Christie Smythe-Journalist, writer, professional interloper, living in New York. Specializes in law, business, and criminal justice. Reach me at christie.smythe@gmail.com.

Daniel Egipciaco’s path to prison was all too familiar. In his teens and early 20s, he dabbled in drugs, associated with some bad characters, got into trouble. As a legal journalist with years of experience observing the criminal justice process, I know his tale is so common it doesn’t even constitute “news.”
 
 His mistakes might have been the kind he could leave in the past as he transitioned into adulthood. Yes, he had one felony on his record — attempted criminal possession of a controlled substance in the third degree — and five years of probation. But he was a smart kid with strong potential to lead a successful life. He got A’s in high school and spent a couple of semesters at Manhattan’s Baruch College. He had legitimate jobs, as well as ideas and ambitions. He had a loving family.

Then he made a fateful choice. At the age of 25, (according to the prosecutors’ version of events) he agreed to help an associate steal 10 kilograms of cocaine from a Colombian drug dealer. It was a setup run by the government, in a controversial tactic sometimes called a “stash-house sting.” The associate was an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration. Egipciaco was caught as soon as he arrived at the scene.
 
 Believing he was a victim of entrapment among other injustices, Egipciaco challenged the government at trial, and lost. He was sentenced to a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years — 20 for the robbery attempt, and five for being a felon with a gun. 
 
 U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl lamented sentencing Egipciaco to 25 years, noting that a guidelines range would indicate only about half the amount if he were not subject to the mandatory minimums. (For comparison, the average time served by federal inmates for violent crime was a bit less than 6 years in 2012.) 
 
 Lawyers for Egipciaco “presented substantial evidence of the defendant’s continuing rehabilitation and good conduct while incarcerated,” Koeltl wrote in a 2016 order addressing a request from Egipciaco to reduce his sentence. But there was nothing the judge could do about that, he said. The ball was in the prosecutors’ court. 
 
 Mandatory minimums essentially allow prosecutors, not judges, to determine sentence length. The government could have opted not to count Egipciaco’s previous drug felony against him, substantially lowering the penalty. Koeltl indicated prosecutors could still make that choice.
 
 “The court previously and unsuccessfully urged the government not to seek a high mandatory minimum sentence in this case, which removed a significant amount of sentencing discretion from the court,” Koeltl wrote. The judge again asked the government to “consider exercising its considerable discretion” to reduce the sentence.
 
 So far, it has not.
 
 Almost half of the more than 180,000 federal inmates in the U.S. are serving mandatory minimum sentences, according to a report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Most of the crimes are drug-related. Intended to severely punish big drug traffickers, the penalties are actually used mostly against low-level dealers and their associates, and often disproportionately against people of color.
 
 There is no parole in the federal system, so a long sentence meted out under a mandatory minimum is indeed long — only about 15 percent can be shaved off for good behavior. Meanwhile, the cost of housing a federal inmate runs about $32,000 per year. 
 
 “Excessively long sentences are not only unjust but extremely expensive and wasteful,” according to the Silver Spring, Maryland-based Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, which is focused on drug enforcement policy reform. Yet mandatory minimums have persisted for decades “despite opposition by citizens and judges.”

I came across Egipciaco, who is now 38, while working on book about another inmate at the prison where he is housed, FCI Fort Dix, in New Jersey. I was impressed with Egipciaco’s sense of determination and his strikingly positive attitude despite his circumstances, which is unusual among inmates with long sentences. I decided to help him tell his story, which follows below. I asked him questions to draw out the narrative, helped him structure it, and edited it lightly for clarity. But these are his words.

Daniel Egipciaco’s words will be posted on a second post from this article. Thanks for your continued support. Please follow the movement @ ReverseSting.org & sign our petition.