Meet 57-year-old James Fulton.
Fulton has been incarcerated in Florida for more than 31 years while serving a sentence of life without parole. He previously served two short prison sentences for possession of small amounts of crack cocaine. His most serious crime is talking about buying drugs. In August 1990, Fulton conspired to buy two ounces of cocaine from an undercover police officer. Drugs never changed hands during the “deal.” It was his third drug offense. He was sentenced to natural life — the same sentence given for murder. He is sentenced to die in prison without ever buying the drugs.
Here is Fulton’s criminal history.
In March 1985, Fulton was arrested after buying or selling a small amount of heroin and cocaine. In July of that year, he was sentenced to two years in prison and two years’ probation. In 1986, Fulton violated his probation by being arrested for possession of another small amount of crack cocaine. He was sentenced to 66 months in prison. Both times Fulton was arrested, he had little more than crumbs of cocaine. The charges were more about the type of cocaine he had than the amount he possessed.
That takes us forward to 1990 and Fulton’s arrest for trying to buy 2 ounces of cocaine from an undercover police officer. He was charged with conspiracy to traffic cocaine and later sentenced to natural life in prison. He is one of many blacks given a lengthy sentence as a result of America’s anti-drug laws. Two ounces — that is 56 grams.
Criminal justice legislation supporting the war on drugs was enacted in the late 1980s. It was an understandable reaction to the landslide of drugs and drug-related violence seizing the streets of American cities. Lawmakers claimed their action would target the “big fish” drug traffickers by giving police, prosecutors, and judges the tools they needed to dismantle big time drug trade. While that sounded good, the laws were instead used to target low-level street hustlers — mostly African Americans.
With mandatory sentences applied for those caught in possession of small amounts of crack cocaine, and crack being mostly sold by African Americans, predominantly black neighborhoods were hit the hardest. The disparity in penalties for possession of “white” drugs such as powder cocaine and crack cocaine was vast. Possession of 5 grams of crack was treated as the equivalent of 500 grams of powder cocaine. That is less than a quarter of an ounce of crack versus half a kilogram of cocaine in powder form. Some judges handed out one year for every rock of crack, no matter the size of the rock, and as stated previously, most rocks were very small.
In subsequent years, most states rescinded the anti-crack laws and restored parity in their drug sentencing schemes. While that may be seen by some as an admission that the penalties for crack were excessive, these same states have done little or nothing to free people like Fulton who were sentenced pursuant to prejudiced laws that were repealed for being unfair.
After spending years unsuccessfully campaigning for lawmakers to help the thousands of inmates serving lengthy sentences as a result of the now-fixed anti-drug sentencing laws, in 2017 then-President Barack Obama took it upon himself to pardon more than 1,300 inmates serving lengthy drug sentences in federal prisons — all of this in an attempt to correct the prejudiced sentencing practices of the anti-crack era.
Gov. Ron DeSantis should follow the cue of Obama and grant mass executive clemency to Fulton and others like him serving draconian sentences for petty drug crimes. Doing so would save money and offer a chance at redemption for nonviolent offenders. Fulton is guilty of a series of minor drug infractions. He has been in prison since 1991 and as of now has no hope of ever being released. He is guilty of little more than thrice-repeated poor judgment when he was in his 20s. He was never one of the kingpins. A natural life sentence is unjust.
It’s time for someone to help Fulton get a sentence that fits his crimes.
Robert Lefleur works as a prison consultant.
