A Kansas court said Deshaun Durham was supposed to serve more than seven years in prison for a first-time marijuana offense.
Durham tried to sway the state’s Prison Review Board to recommend clemency, and the board denied his application.
But Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) overruled the board’s decision November 6 and commuted Durham’s sentence. Friday, he walked out of the Hutchinson prison where he had spent the last two-and-a-half years.
Durham, of Manhattan, was arrested as a 20 year old in 2020 for possession of more than two pounds of marijuana with intent to distribute. He had no criminal history and was later sentenced to 92 months. In the roughly two years between his arrest and sentencing, Durham worked as a Chinese food delivery driver and stayed out of trouble.
Prison changed him, he said.
Durham said he saw “things I’m going to carry with me for the rest of my life.”
On the outside, he felt people saw him as just a criminal. Inside prison, he wasn’t criminal enough.
“He said, ‘I’m losing myself,’” recalled his mother, Brandi Davis.
“To me it was like, ‘Wow, this kid has shown he can make the right choices, and they still thought he needed to be imprisoned for eight years,’” Davis said.
While Durham was serving his sentence, Davis spent her days advocating for his release. She joined with the Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit drug policy reform organization, to pursue clemency.
Barry Grissom, a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas under the Obama administration, represented Durham through his work as legal counsel for the Last Prisoner Project. Durham’s plight isn’t new in Kansas, he said in a news release on the day of Durham’s release.
He said Kansas ought to decriminalize marijuana possession, use and production and craft public policies that regulate and tax it like alcohol.
“To fail to do otherwise means taxpayer dollars are wasted on investigation, interdiction, prosecution and incarceration of individuals, thereby depriving law enforcement from utilizing those funds for more meaningful law enforcement measures to keep us safe in our communities,” Grissom said
Hellbound and Down 