Texan held 22 years on drug offense takes slow steps to freedom
Sari Horwitz,
The Washington Post
07 October 2015
Donel Marcus Clark, 51, and his wife, Ceyita, shared appetizers during a dinner date at TGI Friday’s in Arlington recently. They’ve rekindled their relationship but were taking their time after he spent 22 years in prison for a nonviolent drug offense.
The recently released federal prisoner sat down at his sister’s dining room table in Fort Worth. He pulled out a legal pad and began the letter he had been turning over in his mind for several months:
“Dear Mr. President, I am writing you today with the utmost gratitude to personally thank you for granting my petition for clemency on March 31, 2015. Your actions have given me a second chance to start living life normally again and mere words can’t express how truly grateful I am for your making this moment possible. The Bible says, ‘To whom much is given, much is required,’ and I vow to make the most of this unique opportunity that I’ve been given.”
He went back and crossed out the words “second chance,” replacing them with “unique opportunity.” He frowned. The change made the letter look sloppy. He tore out the page and started again. After writing the lines in neat print, he paused and took off his reading glasses.
How would he end it? he asked.
“When I read the president’s letter to me, I could hear Obama’s voice,” he said as he wrote the letter last month. “I could just hear him saying those things to me personally, particularly when he said, ‘You’ve been given a unique opportunity.’ He was saying, don’t mess it up for the guys behind you. I took that to heart.”
There is a lot to do. He has to find a permanent place to live. He has to avoid old friends who might have drugs, guns or felony records. He has to build relationships with sons who have known him only as a voice on the telephone. And he has to decide if he wants to get back with his wife, the woman who broke his heart.
He picked up the pen again.
“I vow to do many good things with the rest of my life. I realize that I am only one of many whom you have granted clemency to, but I want to assure you that I won’t let you down.
Sincerely, Donel Marcus Clark.”
Mandatory minimums
A 51-year-old who has spent more than two decades behind bars, Clark is one of 22 nonviolent drug offenders to whom Obama granted clemency in March in an effort to shorten the harsh mandatory minimum sentences imposed on thousands of mostly African-American men during the war on drugs in the 1980s and 1990s.
Those ex-convicts, along with 46 others given commutations in July, are making their way from federal prison back into neighborhoods around the country. Separately, 6,000 federal prisoners will be released at the end of the month after retroactive changes in sentencing guidelines.
After receiving Obama’s clemency letter six months ago in the Seagoville federal prison, Clark was surrounded by guards and inmates who shook his hand and congratulated him.
He was free, they told him. But freedom, he learned, comes step by bureaucratic step.
Inmates granted clemency are first moved to lower-security prisons, then to halfway houses before home confinement and, finally, probation.
At 7:25 a.m. April 30, Clark was released from Seagoville prison. “Don’t come back,” a guard said. “Don’t worry about that,” Clark replied.
He pushed open the front glass door to a bright, chilly morning. His sister and his niece were waiting in the parking lot.
“My uncle Marc is coming home!” his niece, Kristen, yelled. “A long time coming. Oh, my God!”
Clark tried not to show any emotion as he walked down the long prison sidewalk.
When he reached their car, he broke into laughter and hugged them tight.
‘Young and stupid’
Donel Marcus “Marc” Clark was known as a “square” in the southeast Dallas neighborhood where he grew up.
Raised by his grandmother after his mother died of cancer when he was 13, Clark went to church regularly and worked at a grocery store during high school. He was hired to work full time after graduating and a few years later took on a second job managing a liquor store for a friend. At 24 he married Ceyita Sampson, a neighborhood girl. They had a son and bought a house.
But Clark’s life began unraveling when he got fired after getting into an argument with his manager at the grocery store when he was not paid for doing extra work.
“I was young and stupid,” Clark said.
About the same time, his friend decided to sell the liquor store and Clark knew he was about to lose that job as well. By then he was supporting three children, including one with an ex-girlfriend and his wife’s son from a previous relationship.
When a former classmate and known drug dealer came into the liquor store, Clark noticed his new truck with new jet skis on the back. Clark asked if there was a role for him in the business.
“He said, ‘This isn’t for you,’” Clark recalled. “I wasn’t a street guy. But I told him, ‘I’ve got bills, I’ve got family. I need some help.’”
