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Veteran’s Conviction of Life in Prison for Cannabis Could be Lifted

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Veteran’s Conviction of Life in Prison for Cannabis Could be Lifted

Veteran’s Conviction of Life in Prison for Cannabis Could be Lifted

One military veteran who was currently serving life in prison for selling 0.069 grams of cannabis in Louisiana could soon walk free.

Derek Harris was caught selling less than $30 worth of cannabis back in 2008 to an undercover officer, which was originally paired with a 15-year sentence. In 2012, his sentence was increased to life in prison with no possibility of parole because of the Habitual Offender Law. This law dictates that anyone who is received more than one felony will face increasingly longer conviction times. The law contributes to Louisiana’s high incarceration rates and ensures that repeat felons are punished with stricter sentences.

However, Harris was recently granted a Supreme Court hearing in July, according to his lawyer Cormac Boyle, who has helped drive his case toward freedom. In that hearing, the court took Harris’ side and agreed that he “received ineffective assistance at sentencing and was entitled to a lesser sentence” in his initial trial. Harris’s legal team argued that his original attorney did not do him justice in challenging his initial sentence. According to Derek’s brother, Antoine, the original attorney was “… just silent, never once appealed it or said I don’t agree with it or anything. He was virtually just quiet, so his counsel was ineffective. And the Supreme Court ruled that he did have ineffective counsel.”

A part of Harris’ defense was that he was a substance abuser when he returned from his tour in Iraq in the 1990s. “His prior offenses were nonviolent and related to his untreated dependency on drugs,” Supreme Court Justice John Weimer wrote in an opinion on the matter.

This discussion has been a boon on Harris’s part. He wasn’t originally sentenced to life in prison, it simply became an automatic sentence when the Habitual Offender Law was passed in 2017. Boyle told CNN earlier this month that he is working with the state’s Department of Corrections on Harris’s release so that he may rehabilitate and spend time with family in Kentucky.

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