CHAPTER ONE A LIFE SENTENCE on January 5 1997 a Black man named Fair Wayne Bryant was on his way to Bossier City Louisiana It was after midnight The 38 year old got lost in the city of Shreveport He was driving a blue van that he had borrowed from his cousin Then the van stopped running Bryant thought he needed gas He began looking for a gas can He entered the storeroom of a home’s carport A carport is an open air shelter that people can Shreveport is in northwestern Louisiana 5
park vehicles under The door was unlocked But Bryant did not have permission to enter Charles Ray the homeowner saw Bryant in the carport He called the Shreveport Police Department He said the thief fled in a van Officer Joseph Dews was about six blocks away He saw a van that matched the description Ray gave Dews stopped the vehicle Bryant was driving it Dews searched the vehicle He found a pair of hedge clippers Bryant explained that he had run out of gas He admitted to entering Ray’s storeroom But he said he did not take the clippers Bryant’s cousin later told authorities that they belonged to him But Ray said the garden tool was his Six months later a jury convicted Bryant of attempted simple burglary Bryant had previously served ten years of hard labor for armed robbery It was his only violent crime But because of his past he received a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison for stealing the hedge clippers Bryant filed 6
an appeal He said that the sentence was excessive But the judge upheld the verdict More than 20 years later Bryant was still in prison for the crime In August 2020 the case reached the Louisiana Supreme Court But the court denied Bryant’s request to review the case The state had a habitual increases penalties the more crimes someone PERSPECTIVES THE COST OF LONG SENTENCES Excessive punishments do not only affect the person convicted They are also expensive for the community Chief Justice Bernette J Johnson of the Louisiana Supreme Court pointed out how much money the state of Louisiana could spend to keep Bryant in prison for life By 2020 he had already spent almost 23 years in prison If he lives another 20 years she wrote Louisiana taxpayers will have paid almost one million dollars to punish Mr Bryant for his failed effort to steal a set of offender law This law hedge clippers commits Repeat offenders can receive life sentences even for petty crimes Petty crimes are minor crimes 7
