Simpson Thacher successfully secured a reduced sentence for a 56-year-old Black individual who was serving a 54-year sentence that could have kept him incarcerated until 2041. Instead, Simpson Thacher persuaded the court to release our client this year under one of California’s newly enacted sentencing laws, SB 483, under which thousands of inmates are eligible for a one-year sentence reduction for prior drug related offenses. Notably, for our client, this new law also permits the court to consider resentencing an inmate to a lesser term “in the interest of justice.”
Following several conversations with the San Diego County District Attorney’s office, prosecutors agreed to Simpson Thacher’s recommendation to strike over thirty-years from our client’s sentence “in the interests of justice.” The court then granted the joint stipulation and resentenced our client to twenty-four years, eight months. Because our client had already served more than two decades in prison and had accrued good time credit, he was released from prison on December 6, 2022.
Welcomed home by his daughter, sister, nephews, nieces and mother, our client looks forward to spending Christmas with his family for the first time in twenty-three years.
Simpson Thacher will continue to represent our client in an upcoming jury trial in August 2023 against prison officials who unlawfully withheld his mail, preventing our client from continuing to prosecute his habeas petition and thwarting any chance our client had to say goodbye to his father before he died.
Pierce A. MacConaghy presented the recommendation to the court. The Simpson Thacher team was led by Buzz Frahn.