SC man gets life sentence for $10 crack deal

Unbreakable

Unbreakable

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A 28-year-old Cherokee County man who sold $10 worth of crack to an undercover informant has been sentenced to life in prison without parole under the state's repeat offender law.

Prosecutors say James R. Byers Jr. was sentenced Wednesday after he was convicted of third offense distribution of crack cocaine and distribution of crack cocaine within a half mile of a school or park.

Source:
http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=14490187


Ain't that a bitch
 
Unbreakable said:
A 28-year-old Cherokee County man who sold $10 worth of crack to an undercover informant has been sentenced to life in prison without parole under the state's repeat offender law.

Prosecutors say James R. Byers Jr. was sentenced Wednesday after he was convicted of third offense distribution of crack cocaine and distribution of crack cocaine within a half mile of a school or park.

Source:
http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=14490187


Ain't that a bitch
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that seems a tad bit fucking excessive...just saying, the guy sold 10 fucking dollars worth. They need to work on that repeat offender bs.
 
That would suck, still after being busted selling crack twice he probably should have explored other career options.
 
THAT SUX. but he was warned. our prison system is so screwed up. it's a money making scheme to get more moneyout of the state's government. i think in texas they get almost 200. per day per inmate. that's a lot of rock, right? but yeh, that's all messed up.
i can't pick up a paper or turn o the news w/out reading about more schools shutting down, budget cuts, jobs going bye-bye, art and music programs disappearing, et. al...
here's one for thought: build MORE schools, offer more FREE help to those who need it, legalize marijuana, get the really bad, toxic, lying,kk conniving, scheming politicians out of office, and put fewer ppl in jail, esp the non-violent ones. create more jobs make some kind of program where repear offenders can work and pay back their due to society. i think recidivism (going back to jail) for those who don't get treatment is lie 75 %. just sad...
 
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maybeimamazing said:
THAT SUX. but he was warned. our prison system is so screwed up. it's a money making scheme to get more moneyout of the state's government. i think in texas they get almost 200. per day per inmate. that's a lot of rock, right? but yeh, that's all messed up.
i can't pick up a paper or turn o the news w/out reading about more schools shutting down, budget cuts, jobs going bye-bye, art and music programs disappearing, et. al...
here's one for thought: build MORE schools, offer more FREE help to those who need it, legalize marijuana, get the really bad, toxic, lying,kk conniving, scheming politicians out of office, and put fewer ppl in jail, esp the non-violent ones. create more jobs make some kind of program where repear offenders can work and pay back their due to society. i think recidivism (going back to jail) for those who don't get treatment is lie 75 %. just sad...
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the country is going down the shitter.
 
Thats messed up, sure this guy had a choice but being an ex con (and I am betting a minority) and likely suffering from substance dependence the options in life he is left with were likely pretty minimal.

It is fucked up to sign someone who hasn't even hit their 30's life away over a tiny bit of crack and a bullshit three strikes rule that seems to bite small time drug offenders in the ass more than anyone, especially when it comes to crack cocaine. No parole?! I mean for fucks sake if they want to make a point and give him a lengthy stretch I can half see how out of touch idiots might see this as a reasonable deterrant, but they have not even given this man an oppurtunity to prove he has redeemed himself and re enter society.

According to one source from 2000-2003 the average life expectancy of a male at birth in South Carolina is 71.6 years, this means that at 28 years old if he was to hit the average life span he has not even lived 40% of his life, and now he is forced to spend the rest in a cage.... fucked up, especially when you consider the amount of time hes already been locked up for if this is his third offence!
 
^Yeah he's a young black male with a felony record, maybe if the government provided programs to help him get out of the crack game he would have, but most crack dealers I've known don't do it for fun, they do it cause it's really the best option for them. Obviously not all dealers are like that, but a lot of crack dealers are just doing what they have to to get by, it's hard to get work and even harder coming from the hood with a criminal record, so crime or homelessness can literally end up as someone's only options.

It's ridiculous for the state to lock someone up for years, let them out with nothing and expect them to do something other then commit crimes. If they really wanted people to commit less crimes they'd try and help people get to where they don't have to do crime to survive. All they really want is to fill the prisons.

