By Kayla Walker

Spared from serving her 24-year prison sentence for drug possession, Kemba Smith shared her story with University students on March 17 to demonstrate how many people become victims of mandatory sentencing.

In her speech, which was part of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority’s fourth annual social action dinner, Smith thanked God for the opportunity to speak to the students after spending more than six years fightingfor her freedom from her jail cell.

“I was supposed to be in prison today, it was intended for me to be incarcerated until 2016,” said Smith, who was pardoned by President Clinton in 2000.

As a freshman at Hampton University, Smith said she fell in with the wrong crowd and started dating Peter Hall, who was a major figure in a $4 million crack cocaine ring.

“When he started noticing me it made me feel so great because here was this guy who I would see around with girls from the dean’s list and major sororities and he was paying attention to me,” Smith said.

After a four-year relationship that Smith said left her emotionally, mentally and physically abused, she turned herself in to police while seven months pregnant. Although, during her trial the prosecutionacknowledged that Smith had sold, but did not manage or use any drugs, she was convicted and sentenced to federal prison for conspiracy, money laundering and making a false statement to a federal agent.

“When the judge read my sentence and I heard that I would serve 294 months in federal prison I didn’t know exactly how many years it was, but I knew it was a lot,” Smith said.

According to anti-drug laws passed by Congress in 1986, to deter people from using and selling drugs the mandatory minimum sentence for the accused is based only on three deciding factors: the type of drug involved, weight of the drug mixture and the number of prior convictions. Known as the Rockefeller Drug Laws, they are among the strictest in the nation, refusing to reduce mandatory sentences unless the defendant provides the prosecution with information needed to catch other offenders.

While she served her sentence, Smith wrote letters to the media to try to make her story available to the public. She eventually gained national attention when her story was featured on “Nightline,” “Court TV” and “The Early Morning Show,” as well as in The New York Times, Washington Post, Glamour, Essence and People magazines.

Soon she received hundreds of letters.

“Some kids from a high school in Dayton, Ohio raised money to travel to Washington,” Smith said. “They stood on the steps of the capital with ‘Free Kemba’ signs and T-shirts.”

People signed petitions and sent letters to President Clinton. Smith’s parents also had the chance to plead with the president to free their daughter.

In 2000 Smith was finally granted clemency, after serving six and a half years of her sentence and giving birth to her son while incarcerated.

“Kemba’s story didn’t end in 2000, there are hundreds of Kembas that are still in the system,” said Kasandra Scales, another speaker at the event. Melissa Milam, a communications associate from the Drug Policy Alliance said 94 percent of people incarcerated under New York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws are black or Latino.

Milam shared an experience in high school when she was expelled because of some rumors that she was a drug abuser.

“There was never any proof that I was doing drugs,” Milam said. “But because of rumors circulating around the school I was expelled.” Since 2000, Kemba has shared her story by touring the country and informing people of the injustices behind mandatory minimum sentencing, but is still required put in travel requests to attend her conferences,submit urine tests, meet with he parole officer and three weeks ago she had to give her DNA to the federal government.

“I found Kemba’s story amazing,” said Allisa Stanisalus, a junior marketing major. “She honestly didn’t have a hand in anything, but because of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offences she was incarcerated.”

In 1976 the minimum sentencing laws were amended to exclude the use and sale of marijuana in order to reduce funding on cases that involved marijuana offenders. The New York Legislature also reduced the minimum sentence for first time offenders from 15 to eight years in January 2004, but Kemba and Milam said out of prison drug offenders face an even harder battle of being accepted into society again.”

It bothers me that alcoholics aren’t judged or penalized unless they are caught driving drunk, they are still accepted into society despite that they are just as big of abusers as drug addicts,” Milam stated.

Kemba asked her audience to stick up for the helpless lives that are being wasted away while the justice system takes over 20 years to realize its mistakes.