Jacqueline Sharp: Florida First Step Act would restore common sense, hope to justice system

My mother is in her 16th year of a 25-year mandatory minimum sentence in state prison. She’s there because she sold 35 pills to a confidential informant.

Her name is Cynthia Powell, and she had never been arrested before.

My mom wasn’t an addict or a drug dealer. She was prescribed pills for severe pain in her legs from diabetes. Money was tighter than usual that month, and when the CI — her friend — asked to buy them, my mom agreed.

She was poor and desperate.

She made a mistake and committed a crime. She was not innocent, but neither did she deserve a quarter of a century behind bars.

The day she went to prison was one of the most difficult days of my life — and it hasn’t gotten much easier. It was especially traumatic for me when I had a kidney transplant in 2015 and she couldn’t help me through it. Visiting her is still mind-numbing and sad. It hurts me to see her in that prison uniform, dejected.

Before she went in, she was helping me raise my daughter, Precious, and they had a special bond. Now Precious is all grown up. My mom missed all of her childhood.

My son was born after my mom went to prison. He cries when we leave because my mom can’t go with us. So do I, but I try not to let her see.

Lately, though, I’m wondering if I should dare to hope. A few years ago, the legislature passed a law that changed the sentence for my mom’s offense. Today, instead of 25 years, the law requires a seven-year prison term.

Last year, voters approved Amendment 11, which allows the legislature to make that law retroactive.

Recently, lawmakers in Tallahassee filed the Florida First Step Act. The sponsors, Republicans Sen. Jeff Brandes (St. Petersburg) and Rep. Byron Donalds (Naples), say passing the bill would mean that we’d spend money to send people to prison who really need it, people we’re afraid of, with good reason — the real drug kingpins and bad guys.

Not people like my mother, whose entire life had been about taking care of her family before she made the mistake that would cost all of us so dearly. I hear that in prison the other women call her Mama because she’s still really good at taking care of people.

The Florida First Step Act would restore some discretion in drug sentencing and allow judges to depart from mandatory minimums for low-risk, nonviolent drug offenders.

Those sentences were put in place decades ago to scare drug kingpins from bringing cocaine and heroin into Florida, and to punish “major players” like Pablo Escobar. But that’s not what happened.

Instead of catching those big fish, Florida has caught thousands of guppies — low-level offenders, and people battling substance abuse — and sent them to prison, often for decades.

This has been expensive — Florida spends more than $100 million a year locking up drug offenders serving mandatory minimums — but there is no evidence it has made Florida safer. In fact, most studies show mandatory minimum drug laws are wasteful and counterproductive.

My mother will finish her sentence in 2023, shortly after her 61^st birthday.

If the Florida First Step Act had been law when she was sentenced, she would already be free, and our family already reunited. She probably would have been there to help raise her granddaughter.

Now, we dare to hope that the Florida First Step Act will pass and apply retroactively, which could mean early release.

But even if that doesn’t happen, I support the Florida First Step Act. So does my family, and many families just like ours all over Florida. We are all paying for laws that don’t work.

The Florida First Step Act would restore a little balance and common sense into our justice system — perhaps a little hope, too — and keep other families from going through what mine continues to endure.

I’m asking lawmakers to think about my mother when deciding whether to support this bill.

Her name is Cynthia Powell. She’s my mother, she’s a Floridian and she deserves justice.

Please, think of her — and do the right thing.

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Jacqueline Sharp lives in Miramar.