Originally published 2021-04-22.
Guy Frank, a 67-year-old man from New Orleans, walked out of a Louisiana prison in April 2021 after serving about 20 years for trying to steal two shirts from a Saks Fifth Avenue store. He had been given 23 years without the possibility of parole under Louisiana's habitual offender law, because he already had earlier theft convictions. His release came after the Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) asked the Orleans Parish District Attorney's office to revisit the case.
His story drew attention because it puts two numbers side by side: a theft of items worth less than $500, and two decades behind bars. To understand how that happens, you have to look at how repeat-offender laws work in the United States.
The crime and the sentence
Frank was addicted to heroin at the time and, by his lawyers' account, was stealing small amounts to pay for drugs. He tried to shoplift two shirts from Saks Fifth Avenue in New Orleans, was caught, and pleaded guilty straight away.
Under Louisiana law at the time, theft of that value was a felony. (The state later reclassified it as a misdemeanour.) Because Frank had prior theft convictions, prosecutors in the office of then District Attorney Harry Connick asked the court to declare him a multiple offender. That finding allowed a much longer sentence. Judge Sharon Hunter imposed 23 years in the Department of Corrections with no chance of parole.
None of his offences involved violence. IPNO described them as the product of addiction rather than danger to the public.
How he was freed
IPNO's Unjust Punishment Project, which works on cases of extreme sentences rather than wrongful convictions, took up Frank's case and lobbied the Orleans Parish District Attorney's office directly to secure his immediate release. The office, which had a new reform-minded district attorney from January 2021, agreed, and Frank was released in April 2021, roughly three years before his full term would have ended.
IPNO argued that the case also raised questions of race and money. In its statement the group said: It is hard to imagine a White person with resources receiving this sentence for this crime.
A post shared by Innocence Project New Orleans (@_ipno_)
What habitual offender laws do
Habitual offender laws, sometimes called repeat-offender or "three strikes" laws, require or allow courts to impose much longer sentences on people with previous convictions. Depending on the state, a new conviction can trigger a mandatory minimum, a sentence multiplied several times over, or life imprisonment.
The aim is to protect the public from people who keep offending. In practice, the laws can apply to minor crimes as well as serious ones, and many do not distinguish between violent and non-violent records. Because the only way around the mandatory sentence is often a deal with prosecutors, the laws also hand prosecutors enormous leverage in plea bargaining.
Frank's case is far from unique. In California, Leandro Andrade received 50 years to life for shoplifting nine videotapes, and Gary Ewing 25 years to life for stealing golf clubs. On 5 March 2003 the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that such sentences do not violate the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Louisiana and mass incarceration
Louisiana has long been one of the most heavily incarcerated places on earth. A 2021 Prison Policy Initiative report put the state's incarceration rate at 1,094 people per 100,000 residents, the highest of any US state, and a 2012 Times-Picayune investigation famously called it the "prison capital of the world". The state passed a package of sentencing reforms in 2017 that softened some of these rules, but people sentenced earlier, like Frank, were often left serving old terms.
The United States as a whole holds the largest documented prison population in the world, about 1.8 million people in prisons and jails in 2021. On a per-person basis, recent rankings place the US among the top few countries rather than always first; the World Prison Brief listed it sixth in 2023, at 531 per 100,000.
Researchers point out that tough sentencing laws helped drive the rise in life sentences in the 1990s and 2000s, even as violent crime fell. A 2013 count found more than 3,000 Americans serving life without parole for non-violent crimes, most because of mandatory sentencing rules.
The debate over long sentences for minor crimes
Supporters of habitual offender laws argue that people with long records are more likely to reoffend, and that judges need firm tools to deal with them. Victims of repeated property crime also have a real stake.
Critics answer that decades in prison for shoplifting cost taxpayers far more than the goods stolen, keep people locked up long after they pose any risk, and do nothing to treat the addiction that fuels many such crimes. Older prisoners, like Frank, are among the least likely to reoffend and the most expensive to hold because of their health needs.
There is also the question of fairness. Black Americans are imprisoned at much higher rates than white Americans, and groups such as IPNO argue that prosecutorial discretion in seeking enhancements has fallen hardest on poor Black defendants.
Life after prison
Leaving prison at 67 after two decades means starting from scratch: housing, income, identification documents and health care all have to be arranged. IPNO said it would support Frank with re-entry services, and that he hoped to become an assistant deacon so he could help young people make better choices than he did.
Supporters set up a GoFundMe page to help him rebuild his life.
Frank's case is a small one in legal terms, two shirts and a guilty plea. That is exactly why it became a symbol in the wider argument over whether long mandatory sentences for minor, non-violent offences make anyone safer.
Sources: The Mind Unleashed (with Innocence Project New Orleans statements); Innocence Project New Orleans on Instagram; Wikipedia: Habitual offender; Wikipedia: Incarceration in the United States.
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