Supreme Court Nominee Just Bragged About Sending a Man To Prison Who Is Now Free.

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WASHINGTON — When Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland introduced himself to the country in a Rose Garden address in March, he told the story of one of his first assignments as a federal prosecutor. Garland described how, in the late 1980s, he helped prosecute a violent New York gang that moved to the nation’s capitol, where it “took over a public housing project” and “terrorized” the residents.

One key gang member, Richard Smith, was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years following his conviction in 1989. Smith was supposed to die behind bars. But less than a week after Garland’s White House speech, a federal judge sent the 51-year-old inmate home.

The story of how Smith went from being a federal lifer to walking free is complex — much like the nation’s sentencing laws. Smith was one of the first defendants convicted under the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which mandated a life sentence for individuals involved in major drug trafficking rings.

Smith, who was 24 when he was sentenced, was described as a “principal lieutenant” to the ringleader of a drug operation that supplied crack cocaine to dealers who operated out of the Mayfair Mansions housing complex a few miles east of the U.S. Capitol building. He was arrested with a gym bag containing 10 guns — including a firearm that qualified as an automatic weapon, which drastically lengthened his prison term. When he was sentenced, the judge said that he had participated in a kidnapping and shootout, and alleged that he even pointed a gun at a police officer’s chest on one occasion and at an officer’s face on another occasion.

Smith faced 23 counts, ranging from use of juveniles in drug trafficking to distribution of more than 50 grams of cocaine base. He was originally convicted on seven counts. Add in a substantial criminal history, and Smith was sentenced to a life term plus additional years. Later appeals and court rulings, including one from a panel that included the future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, vacated some of those convictions, including the enhanced sentence for the machine gun charge.

Continue to Full Story at Huffington Post

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