Poor guy, the system is fucked. Especially the fact that he doesn't get parole, that seems like cruel and unusual punishment to me, but it doesn't matter what I think. The judge who sentenced him is disgusting, I thought that in 3rd strike states the sentence on the 3rd strike is 25-life. So the judge decided that 25 years (putting him in until he's 53) wasn't even long enough, and that this man was a menace without any redeemable qualities whatsoever. Awful.
 
This is just a bullshit idea. Let's think about it for a minute:

Guy sells crack once, gets some jail time which is supposed to rehabilitate him and then gets out.

Guy sells crack (again), gets some jail time which will rehabiliate him this time around, guy gets out

Guy sells crack (AGAIN), gets even more jail time because it worked so well the first time....dumb

When I was in prison I had to pay $10 per day for the cell, that's what they charge you for being in jail. When you get out they tally all the days up and send it directly to a collection agency instead of just sending it to you to pay.

When they send it to the collection agency they add 20% to the total because they had to get involved. So when I got out of prison I had to pay over $10,000 to the prison for my time there, plus I had a record and was on parole and had to pay $100 per month for the privilege of being on parole.

My point is that the whole system is set up to get money for those involved, and if you don't pay up when you're on parole they just throw you back in prison and keep tallying up the cost of your cell.
 
This is fucking sad. I couldnt imagine being sentenced to life in prison ever, let alone before im even 30. This dude was just trying to make a living (and smoke crack).

I do think it was stupid of him to get caught three damn times although i agree with most people in this thread that he probably had no other way out and i feel if i was in that situation id be doin the same thing.
 
calano22 said:
Its unfortunate. But when it's all he knows, it's not as if he was going to take become any contribution to society without help. And our legal system knows that.
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contributing to society would be spending this drug war & court fees money on drug treatment (by way of actual medical evidence) rather than hunting down low level "ingrates".

also.. if a man who sells crack does not contribute to society, then neither does a man who works at a liquor store.
 
qwe said:
i hear employers are always looking for recent convicts.
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Hehehe Qwe I love your sense of humor man.

I have 68 job applications in right now, I have to put down on all of them that I have 6 felony convictions and explain them in a space big enough to write 2 sentences, and I quote:

"Please list the contents of your record. A criminal record does not necessarily ban you from employment."

Yea, and me and Scarlet Johanssen and Natalie Portman are havin a 3 way tonight.....stupid job applications.
 
A little excessive, maybe. I think so. In fact this is very sad and frustrating. This sort of thing will continue for sometime and there is no end in sight.
 
Mora Fiend said:
When I was in prison I had to pay $10 per day for the cell, that's what they charge you for being in jail. When you get out they tally all the days up and send it directly to a collection agency instead of just sending it to you to pay.

When they send it to the collection agency they add 20% to the total because they had to get involved. So when I got out of prison I had to pay over $10,000 to the prison for my time there, plus I had a record and was on parole and had to pay $100 per month for the privilege of being on parole.

My point is that the whole system is set up to get money for those involved, and if you don't pay up when you're on parole they just throw you back in prison and keep tallying up the cost of your cell.
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wholly shit, thats epic!
you basically come out in a worse situation (to a degree for some cases i'm sure) than when you went in.
i imagine that wouldn't really fill you with faith and hope to succeed in the future...
 
misk said:
wholly shit, thats epic!
you basically come out in a worse situation (to a degree for some cases i'm sure) than when you went in.
i imagine that wouldn't really fill you with faith and hope to succeed in the future...
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Even my parole officer said that the system is set up to get people who were in prison back in by putting them in a situation that they probably cannot get out of. I was lucky and had a job set up when I got out and was able to make payments, but in an economy like this and the way things are today it's almost impossible to pay off a debt like this if you don't have money laying around, and if you're a heroin addict it's unlikely that you do.

That's why there is such a huge return rate in our prison system, they want us to go back, they want us caged just because we put substances in our body. Noone gets hurt, it's not a violent crime, and the only victim is yourself. There are obviously situations that people can get hurt, such as if you have a family and neglect them for your drug addiction and such, but I was a single male with no children, only thing I had to take care of was my dog.

Anyway...I guess that's just the way things go, sad but true.
 
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