“The Sentence” shows the dark side of mandatory sentencing

“The Sentence” shows the dark side of mandatory sentencing October 15, 2018

 

In 2008 there was an ominous early morning knock on the door of the Shank family home in Lansing, Michigan. Cindy, mother of Autumn (6), Ava (2) and Annalise (under a year), and wife to Adam, answered the door. Federal agents were there to arrest Cindy on conspiracy charges related to the time she was a live-in girlfriend to a drug dealer named Alex. After Alex’s murder state and federal charges were brought against Cindy; as the girlfriend she was charged with the same offences that Alex would have faced. Those charges were dropped, however, because she refused to accept plea deals for crimes she did not commit.

But the feds persisted. After her arrest they offered a plea deal: 13 years for pleading guilty. Cindy refused because she did not commit the crimes. She was found guilty at trial and sentenced to a mandatory sentence of 15 years. She admits she knew about Alex’s activities and she did not report them.

The film, by Cindy’s brother Rudy Valdez, opens with scenes of Alex and his daughters talking to their mom on the phone.  This scene is repeated over as the years pass.

Filmmaker Rudy Valdez and his sister, Cindy Shank

Thanks to HBO

“The Sentence,” winner of the Audience Award at Sundance in January 2018, focuses on the mandated sentence that Cindy received and how the severity of it affected her children, her marriage and her family.

But it is impossible not to consider that she was arrested six years after Alex was murdered and for his crimes; she did not commit any of them. With all of the federal crimes committed in the US, the feds worked all those years to arrest Cindy – the girl friend. But she knew about his activities and didn’t say anything; this is also contrary to law. (Punishing “girlfriends” for actions committed by their boyfriends is being reviewed but so far nothing.) Cindy accepts responsibility for this. But this film is also an indictment on the war on drugs that no one is winning, and everyone is losing. It is also an indictment of mandated sentencing guidelines that neuters the discretionary roles of judges and fills prisons but does nothing to stop the war on drugs. This plainly told but compelling film is also an indictment of the prison industrial complex in the United States that warehouses inmates for profit, squanders resources and costs the taxpayers billions.

When Cindy’s appeals ran out she petitioned for clemency in 2016. 36,000 inmates (sentenced for non-violent crimes related to drugs) qualified for clemency but then President Obama granted clemency for only 1,600. Cindy’s journey, her determination to do well despite everything, is a human triumph.

And the U.S. prison mill just keeps on grinding away.

 

 


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