Georgians have heard a lot in recent years about criminal justice reform. Those who haven’t followed those efforts very closely may be tempted to think the idea is merely to go easier on criminals. But advocates’ real emphasis has been on the word “justice,” and the belief it isn’t being served in too many cases.
To take that notion beyond a philosophical debate requires real examples of real people harmed, not by miscarriages of justice — a phrase that connotes wrong application of laws — but by laws being carried out exactly as written. Only those examples can demonstrate the laws are misaligned with common sensibilities about what’s just.
And there may be no better example than Cindy Shank’s story, told in a new documentary titled “The Sentence.”
Cindy lived in Michigan in the early 2000s with a boyfriend who sold drugs. After he was murdered, police found drugs, weapons and lots of cash at their home. Although Cindy was not credibly accused of participating in the trafficking, she clearly knew about it. Prosecutors, however, declined to charge her.
At first.
Six years later, Cindy was married with three little girls and a job. She had turned her life around. Then early one morning she and her husband, Adam, were awakened by a loud knock at the door. Adam recalls being confused, but Cindy went immediately to embrace her girls.
Somehow, she knew: On the other side of the door, her past had caught up to her.
She was arrested and charged with conspiracy — that is, knowing about the crimes her late boyfriend committed years earlier. The federal prosecutor asked for a sentence of 89 years in prison. The judge knew better than that but couldn’t go below the mandatory minimum set by Congress: 15 years.
Fifteen years, for knowing about crimes but not reporting them. Fifteen years, for a first-time, nonviolent offender after six years of clean living. Fifteen years, with three daughters too young to understand their mother wouldn’t be around to raise them.
“Missing my daughters grow up, that’s what I was sentenced to,” Cindy says over a call from prison recorded by her brother, Rudy Valdez, who made “The Sentence” largely from home movies he made of the girls so that one day Cindy could see even a few glimpses of their childhood.
At one point, she was transferred to a prison in Florida, and her family could afford to bring her daughters to visit only once a year. The only thing more heartbreaking than watching a child visit a parent in prison is knowing all the days she goes without seeing that parent at all.
To Cindy and Rudy’s credit, they don’t argue she shouldn’t have been charged, or that she shouldn’t have been locked up at all. They are clear-eyed about her culpability and the consequences.
“What we cannot wrap our heads around as a family,” Rudy says during a radio interview also captured on the film, “is the sentence she received. It’s 15 years on paper, but her entire life has changed.”
“The Sentence” was shown at the Sundance Film Festival, and HBO bought it with plans to release it later this year. Last week, Rudy showed it at the U.S. Capitol at the invitation of Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Mike Lee, R-Utah. (I happened to be in town and attended.) The idea was to prompt change in federal mandatory minimum laws and restore more sentencing authority to judges.
“As a Republican,” Lee, a former federal prosecutor himself, said before the screening, “I like to think I care about liberty. Liberty is no more threatened than when government puts someone behind bars for years, perhaps decades.”
He might have added: and when no one, not even the judge in the trial, can do anything about it. That’s not justice; to the extent it erodes confidence in the system, it’s a threat to justice.
Kyle Wingfield is president and CEO of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. Contact him at kylew@georgiapolicy.org.
