When you think about who should be in prison and who shouldn’t, many may agree that Derek Harris is not one of the men that deserve a life sentence.
The military veteran has been serving a life sentence for selling less than $30 worth of marijuana back in 2008. Harris was arrested in Louisiana for selling an officer .69 grams of marijuana.
According to Harris’ attorney, he will fortunately be released from prison soon. The vet was recently resentenced to time served after already serving nine years in prison.
Harris was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison initially, according to the Louisiana Supreme Court. He was resentenced in 2012 to life in prison under the Habitual Offender Law, which allows judges to impose stricter sentences on someone who’s been charged before.
His lawyer, Cormac Boyle had said that prosecutors in Vermilion Parish agreed to release Harris from prison after the Louisiana Supreme Court granted him a new hearing last month.
The Louisiana Supreme Court agreed with Harris’ argument claiming he had “ineffective assistance of counsel at sentencing on post-conviction review.”
“His prior offenses were nonviolent and related to his untreated dependency on drugs,” Louisiana Supreme Court Justice John Weimer wrote in his opinion. Weimer had noted that the trial judge said that Harris was “not a drug kingpin” and didn’t fit what they thought of “as a drug dealer, so far as I can tell.”
According to Boyle, Harris will be released soon and would be moving to be closer to family in Kentucky and that he was looking forward to spending time with his brother, Antoine, and his family.