His friend offered him a job packaging the drugs and supervising the “kitchen crew” — which cooked the powdered cocaine into crack. He would get paid $1,000 a week.
continued here http://www.dallasnews.com/news/metr...-drug-offense-takes-slow-steps-to-freedom.ece
Sari Horwitz,
The Washington Post
07 October 2015
Donel Marcus Clark, 51, and his wife, Ceyita, shared appetizers during a dinner date at TGI Friday’s in Arlington recently. They’ve rekindled their relationship but were taking their time after he spent 22 years in prison for a nonviolent drug offense.
The recently released federal prisoner sat down at his sister’s dining room table in Fort Worth. He pulled out a legal pad and began the letter he had been turning over in his mind for several months:
“Dear Mr. President, I am writing you today with the utmost gratitude to personally thank you for granting my petition for clemency on March 31, 2015. Your actions have given me a second chance to start living life normally again and mere words can’t express how truly grateful I am for your making this moment possible. The Bible says, ‘To whom much is given, much is required,’ and I vow to make the most of this unique opportunity that I’ve been given.”
He went back and crossed out the words “second chance,” replacing them with “unique opportunity.” He frowned. The change made the letter look sloppy. He tore out the page and started again. After writing the lines in neat print, he paused and took off his reading glasses.
How would he end it? he asked.
“When I read the president’s letter to me, I could hear Obama’s voice,” he said as he wrote the letter last month. “I could just hear him saying those things to me personally, particularly when he said, ‘You’ve been given a unique opportunity.’ He was saying, don’t mess it up for the guys behind you. I took that to heart.”
There is a lot to do. He has to find a permanent place to live. He has to avoid old friends who might have drugs, guns or felony records. He has to build relationships with sons who have known him only as a voice on the telephone. And he has to decide if he wants to get back with his wife, the woman who broke his heart.
He picked up the pen again.
“I vow to do many good things with the rest of my life. I realize that I am only one of many whom you have granted clemency to, but I want to assure you that I won’t let you down.
Sincerely, Donel Marcus Clark.”
Mandatory minimums
A 51-year-old who has spent more than two decades behind bars, Clark is one of 22 nonviolent drug offenders to whom Obama granted clemency in March in an effort to shorten the harsh mandatory minimum sentences imposed on thousands of mostly African-American men during the war on drugs in the 1980s and 1990s.
Those ex-convicts, along with 46 others given commutations in July, are making their way from federal prison back into neighborhoods around the country. Separately, 6,000 federal prisoners will be released at the end of the month after retroactive changes in sentencing guidelines.
After receiving Obama’s clemency letter six months ago in the Seagoville federal prison, Clark was surrounded by guards and inmates who shook his hand and congratulated him.
He was free, they told him. But freedom, he learned, comes step by bureaucratic step.
Inmates granted clemency are first moved to lower-security prisons, then to halfway houses before home confinement and, finally, probation.
At 7:25 a.m. April 30, Clark was released from Seagoville prison. “Don’t come back,” a guard said. “Don’t worry about that,” Clark replied.
He pushed open the front glass door to a bright, chilly morning. His sister and his niece were waiting in the parking lot.
“My uncle Marc is coming home!” his niece, Kristen, yelled. “A long time coming. Oh, my God!”
Clark tried not to show any emotion as he walked down the long prison sidewalk.
When he reached their car, he broke into laughter and hugged them tight.
‘Young and stupid’
Donel Marcus “Marc” Clark was known as a “square” in the southeast Dallas neighborhood where he grew up.
Raised by his grandmother after his mother died of cancer when he was 13, Clark went to church regularly and worked at a grocery store during high school. He was hired to work full time after graduating and a few years later took on a second job managing a liquor store for a friend. At 24 he married Ceyita Sampson, a neighborhood girl. They had a son and bought a house.
But Clark’s life began unraveling when he got fired after getting into an argument with his manager at the grocery store when he was not paid for doing extra work.
“I was young and stupid,” Clark said.
About the same time, his friend decided to sell the liquor store and Clark knew he was about to lose that job as well. By then he was supporting three children, including one with an ex-girlfriend and his wife’s son from a previous relationship.
When a former classmate and known drug dealer came into the liquor store, Clark noticed his new truck with new jet skis on the back. Clark asked if there was a role for him in the business.
“He said, ‘This isn’t for you,’” Clark recalled. “I wasn’t a street guy. But I told him, ‘I’ve got bills, I’ve got family. I need some help.’”
His friend offered him a job packaging the drugs and supervising the “kitchen crew” — which cooked the powdered cocaine into crack. He would get paid $1,000 a week.
continued here http://www.dallasnews.com/news/metr...-drug-offense-takes-slow-steps-to-freedom.ece
