A Tale of Two "Drug Dealers": Giuliani's Friend and Me

I want to share with you a story about two so-called drug dealers, one, a friend of presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, the other, yours truly.

Mr. Thomas Ravenel, Guiliani's South Carolina Campaign Chairman, was indicted last year and recently pled to federal charges of possessing cocaine with intent to distribute. He received a sentence of ten months in prison.

I am a formerly incarcerated person now working for the Drug Policy Alliance; prior to my incarceration I was an administrative assistant at the University of California, in Davis. I was sentenced to ten years in prison -- more than 10 times the penalty received by Mr. Ravenel. Despite this discrepancy, our "criminal" conduct is virtually the same.

I went to prison on April 6, 2000, for conspiracy to distribute LSD. While the government has its own version of what happened, essentially my role in the offense was to have supplied a good friend of mine with a significant amount of LSD -- enough for me to reasonably think he was either throwing major parties, or was a small-time dealer.

However -- and this is crucial -- the aggregation of amounts under conspiracy charges means that the total amount of LSD I had arranged for him to get over a two-and-a-half year period was treated as one lump sum, which turned a relatively minor case into a major one and garnered me a ten year sentence. I don't begrudge my sentence too much, it could have been a lot worse: the prosecutor argued for 30-to-life because I was unwilling to cooperate with the authorities, i.e. "snitch."

It didn't help that I wasn't a "drug dealer" in the common understanding of the oft-used term, which invokes shady dealings by questionable, often violent characters. Instead, I was that guy you knew back in college who had a knack for "finding" things, legal or not. Unfortunately, in our flashy culture, the "drug dealers" that I could be categorized with are ignored in the media and in public discourse on drug policy because, as an archetype, we're relatively boring. It's a damn shame, because even though we're not glamorous, we happen to be the majority of "drug dealers" who are serving out lengthy sentences behind bars.

The majority of drug dealers prosecuted in federal courts are similar to Mr. Ravenel in terms of drug-associated actions. What makes Mr. Ravenel decidedly different than the majority of federally prosecuted drug dealers, however the following: he has strong ties to former Mayor Guiliani; is a millionaire developer; held office as state treasurer for South Carolina; and received received only ten months for possession with intent to distribute cocaine, despite admitting to cocaine possession and use for more than 25 years.

I imagine Mr. Ravenel was distributing cocaine to his friends for a significant portion of that time, much like I was distributing LSD to my friends. I also imagine that, for that same portion of time, he was rich while yours truly was (and remains) poor.

That's not the only place we part company though. My prosecutor argued for the stiffest sentence possible, despite skepticism from my judge about the necessity of a long prison sentence. In Mr. Ravenel's case, the prosecutor argued for a low-end sentence, despite skepticism from the judge. What a difference having money, connections and fame makes with the prosecution of drug cases! In most cases with "drug dealers" like myself, prosecutors argue for the stiffest sentences possible, to "encourage" cooperation with the authorities.

In the final analysis, Mr. Ravenel is clearly not being treated equally with the rest of society as concerns drug law violations. The aggregation of drug amounts that he possessed and distributed to his friends over the course of almost three decades would clearly qualify him for a mandatory minimum of ten years. Odds are, if he was black and/or poor, he would get at least that amount of time. But more than likely prosecutors would allege one of his "co-conspirators" (a.k.a. his friend) cooked the coke into crack. Then Mr. Ravenel, the poor minority with a federal defender or pro bono lawyer, would be looking at a 30-to-life sentence. Any attempt to reduce his sentence would be decried as either being a travesty against justice or returning an "offender" to our communities to further victimize the public.

This cry was given by Acting Attorney General Mukasey recently at a House hearing on reducing the 100-to-1 disparity of sentences for crack offenders, who have been grossly over-punished for a particular form of cocaine, a practice that was implemented in a racist fashion (a majority of crack dealers and users are white, but a majority of crack cocaine cases are brought against blacks). Where is Mukasey's shrill cry of danger to the community in Ravenel's case?

Once again, we can remember these wise words: drugs don't discriminate, but our drug laws do. If only I had been a well connected millionaire... but then I wouldn't be able to share this personal experience. This experience demonstrates the consequences of drug prohibition: there are hundreds of thousands of people behind bars who have acted similarly to Mr. Ravenel, except they are poor, members of a minority group, most likely aren't friends with Rudy Guiliani, and as a result are in prison for a whole lot longer.

Comments

[drumz]

More class warfare brought to you by your local GOP.

[dadw5boys]

Money and Connections.

From the Bill of Rights:
When corruption becomes to much those who can must rebel and replace the Government with one more protective of Americans rights!!!

[i1der2]

There is no rational reason why anyone should ever be arrested for something that they smoke, eat, snort , or inject.

There is no rational reason to hold a limited hangout view of our immoral drug prohibition laws, either.

It's way past time to legalize freedom in the so-called land of the free.

[oldpotsmuggler]

Dude, I understand every word you're saying, and can still state in all honesty that I did far more time than both of you put together, and got mine for weed.

Hey, bring on the rich, powerful white guys going down for blow, or whatever. Even if they get short bits, they're still hating it, and their people are always as shocked and outraged as yours and mine were. The first time any and all of them hear about a full cavity drug search they cross the line to being anti prohibition.

Yeah, lock up all of the rich old white bastards so that we can get this problem fixed once and for all.

[MysticMichael]

It's true: the drug laws in the U.S. are completely whacked, with penalties that are grossly, ridiculously over the top. Mostly the product of political pandering and over-reaction to the ignorance and paranoia of Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public.

I myself came close to getting busted for LSD (that didn't even belong to me!) in 1975 . Had that happened, I might well have suffered the fate that you did. There but for the grace of God...

[nero999666]

This was a great article. The strangeness of it is that there are hardly any comments for such a true and existing tragedy as there is today between drug sentences as well as prisons. The reality of how the rich are usually afforded better treatment, better housing in prison, (low security work camps with tennis courts) and better legal representation, all because they can afford to buy their way out of everything, is an abuse amongst thousands of abuses that should be ended in the justice system.

The few token rich who do long stretches are put out there to show that the system itself works, when in fact it doesn't work. I applaud the author here for writing such a great piece, and am quite shocked that it garnered little to no attention from people who read and post here. The system itself is one of the worst on the planet, and affords almost no one the opportunity to get out and actually get work after they are released, thus repeating an endless cycle for ex-convicts of going back from whence they came, which is prison, with no way and no hope to ever get out.

Great article, possibly wrong timing, as everyone is basking in the glow of the Obama speech, and has little too no time to talk about a serious problem in America, which is the oft tainted and severely abusive Justice system. Thank you for writing what should be said over and over and over until we come to a consensus in the USA that justice is never served, except of course - if your rich. Then you are always served well. .