierced and assaulted.”
Click here to view original ACLU article (Page 136).
Rayvell Finch with his mother, Linda.
Paul Free with his mother, who died in December 2012.
PAUL FREE
Free was accused of conspiring with people he says he had never heard of, and also of transporting Mexican marijuana shipments from an Arizona park, though he says he had never set foot in Arizona during the previous 18 years. Two months after his arrest, Free graduated with a degree in biology from San Diego State University, and he continues to lament the lost job opportunities that were available to him at the time. According to Free, at the time of his arrest he was operating a language school under contract with the Catholic Church, and he was closing a lucrative deal with the Chinese government to sell them used steel and railroad rails.
After a trial during which Free recalls the judge fell asleep five times, Free was convicted of conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute 1,756 kilograms of marijuana, in large part on the basis of cooperating co-conspirators who testified against him in exchange for reduced sentences. Free was held accountable for repeatedly transporting hundreds of pounds of marijuana to and from California. In 1995, Free was sentenced to a mandatory minimum sentence of LWOP on account of two prior 20-year-old marijuana convictions. Free had pleaded guilty in 1974 to possession with intent to distribute three pounds of marijuana, and in 1975 to conspiracy to distribute marijuana; the same marijuana led to both convictions. He says his attorney never told him he was facing a mandatory life term.
Now 63 years old, Free has been incarcerated for 18 years. He writes of his life prior to arrest, “I had a wonderful woman, 26 years old, who agreed to marry me and start a family. Now, 18 years later, I have no children nor grandchildren.” He says it has been particularly difficult for him to be separated from family and friends. His mother died last December, and he says, “She cried many times when I spoke with her, saying, ‘I wish I could see you once before I die.’” Though they spoke on the phone at least two times a week, they had not seen each other in seven years due to her poor health and the geographic distance between them.
Free has taken many courses since entering the prison system, including classes in writing, American history, world history, legal research, electronics, and computers. He has taught GED classes and believes he had the highest percentage of successful graduates in the prison system. He says he derives special satisfaction from teaching older inmates to read. Free spends every day in the law library studying law and assists other inmates with their appeals. He reports he has succeeded in securing more than 100 years off the sentences of a few dozen prisoners, but he has failed to obtain any sentence reduction in his own case. He says, “I would tap dance out of here in a pink tutu and high heels if they would release me.”
Click here to view original ACLU article (Page 162).
*Paul’s sentence was ultimately commuted by President Obama after serving more than 20 years behind bars.