Friday, March 26, 2010

DMX to Serve Six Months in Jail After Violating Probation Term

DMX has been sentenced to six months in prison after pleading guilty to charges of probation violation - but the embattled rapper has been offered a way out of jail thanks to reality TV's Dr. Drew Pinsky. The hip-hop star, real name Earl Simmons, appeared in court on Tuesday, March 16 when he confessed to five separate claims of probation violation by using illegal drugs following his arrest in Phoenix, Arizona on March 9.

The judge ordered DMX to spend time behind bars - but the rapper could escape the jail term and serve his sentence in rehab instead, after an appeal from a representative from the Pasadena Recovery Center in California. The spokesperson approached the judge presiding over the case during the hearing and presented a letter from Pinsky asking for permission to help DMX kick his drug habit at the treatment center.

As WENN went to press, a decision on the offer had yet to be delivered but TMZ reports the judge was "open" to sending the troubled star to rehab. Pinsky has become known to U.S. TV audiences thanks to his reality show "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew" and its spin-off "Sober House", in which he attempts to help stars kick their drug and alcohol addictions.

DMX spent time in jail in 2009 on charges of drug possession, animal cruelty and theft, stemming from various arrests in 2008. He was sentenced to 18 months probation after his release in May 2009 for verbally threatening a guard during his stint in prison.

After 19 Years, Released From Prison Under the Rockefeller Drug-Law Reforms

NEW YORK, NY March 26, 2010

Last year, New York State overhauled what many saw as the overly severe Rockefeller drug laws. The changes eliminated mandatory minimum sentences for most drug offenses, expanded drug treatment alternatives, and reduced some penalties. But what about the people still behind bars under the old sentences?

Reporter Maria Scarvalone met with one prisoner who has spent almost two decades in prison under the laws.

On a cold February afternoon, guards eye Amir Varick Amma as he walks into the crowded visitor room at Eastern Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Ulster County. Doors buzz and keys rattle over the din of conversation. It’s a routine Amma knows well. He’s spent the last 19 years in prison as one of tens of thousands of men and women who, under the Rockefeller drug laws, received long sentences for dealing drugs.

Amma, a tall man from Queens with a confident smile and firm handshake, was arrested in 1991 in a drug investigation in Albany. He was 23 years old at the time. Police claimed he was selling cocaine, though Amma denies it. Because he wouldn’t testify against others, Amma turned down a plea bargain that would have given him a maximum six-year sentence. It was a gamble he lost. At trial, he was convicted of two drug felonies -- the most serious for possessing two ounces of cocaine -- and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Amir Varick Amma was convicted in 1992 of two drug felonies, the worst of which was possession of two ounces of cocaine, and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. He says he's a new man, and changed his name in prison this year to prove it, from Anthony Williams to L. Amir A. Varick Amma.

“When I got that 25 to life, I just couldn’t believe it. Today I still can’t believe it,” Amma says. “I hate to tell people my time because individuals look at me like, ‘Yo, you got 25 to life? I copped out to two bodies. I got ten to life!’ The Son of Sam killer, he received 25-to-life. So, okay, society put me equal with these individuals, 25-to-life? So, like I said, I can’t really say what a just sentence would be, but I know 25-to-life, that’s not just.”

David Soares, Albany’s District Attorney, agrees. “It’s a travesty of justice, really,” Soares says. He has long championed reform of the drug laws, signed into effect in 1973 by then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who ushered them through the legislature.

“What characterized the drug laws and what made these laws very unique was that the sentences were very severe, placing mandatory minimums for very small amounts of drugs,” Soares says. “For the same crime in Albany County, if everything was the same in 2010 as they were in 1991, Mr. Amma would receive about seven years.”

At dawn on a recent morning in Harlem, prison-reform activists get ready to board two buses. They're headed to Albany along with hundreds of others to lobby legislators. It is the efforts of dogged activists like these that have lead to reforms in the past six years.

But Robert Gangi, head of the Correctional Association, says the reforms have not gone far enough.

“There were significant reforms enacted to the Rockefeller drug laws last year. The problem is that the reform enacted did not represent full repeal, so there are still mandatory sentencing provisions on the books in New York State that will cause the incarceration of thousands of low-level drug offenders each year,” Gangi says.



