A 67-year-old, who spent 20 years in jail for stealing two shirts, was finally released on April 8. In September 2000, Guy Frank, who was a waiter at the time, was arrested for stealing two shirts from Saks Fifth Avenue, New Orleans. Shirts were returned to the store, but his crime theft under $500 was considered a felony in Louisiana then, and he ended up serving a two-decades-long sentence. His harsh sentence was also a result of Louisiana’s habitual offender laws, also known as three-strikes laws, which enable prosecutors to seek harsher sentences if a defendant has previous convictions.
These laws have been heavily criticized for contributing to mass incarceration and exacerbating racial inequities in Louisiana, the most incarcerated state in the country. They drew heavy backlash also because they only focus on punishment, rather than rehabilitation or crime prevention.
Before stealing the two shirts from Saks Fifth Avenue, Frank had been arrested 36 times, starting 1975 and had been convicted a few times for theft, possession of cocaine and had served a three-year sentence in the 1990s, as per a state court decision from 2002. It is still unclear what the charges were in that case.
The Innocence Project New Orleans, which have been involved in his case through its Unjust Punishment Project, said in a statement that Frank’s case shows how poor Black people are disproportionately affected by these extreme sentences while at the same time, it is hard to imagine a white person with resources receiving this sentence for a similar crime. According to Innocence Project New Orleans, he “had never done more than steal in small amounts.”
Bernette Johnson, the former Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, said that these laws were meant to keep Black people in poverty, reports The Washington Post. In 2017, provisions of the habitual offender laws were scrapped but drastic racial inequities still remain.
Johnson argued that these “Pig Laws” criminalized poor African Americans freed from slavery and allowed states to sentence people to forced labor.
The theft of two shirts was his fourth offence, hence, the same court could sentence him to 23 years in prison. The Innocence Project New Orleans statement states that he received “egregious sentence” despite the fact that he was "never a threat to anyone.”
The non-profit organisation has been advocating for Frank to the office of Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Rogers Williams, a former city councilman who was seen as ‘progressive prosecutor’ last fall.
During Frank’s sentence, his wife, son, mother and two brother all died and a GoFundMe was set up to help with his post-release expenses.
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