In 2015, Randy Bookout was sentenced to nearly 20 years in federal prison (with no parole) after pleading guilty to a single $250 drug deal. Randy was never caught with drugs, nor was there a single piece of physical evidence tying him to drugs, much less direct evidence of drug distribution. Still, he was told that if he did not waive his Constitutional right to indictment-by-grand-jury by pleading guilty to a single $250 drug deal, he would "die in federal prison." He eventually caved in, despite having steadfastly denied the accusations. His case presents a prime example of the ways in which prosecutorial discretion and harsh drug sentencing laws can ratchet up a person's sentence beyond proportion to their crime. 

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But it wasn't the petty $250 drug deal to which Randy pled guilty that prosecutors were really after. They had a scheme brewing from the beginning. The government just waited until sentencing to show its hand. At the sentencing hearing for Randy’s case, prosecutors successfully argued that he was responsible for selling an amount 70 times greater than the amount to which he pled guilty (more than 50 drug deals and related activities over a four-year period, in all). To make this argument, they primarily relied upon bald assertions with no evidentiary basis in Randy's Presentence Report (PSR), a sentencing report prepared for the judge. Although the Presentence Report didn't bother to name a particular source for its naked assertions, an exhaustive review of the investigative reports conclusively demonstrates that the accusations were uncorroborated, out-of-court hearsay accusations from high-level-drug-dealers-turned-government-witnesses (who traded the vague information in exchange for massive sentence reductions and other off-the-record benefits, helping them escape harsh prison terms). 

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Importantly, by strategically slipping what was practically the government's case in at sentencing, the government circumvented the vital Constitutional protections afforded to the criminally accused at a criminal trial—e.g., the demanding beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard of proof, the right to face one's accuser, the Federal Rules of Evidence that govern admissible evidence, and so on. 

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What's more, although the Presentence Investigation Report touted page after page and paragraph after paragraph of accusations (of drug trafficking and related activities), it failed to mention that most of the information proved to be unreliable or even demonstrably false upon investigation. If there was evidence that the drug-dealer-turned-government-witness had lied, it simply was not reported, no matter how overwhelming, because it didn't comport with the government's one-sided narrative. Despite the fact that the Presentence Investigation Report's raison d' etre is to provide the judge with all of the information gleaned from the investigation, so as to allow the judge to make important factual findings that will drive the length of the accused’s prison sentence (in this case, whether the accusations of more than 50 drug deals and related activities are reliable), Randy's judge saw only one side. The overwhelming evidence that supported Randy's version of events (that the accusations were false) and undermined the government's accusations never saw the light of day. 

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To be sure, the uncharged conduct that was slipped in at sentencing was critical to the federal government's case. In the absence of the conduct pinned on Randy at sentencing (more than 50 drug deals and related activities), the government would have been left with a single $250 drug deal—the conduct underlying Randy's guilty plea—and the government certainly was not going to let a little thing like the truth get in the way of its prosecution. After all, federal prosecutors hunt big game; they are in the big leagues, and they crush big-time drug traffickers with decades in prison. That said, they relegate sentences of probation for petty drug deals to state prosecutors. And a single $250 drug deal—well, that is small potatoes, indeed. 

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To that end, a single $250 drug deal wouldn't look good in a press release from the U.S. Attorneys' Office; but a four-year drug enterprise? Well, now that's more like it. Accordingly, the government made the accusations stick—at all costs. 

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With that in mind, while Randy pled guilty to a single $250 drug deal that produced a sentencing range of probation to just 18 months in prison, the ready-made, four-year drug enterprise comprising more than 50 drug deals and related activities that was introduced at the sentencing phase caused Randy's sentencing range to leap from 18 months to nearly 20 years in prison. Clever. Clever and devious. In short, the government snuck through the backdoor what it couldn't bring through the front. Randy vehemently denied the accusations and was rightly incredulous upon viewing the sentencing report. 

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Incredibly, the additional 50 uncharged drug deals and related activities pinned on Randy at sentencing increased his sentence tenfold, one of the largest increases in the 30-year-plus history of the Sentencing Guidelines. As a result, Randy, a 50-year-old professional photographer who reluctantly pled guilty to a petty drug deal (under the threat of lifelong imprisonment) and who had never been to prison, received a near-statutory-maximum prison sentence, an extreme sentence usually reserved for the worst of the worst—e.g., cartel bosses and drug kingpins. (The same Judge who crushed Randy with nearly two decades in federal prison sentenced cartel boss Tony Hernandez to just 15 years in prison. Hernandez was a drug boss who, according to a U.S. Attorneys' press release, flooded the community with 1500 kilograms of 100 percent pure methamphetamine each month, hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of pure methamphetamine, colloquially referred to as "ice"). 

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In fact, Randy, a low-level addict, received a prison sentence 10 to 14 years longer than the high-level drug traffickers who provided the government with vague information about him, most of which was easily proven false when it was investigated, and none of which was ever verified by a single piece of physical evidence, or even a third-party witness. The information provided by the drug dealers—who were confronted with overwhelming, concrete evidence of their guilt—dramatically lowered their prison sentences while radically inflating Randy's. (Notably, the government’s witness #1 did not corroborate government witness #2's accusations against Randy. Instead, their stories were logically inconsistent and glaringly contradictory, but the inconsistent parts were omitted from the Presentence Report to create the appearance of consistency and corroboration, a devious and unprincipled tactic.) To put it another way, if we take both high-level drug traffickers who traded information about Randy for their freedom and combined their prison sentences, Randy's prison sentence would be nearly twice as long as both of their sentences combined. 

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Sadly, Randy was a 50-year-old professional photographer with three kids and a wife, who had never been to prison. Randy was not a leader nor a boss of any kind. There is no accusation of violence in Randy's case. What is particularly telling is that even though there was a massive multimillion-dollar, four-year-long investigation into a large-scale drug distribution ring (spearheaded by top government agencies), somehow, there was not one piece of evidence that so much as linked Randy to drugs—not even a text message—despite the government’s use of sophisticated investigative techniques—e.g., controlled buys, search warrants that yielded seized drugs, telephone wire taps, and other forms of surveillance—to collect evidence. 

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We invite you to scrutinize the nuances of Randy's case, and we implore you to help us call attention to the injustice of his conviction and prison sentence of nearly two decades without parole. Our goal is to get the attention of a legal advocate who can, in turn, help Randy secure a Presidential grant of Clemency. That can only be achieved by spotlighting the striking injustices of which Randy's case is composed.