Lewis was arrested with two others during a drug bust in February 2005. Acting on a tip, Minden police were conducting surveillance of a residence. Police saw Lewis, his girlfriend, and a friend leave the residence and followed them as they drove to Lewis’s parents’ house in two cars. There, police searched Lewis’s girlfriend’s car, in which they found scales and 350 grams of crack cocaine zipped inside her purse. No drugs or paraphernalia were found on Lewis or in his home. Police returned to the residence that had been under surveillance, where they found a plastic bag containing cocaine residue and items prosecutors said could be used in the manufacturing of crack cocaine (a Pyrex dish, a box of baking soda, and a whisk). Lewis chose to go to trial to fight the charges against him. His three co-defendants—including his girlfriend—testified against him in exchange for dismissal of the charges against them or reduced sentences. Lewis was convicted at trial of distribution of more than 28 grams but less than 200 grams of cocaine.

Lewis was originally sentenced to 20 years in prison, but he was subsequently sentenced to mandatory LWOP as a third-strike offender because of two prior convictions for selling $20 worth of cocaine to undercover agents in 1997, when he was 17 years old, and again in 1998, when he was 19 years old; he was convicted of these offenses in 1998 and 2000.

Now 34, Lewis has been incarcerated for eight years. “Words can’t explain the pain I endure here daily…It’s like staring death directly in the eyes every day,” he says. Lewis, who dropped out of school after completing the eighth grade, is studying for his GED and has completed substance abuse, anger management, and Bible study courses in prison. He calls his family every other day, and says he is deeply pained by the prospect of never reuniting with them outside prison walls.

His mother, DeLoice Lewis, said that she has been so devastated by her son’s sentence that is has driven her to contemplate suicide. She said, “At one time, I say, I wish I could just drive into a river. And it would take it away, the hurt that I was having. The hurt that it was doing to me. I just wanted to drown at one time…I was really ready to commit suicide. That’s the only thing I could think of, ’cause I couldn’t help my child.” She says that holidays, family birthdays, and Mother’s Day are extraordinarily difficult. “Those are days I break. I break. I just have to fall down and start praying and crying and telling God to give me the strength to make it through that day,” she said. The stress of her son’s incarceration and sentence has caused her to lose nearly 100 pounds.

Lewis’s 72-year-old father, Willie, told the ACLU, “It’s been hard. Old man like me, you know, have to take something like that…I stay awake most nights just thinking, thinking, thinking…It done took its toll a while.” Willie cries every time he visits his son, and he sobs when he talks about him. “I go down there and see him. I can’t hardly stand it, leaving, but I know I have to go,” he said.

Click here to view original ACLU article (Page 141).