‘They changed’: Former Charlotte gang members to go free after 31 years in prison
As 20-somethings, they went to prison — all leaders or members of a violent Charlotte crack-cocaine gang that preyed on vulnerable neighborhoods and ruthlessly protected its turf.
In the coming days, brothers Orrin and Cecil Jackson, their cousin Eric Whitener and former gang colleague Gary Davis — now in their 50s — will all walk free, thanks to a federal judge.
In his order last Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn described the four as changed men. Equally important: The laws have changed, too, the judge wrote.
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All four defendants were prosecuted in the 1990s on drug trafficking and firearms charges that sent them away to prison for as long as life plus 145 years.
The extraordinary punishments meted out were a government counterpunch in an era in which crack and drug-related violence devastated urban neighborhoods nationwide. Today, the sentencing laws from that period are viewed by many as a punitive and discriminatory overreach that penalized Black drug dealers far more harshly than whites.
Either way, after years of sentencing reforms, the prison terms the four Charlotte men received would not be possible today. A 2020 appeals court ruling opened the door for them and other inmates from that era to use their sentences as the required “extraordinary and compelling” grounds to seek court relief.
In the Charlotte cases, all four men have served 31 years. Time enough, Cogburn ruled.
In succinct language the judge applied to several of the former Charlotte gang members, Cogburn said this about Orrin Jackson: “... There is simply no additional benefit to be achieved by incarcerating (him) for 38 more years.”
Mecklenburg County commissioner Pat Cotham, who spoke before Cogburn last month on the inmates’ behalf, said the judge’s words are grounds for a celebration.
“Good for them for making good on the opportunities they had in prison,” said Cotham, long active in programs that help former inmates reenter society.
“They learned from their mistakes. They changed their lives. There was no guarantee they were getting out. But they worked to become better people. Orrin worked to become a better father. I am thrilled.”
From crack to ‘moral conscience’
Court documents in the decades-long case file feature ample details from the defendants’ young and violent lives — how Cecil Jackson, the gang leader, pulled the trigger or had a hand in at least seven shootings; how Whitener once put a gun to a woman’s head to force her to allow the gang to sell crack from her home.
“To be clear, this is not a case where someone was wrongfully accused and convicted. Nor does it involve an unfair sentence,” Cogburn wrote in each of his four opinions. “(Each defendant) was part of a violent street gang that distributed drugs, shot people, intimidate citizens, and tried to bribe a juror. They went to trial and showed no remorse.”
Today, the court record offers an addendum — how each of the four took part in dozens of prison educational or vocational programs or helped other inmates earn GEDs or interceded with potentially suicidal fellow prisoners.
In an emotional May 12 hearing before Cogburn — which the judge noted in his ruling — former inmates testified how the prison mentoring of the Jacksons and Whitener had changed their lives.
In his own filings to the judge, Orrin Jackson, who was 20 when he arrested and would have been 90 on his scheduled day of release, said he wants to use what he’s learned in prison to work with at-risk kids.
In a letter to Cogburn, Butner federal prison chaplain Oliver Muhammad described Orrin Jackson’s “ever-growing moral conscience” and his natural abilities as a teacher and motivational speaker.
Jackson’s attorney, Matt Pruden of Charlotte, broke the good news to his client Wednesday at the Mecklenburg jail, where Jackson has shared a prison pod with his brother and cousin since their federal court hearing last month in Charlotte before Cogburn.
“You could just sense the relief and happiness,” Pruden said. “He was so young at the time, just turning 20 ... Now they’ve become the wise older men of the prison system.”
“He wanted to change,” Pruden said of Orrin Jackson. “This ruling rewards him for that. It shows a lot of people who went down the wrong path and made mistakes, costly mistakes, that if you’re willing to make the necessary changes, you’ll get another chance.”
Under the judge’s order, Orrin Jackson’s second chance begins in the next few days. Pruden said his client’s social calendar already filling up.
“He told me, ‘I’m going to take you out to lunch.’”
