Huffington Post - 11/13/2013
Saki Knafo and Ryan J. Reilly
Robert Booker admits that he didn't really need the money he got from
drug dealing. He grew up in a two-parent, middle-class family in
Detroit in the 1970s, and his job as a lifeguard for the city's parks
department paid "good money." But the drug business paid more, and by
the late 1980s nearly all of his friends were showing up to the pool
with new cars and expensive sneakers. "I was smarter than the average
cat, and I was like, 'If they could do it, I could do it easy,'" Booker
said by phone on Monday from the Federal Correctional Institution in
Schuylkill, Pa. "I left lifeguarding and started hanging around."
Twenty-five years later, at 47 years old, Booker is two decades deep
into a life sentence in federal prison for three related, nonviolent
drug crimes: possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine,
conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute crack cocaine, and
operating a "crack distribution house." Although a trial judge initially
sentenced him to 20 years in prison, the prosecutor filed two separate
appeals, ultimately triggering an automatic sentencing mechanism that
forced a federal judge to send Booker to prison for the rest of his
life.
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