A Black military veteran serving a life sentence for selling less than $30 worth of marijuana will be released from prison according to FOX 59. Derek Harris was arrested in 2008 in Louisiana for selling a police officer .69 grams of marijuana has been resentenced to time served. Harris has already spent nine years in prison.
Harris was initially convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison but was later resentenced in 2012 to life in prison under the Habitual Offender Law, which allows judges to impose stricter sentences on someone who’s already been charged. Prosecutors in Vermilion Parish have now agreed to release Harris from prison after the Louisiana Supreme Court granted him a new hearing last month according to his lawyer Cormac Boyle.
The Louisiana Supreme Court agreed with Harris’ argument alleging he had “ineffective assistance of counsel at sentencing on post-conviction review.”
The District Attorney’s office agreed that Harris “received ineffective assistance at sentencing and was entitled to a lesser sentence,” Boyle said according to the news station. Boyle also said Harris had a substance abuse problem that began when he got back from Desert Storm in 1990.
“His prior offenses were nonviolent and related to his untreated dependency on drugs,” Louisiana Supreme Court Justice John Weimer wrote in his opinion FOX 59 reported. Weimer also wrote that the trial judge said that was “not a drug kingpin” and didn’t fit what they thought of “as a drug dealer, so far as I can tell.”
Weimer wrote that those were the main reasons the maximum 30-year sentence was not imposed. He also said that the trial court imposed a life sentence when the multiple offender bill was passed. Boyle told CNN that he is working with the Louisiana Department of Corrections on Harris’ release and hoped to have him out soon. Once released Harris will be moving to be closer to family in Kentucky.
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