Eastern Correctional Facility, the maximum-security prison in Napanoch, NY, where Amma has spent the last eight of his 19 years in prison. It is one of the oldest prisons in New York, and opened in 1900.

Nazimova Varick, Amma’s mother, is one of dozens of family members continuing to fight for reform.

“I gave my word so I have to come, but my heart is heavy, real heavy. But I’m here,” Varick says.

She feels she’s done her own time, waiting for her son’s release. Back at her Queens home, a pair of shoes sits near the front door. For her, the shoes are a symbol of hope, one she's kept these many years of waiting while battling her own cancer and heart problems.


“I took my son’s shoes everyplace I went, because I believed this was symbolic of my son walking out of prison. He will put these shoes on to fulfill my prayers, and then he can throw them away,” Varick says through tears.

While his mother waits, Amma has tried to move his own life forward. He has taken college courses, tutored other inmates, and graduated from the prison ministry program. He says he’s a new man, and even changed his name to prove it -- from Anthony Williams to L. Amir A. Varick Amma. Changes, though, that weren’t enough to get him out of prison.


Amma’s shoes, which his mother has kept during his imprisonment, sit near her front door as a symbol of hope that he will come home. She's carried them with her from home to home over the years, and turned the shoes to face into the house when she learned he would be released.

After the first reforms in 2004, Amma’s request for re-sentencing was denied. He'd been caught smoking pot in the prison courtyard seven years earlier, making him ineligible under the strict reform law rules. Ironically, the way the reform laws were written, he would have been eligible if he’d been convicted of a worse drug felony in 1992.

“That really crushed me -- I think that crushed me more than actually being sentenced for the original 25 to life,” Amma says.

Two years later, his petition for merit time early release was denied, for the same reason. Then when he applied for clemency, that too was denied. But in January, his luck finally changed. He applied for re-sentencing under the latest reform law and the judge reduced his sentence enough to be paroled.

Assistant District Attorney Sean Childs says that this time, there was no legal reason to oppose the re-sentencing. “He’s been incarcerated for 20 years so we were just trying to make sure that justice was done that day,” Childs says.

After the hearing, Amma rose and extended his hand to Childs and to the judge. “That was a first time experience. I’ve never had a defendant shake my hand,” Childs says. Sitting in prison only days from his release, Amma explains why he acted so unpredictably. “That was the first step: to surprise the judge and everybody else,” Amma says. “I’m not a monster. I’m just a human being that made a stupid mistake when I was young."

Then he turned around and his lawyer asked Amma for his mother’s phone number to notify her of the news. That was the first time Amma cried. “Wow, I’m re-sentenced!” he exclaimed. His lawyer asked him again for his mother’s phone number, but Amma was too overcome to speak. Finally, he motioned for a pen and wrote the number down. “I still don’t believe it right now,” Amma says about the ruling.

Amma is a lucky man. Fewer than a thousand drug felons have been re-sentenced so far -- out of the more than 10,000 incarcerated in New York prisons.

Tuesday March 23, Amma was released. But he knows he is about to face a series of new challenges. Trying to reconnect with his two sons -- one he has never met -- and making a living in a tough job market, especially difficult for a felon who has never used a cell phone or the internet.

Still, Amma is trying to stay positive.

“What this time did for me, it made me realize that I have the power to have perseverance in the face of adversity. Anything that comes my way, I know that I can handle it,” he says.

Amma's mother, "Queen" Nazimova Varick, had this outfit made for her son to wear home from prison. She thinks Amma, who studied Black history in prison, will like the fabric's motif of the Egyptian ankh, symbolizing life.

For Amma’s mother, her son's coming home is an answered prayer, but she will not relax until she sees him a free man.

“Lord, don’t let me die while my child’s in prison, and don’t let my child die in prison." Varick says. "Until he walks out of the door, until I see my child and I embrace him, the fear is still there. It’s still there. It hasn’t gone away. It’s even worse now, because it’s so close. You know, you say ‘Gee, I came so far –- will I make it to the finish line?'"

For Amma, it’s just the beginning -- of a new life without bars. According to a recent Legal Aid study, he stands a good chance of never returning to prison. Since the first drug law reforms, the recidivism rate for people re-sentenced and released early from prison has been less than 10 percent.