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Adam
F L I N T O I D
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http://www.mlive.com/flintjournal/index.ssf/2008/04/flintarea_man_enjoying_freedom.html
Larry Drum tossed and turned in bed his first night as a free man.
After spending nearly 17 years on prison and jailhouse beds, the 70-year-old just couldn't get to sleep in his brother's home.
"The bed was too comfortable," said Drum, who walked out of prison April Fool's Day courtesy of a rare commutation from Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
It's been a whirlwind month for a man who is trying to fit back into society after a judge once sentenced him to life without parole in a cocaine case.
"I thought my life (was) over," said Drum.
But what once seemed like a death sentence turned into a fight that ultimately showed Drum what happens when people who care work to change the system.
Drum says previous media accounts of his crime are "not very accurate,." but doesn't care to discuss the circumstances that first put him in a jail cell in June 1991.
"It doesn't matter anymore whose fault it is," said Drum., who says previous media accounts of his crime are "not very accurate."
What has been printed is that after Drum was busted for delivering a small amount of cocaine to a police informant and, police raided an apartment he shared in Birmingham. They found more than 650 grams of cocaine in his roommate's bedroom.
"I'm not totally innocent, but I'm not what they make me out to be," said Drum.
What is indisputable is that Drum, then 54, was sentenced to life in prison in January 1992 under the state's old "650 lifer law," which made it a mandatory life sentence for anyone convicted of delivery of at least 650 grams of cocaine -- an amount large enough to pack a large Ziploc freezer bag.
The promise of a life sentence for that much cocaine was intended to make drug kingpins think twice about doing business in Michigan when Gov. William G. Milliken signed it into law in 1978.
Instead, it ended up tossing drug addicts and low-level couriers -- a shortcoming failure that Milliken later acknowledged and caused him to personally lobby for changes to the law.
Stuck in prison with little hope for freedom, Drum appealed his case but got nowhere.
The first glimmers of hope came in 1998 when lawmakers began softening the law, but that did little for Drum who was still stuck under the old terms of the sentence.
When the law was eventually amended in 2003 to allow parole, Drum still faced the prospect of dying in prison because of two 20-year terms for lesser cocaine delivery that had been tacked when he was first sentenced to life.
But things started to change when a childhood friend paid him a visit.
Susan Mascia was visiting Michigan from her home near San Francisco in August 2005 when she went to visit Drum at the Macomb Correctional Facility.
"I asked him, 'Wwhat I can do to help?'" said Mascia.
Figuring he had nothing else to lose, Drum asked her to go to the media and try to create a groundswell of support for his cause.
For the next year, Mascia and Drum's sister, Gayle Garcia of Lapeer Township, spent upwards of 25 hours a week making phone calls and writing letters to everyone from reporters to lawmakers.
"It was like a snowball effect," said Mascia, who eventually enlisted the support of Milliken, former state Sen. Mat Dunaskiss, state Rep. Jim Marleau and the reform group Families Against Mandatory Minimums.
Drum estimates the work of Mascia and Garcia resulted in upwards of 400 letters being written to Granholm asking her to set him free.
The effort hit a wall in November 2005 when the state parole board recommended that Drum's sentence not be commuted, but Mascia and Garcia continued to press the case until Granholm said yes to Drum and an Oakland County woman drug offender two months ago.
Announcing her decision, Granholm's office said she commuted the sentence due to his age and because he is not a threat to the community.
Mascia cried when she got the news from Garcia, followed by a call 10 minutes later from an ecstatic Drum.
"We did it," he told her.
Garcia said she only wanted one thing from her brother as payment -- a big hug.
Something she got one when she picked him from prison on April 1.
"All I wanted to do was hug him and hold him," she said.
Garcia and Mascia hope that Drum will serve as an example to free others in his situation.
So far, Granholm has not granted any more non-health related commutations.
"It doesn't end with Larry's release," said Laura Sager, who works with Family's Against Mandatory Minimums FAMM's Michigan chapter.
Sager said there are many others still serving what she called extraordinarily harsh sentences for drug crimes.
"Some are looking at decades in prison, if not life," she said.
Since his release, Drum has spent his waking hours reclaiming his former life and getting accustomed to a world that has changed a lot since he was locked up.
He celebrated his first free meal with a steak and a Diet Pepsi at Applebee's -- a restaurant that he said wasn't even around when he was arrested.
His two sons now have five children of their own that were born after Drum went to prison.
He has seen three of his grandkids since his release and is looking forward to seeing the other two next month when they visit from Florida.
Sometimes, he said, he simply becomes choked with emotion.
"I cry a lot," he said.
Cellphones look like toys to him and his Lake Orion hometown has become a "metropolis" with a Starbucks just down the road from his brother's house.
There's also the little inconvenience that he can't take his black 1990 Corvette Stingray around the block without a licensed driver sitting next to him until next month when he passes his driving test.
Eventually, Drum said he hopes to get back to his passion for carpentry and get back to work.
He's also been handing out thank yous, including a call left on Milliken's answering machine for the work he did to give Drum freedom -- despite the fact that he also signed the law that took it away for 17 years.
It was Milliken who personally lobbied Granholm for the commutation.
"I was very surprised he got involved with me," Drum he said.
During his years in prison, Drum missed his parents' funerals and his youngest son's wedding.
His roommate who was also busted in the cocaine case was released from prison three years ago. The real kicker is that , while
Drum ended up spending nearly three times as long behind bars as the man who killed his sister and was convicted of second-degree murder in the 1970s.
But Drum refuses to let his second chance become clouded by self pity.
"You always have a little bit of bitterness," said Drum. "But the biggest thing is my poor choices. I was living in the fast lane ... I goofed up." |
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Sat Apr 19, 2008 1:40 pm |
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