Incarcerated for Life, an Inmate Is Left Behind by Prison Reforms

The New York Times, September 24, 2023: Incarcerated for Life, an Inmate Is Left Behind by Prison Reforms

“Federal inmate number 14289-077 is baffled whenever the television in his Texas prison blares out assertions from supporters of Donald Trump that the former president has been victimized by a two-tiered system of justice.

“‘I’ve heard all these Republicans say, “Well, we don’t care if Mr. Trump did wrong, we’re going to support him anyway,”’ Bonnie Erwin said in a recent phone conversation from prison. ‘What kind of system is that? I don’t mean any disrespect to his people. There’s two justice systems, all right. And if I was a white man, I’d have been out of here a long time ago.’

“Mr. Erwin, 81, has been incarcerated for 39 years, spread across 11 different facilities. For the past three years, his home has been the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, in a minimum-security unit with other disabled inmates. Partially paralyzed on his right side from a stroke a decade ago, Mr. Erwin relies on other inmates to push his wheelchair and to type his emails.

“Mr. Erwin is both a reflection of an earlier era’s draconian prison sentences and an example of how recent reforms can miss their mark. He was convicted by an all-white jury two years before the Supreme Court forbade the racial pruning of jury pools. He was sentenced three years too early to qualify for ‘compassionate release’ under the terms of a law, the First Step Act, signed by President Trump in 2018.

“And though a murder charge against him was overturned in 1987, his court-appointed attorney on that appeal was Louie Gohmert, a young trial lawyer who would add another chapter to Mr. Erwin’s story. As a far-right Republican congressman from Texas, Mr. Gohmert, now retired, voted against the First Step Act and later contended that the real victims in the criminal justice system were Trump supporters.”

Additional reading:

The Marshall Project: Bonnie Erwin

The Sentencing Project, August 22, 2023: The First Step Act: Ending Mass Incarceration in Federal Prisons

Forbes, September 25, 2023: Why Thousands Of Prisoners Could Be Spared Because Of A Supreme Court Case Over The Word ‘And’