True Short Story

Thank you for the opportunity to introduce myself and my story. My name is Timothy Adams. I am currently confined in prison here at F.C.I Fairton, NJ serving a life sentence for Conspiracy to Distribute Crack Cocaine. During my time of confinement I wrote a short autobiography called "True Story" , about how I was wrongfully convicted and how unjust the federal court system's are. In True Story you will learn that two decades ago, little was known about crack cocaine laws. There was a vague but compelling perception that this derivative form of cocaine was more dangerous than its original powder form; which would signigicantly threaten public and prenatal health, and greatly increase drug-related violence. Those assumptions drove congress to adopt a particularly harsh sentencing structure for crack cocaine when it established new, non-parolable mandatory minimums for a host of drug offenses in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. That act imposed the so-called "100:1 sentencing ratio" which dictates that crack defendants recieve sentences indentical to powder defendants convicted with 100 times as much drugs. Now, 25 years later, those perceptions have been repeatedly disproven and discredited. Crack and powder cocaine produce the same psychological and psychotropic effect; crack users are not inherently predisposed to violenc; and the effects of prenatal exposure to crack are significantly less than once believed and less than such exposure to alcohol or tobacco. The science, the public, the courts, and even politics are now on our side. Thank you.