On Thursday, the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the 12-year sentence of Willie Nash, who was convicted of violating a Mississippi statute of illegal possession of contraband while incarcerated. On Aug. 23, 2018, Mississippi judge Mark Sheldon Duncan sentenced Willie Nash to 12 years in prison. He said that Nash should “consider himself fortunate,” for not receiving a maximum 15 years in prison … for possessing a cell phone in jail.
Nash had been jailed on a misdemeanor charge at the Newton County Jail in 2018. He asked one of the corrections officers if he had a way to charge his phone. The jailer took the phone and then brought it to the sheriff’s attention. At this point, it becomes clear that Nash realizes he has unwittingly got himself into trouble, as he reportedly denies the phone is his, but gives up his passcode, at which point the sheriff is able to determine that the phone was Nash’s because his image appeared on the phone. The only communication found on the phone during his time in jail at that point, was his wife asking him where he was and Nash replying he was “in jail.”
For this, Nash was sentenced to 12 years. The reason Judge Duncan said Nash should “consider himself fortunate,” was because Nash had a previous burglary conviction and sentence. Nash had served his time between the years of 2001-2008. Since that time he has stayed out of trouble. By all evidence, Nash is something of a success story of rehabilitation. However, Nash is black in one of the most historically racist states, with some of the highest incarceration rates (racially disproportionate of course) in the world.
In upholding Nash’s sentence, the Mississippi Supreme Court argued that the state’s case law and Nash’s argument didn’t jibe. Nash argued that the sentence was an example of a “grossly disproportionate” punishment for the crime. The basis for this being that the statute he was in violation of seemed to include “differing degrees of transgression.”
The law he violated was the 1972 Mississippi Code Section 47-5-193, that says “It is unlawful for any officer or employee of the department, of any county sheriff's department, of any private correctional facility in this state in which offenders are confined or for any other person or offender to possess, furnish, attempt to furnish, or assist in furnishing to any offender confined in this state any weapon, deadly weapon, unauthorized electronic device, cell phone, or any of its components or accessories to include, but not limited to, Subscriber Information Module (SIM) cards, chargers, etc., or contraband item.”
The MS Supreme Court’s opinion on the matter was that the statue as written, did not distinguish between those levels and therefore there was no ”three-tiered” system to judge from. As a result, the statutory range for violating this law is a sentence between 3 and 15 years in prison, while “obviously harsh,” was not “grossly disproportionate.”
A secondary opinion was added by Missouri Supreme Court Justice Leslie D. King, and joined by two of the other justices, walked through how, while agreeing with the court’s decision, as it upholds Mississippi case law, the sentence and steps within the justice system to get to this decision are a poison problem. “Cases like Nash’s are exactly why prosecutors and judges are given wide discretion. Nash served his time for his previous convictions and stayed out of trouble with the law for many years. He has a wife and three children who rely on him. His crime was victimless, and the facts of the case lend themselves to an interpretation that his crime was accidental and likely caused by a failure in booking procedures. Nash did not do anything nefarious with his phone, and he certainly did not hide his phone from law enforcement. While I do not think this Court can find under the law that the trial court abused its discretion in sentencing, it is a case in which, in my opinion, both the prosecutor and the trial court should have taken a more rehabilitative, rather than punitive, stance,” King explained in the opinion.
What the next steps are for Nash remain to be seen. But this isn’t justice.