"A man I found guilty of dealing drugs died in prison. I wish I could take that verdict back."
By Paul St. Louis
July 9
Paul St. Louis is a resident of Fairfax County, Va.
Last spring, I was on a jury that found 37-year-old Frederick Turner guilty of dealing drugs. It wasn’t easy to arrive at this verdict, and the result of our deliberations gave us no pleasure. A few months later, I found out the result of our verdict was worse than I expected: Turner, a meth addict with no prior criminal convictions, received a mandatory minimum sentence of 40 years on two counts of having a firearm while dealing drugs. I was astonished; we had no idea that we were sending someone to prison for four decades. Even the man who sentenced Turner — T. S. Ellis III, a no-nonsense judge with more than 30 years on the bench — thought the term was “excessive” and “wrong.”
Turner lasted less than a year in that prison. On June 13, he was found dead in his cell at the U.S. penitentiary in Florence, Colo., a notoriously dangerous prison. The circumstances of his death are not clear.
I can’t stop wondering: Why 40 years? And why was this first-time offender, with zero history of violence, sent to one of the most brutal penitentiaries in the country, with a heavy gang presence and minimal staff to manage the extremely dangerous environment?
...
I wasn’t aware of the concept of jury nullification — when a jury finds someone guilty but chooses to acquit because the potential punishment for breaking the law is too harsh. If I could go back in time, and if I knew Turner faced 40 years, I would nullify. The sentence he received was simply unjust.
If you poll Americans on whether they know about
jury nullification, the numbers would be appallingly, deplorably low.
Obvious question: why the appalling, deplorable ignorance? Levels of knowledge or ignorance of jury nullification should be a knock-down, no-brainer litmus test of the quality of civic education in this country. Someone has really fucked up there, and that someone is probably shifting blame for the problems in this country.
For fuck's sake, already.
