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Over 12 years after he was sentenced to life in prison for selling undercover cops two dime bags of weed, a Louisiana man walked free Wednesday.
Fate Winslow, a 53-year-old Black man, got the pitiless sentence in 2008, New Orleans CBS affiliate WWL reported. The life sentence was legally possible because the marijuana distribution was Winslow's fourth nonviolent offense.
Shortly after losing his Shreveport home in 2008, Winslow was approached by two undercover cops who asked him where to buy weed, according to a 2013 American Civil Liberties Union report that first highlighted his case.
The cops gave Winslow $20, which Winslow then used to buy marijuana from a white dealer, the report said. Cops paid Winslow a $5 finder's fee so he could buy food.
At trial, Winslow received little help from his public defender, Yahoo News reported. Winslow had previously been convicted of two nonviolent burglaries and a cocaine possession charge. The judge sentenced him to life in prison, to be served in the state's notorious "Angola" state penitentiary.
"The other inmates could never believe it," Winslow told WWL after he was freed Wednesday. "They always said, 'You're doing life for a bag of weed?'"
The Innocence Project of New Orleans was crucial in the fight for Winslow's freedom, with attorneys appealing for his release on grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel, WWL reported. The appeal was granted, with Winslow's sentence changed to time served.
"It's completely insane that he [was] in there for a life sentence," the project's executive director Jee Park told Yahoo. "The facts of this particular case are crazy."
The white dealer who initially supplied the marijuana was not arrested, even though police found him carrying the marked $20 bill they'd first given Winslow, according to the ACLU report.
Winslow, whose daughter set up a GoFundMe to help him get back on his feet, told WWL his first stop as a free man would be Popeyes back in Shreveport.
"I was so happy to get out," Winslow said. "A life sentence for two bags of weed? I never thought something like that could happen."