Next in Line, Left Behind Gov. Parson has pardoned six inmates trapped by Missouri’s harshest drug law. Hundreds are still waiting B Y
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t was December 21, 2020, and things were finally looking up for Jason Norman. The 45-yearold inmate was settling in at his new home in the lgoa Correctional Center, a minimum-security state prison on the outskirts of the capital in efferson City. His recent move from the state prison in Boonville meant more than a change in scenery: He’d been selected to join the prestigious “inmate trustees” who worked in the governor’s official residence, an opulent Victorian mansion overlooking the Missouri River, just a few minutes’ drive from the prison. Being a trustee involved a rigorous selection process, and if chosen, Norman would earn $2 an hour. Norman had come a long way since his 2003 arrest. Now, more than seventeen years into a twenty-year sentence for drug trafficking, he’d earned a chance at a kind of freedom, if only within the mansion’s kitchen or as a maintenance worker on its grounds. rriving in lgoa in ovember, Norman was told to wait while prison officials made their final review of the incoming trustees.
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our days before Christmas, he was still waiting. “I was there 30 days,” he recalls, “and that day I was in my cell, locked down for the count, and an officer came to my door.” The guard told him that he was needed “upstairs” in the prison’s probation office. It was a strange request: Norman wasn’t eligible for parole, the result of a uniquely harsh Missouri sentencing law that targets drug offenders with prior felonies. he meeting with the parole officer lasted only minutes. When Norman left the office, he knew one thing: He wasn’t going to be working in the governor’s mansion. Governor Mike Parson had gotten to him first. hat day, while Norman was killing time in his prison cell, Parson was signing his commutation papers. One week later, Norman was released from prison on a modified house arrest, technically a “partial commutation” that allows him to serve the rest of his sentence as he works to rebuild his life in the small town of Marshall. His movements are monitored by a GPS device on his
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ankle. He spends his days driving a tow truck and his nights at home. It may not be a mansion, but, he notes, “It ain’t prison.” “I thought it was a done deal, that I’d have to serve out the rest of my time,” he adds. He points out the obvious, that without Parson’s action, he was facing at least two more years of prison before he could qualify for conditional release. Those were years he couldn’t afford to lose. s he enters middle age, he’s already spent most of his adult life in prison. “I’m just thankful,” he says. “I’m very grateful that the governor chose me. It’s like hitting the lottery.” Norman wasn’t the only inmate surprised on December 21. That same day, Parson ordered commutations for two other drug offenders, both trapped in long sentences through the same “no parole” sentencing enhancement that affected Norman. But the issue is much bigger than three cases. ccording to recent prison records, Norman is just one of more than 200 drug
offenders serving no-parole sentences under an unusual state drug law that for decades has skyrocketed sentences and barred legal avenues for early release. For those still in prison, freedom isn’t like a lottery. Their odds remain static, frozen at zero. That’s not true for most Missouri prisoners. The vast majority of inmates — including prior offenders and felons — are eligible for parole after serving about 25 to 50 percent of their sentence. In fact, of the roughly 84,000 people under the oversight of the Missouri epartment of Corrections, only 24,000 are in prisons. The remaining 60,000 people, all convicted criminals, are on probation and parole, serving their sentences as productive, if restricted, members of society while saving the state money on prison costs. nd yet hundreds of Missouri drug offenders are serving sentences so long that their punishments rival those of murderers. The cause is a criminal statute defining “prior and persistent drug offenders,” a sentencing law so extreme that in a bipartisan
