Demaryius Thomas’s mother
By 
Demaryius Thomas, the great former Denver Broncos’ receiver who died last night at the age of 33, left behind a mother who never saw him play in an organized football game until she was released from federal prison, 15 years into a 20-year mandatory minimum sentence. (The last five years of her sentence were commuted by Barack Obama in 2015).
Here is an account of the criminal history that led Katrina Smith to spend — even with the benefit of the presidential commutation — more time in prison than the average sentence served by defendants convicted of homicide:
FOR 4,568 DAYS in prison, she kept a picture in her cell of the last time she traveled to see her son play, at a junior high basketball game in 1999. The bleachers were mostly empty that night. The court was made of rubber. Both teams were coed. Demaryius made two 3-pointers while Katina watched in a sweatshirt with his nickname, Bay-Bay, stitched across the chest. They posed for a picture in the parking lot and then drove home, where the next morning they were jolted awake by the sound of 14 federal agents kicking in the front door.
The agents executed a search warrant and found several hundred dollars of rolled-up cash, money that was connected to a small drug ring led by Katina’s mother, Minnie Pearl. Katina was charged with conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. The crime carried a mandatory minimum sentence of at least 20 years in federal prison.
“That must be some kind of mistake,” Katina remembered saying to her lawyer, at their first meeting, because she had expected probation or maybe a few months in jail. She had no criminal record. She had never used drugs. At the time of her arrest, she was working the overnight shift at a clothing factory to support Demaryius and his two younger sisters. The “sophisticated drug ring,” as prosecutors described it, was run out of a rotting and abandoned gas station near Minnie’s trailer, where customers came to spend $10 or $15 at a time. The government’s evidence indicated that Katina had neither dealt drugs herself nor been paid for helping her mother store the extra cash.
“She was doing me a favor, really,” Minnie said. “She was a bit player at most.”
The government offered Katina a plea deal of four years if she testified against Minnie, but Katina refused to turn against her mother. She chose instead to risk abandoning her three children for the next 20 years by taking the case to trial. “It was what I felt I had to do as a daughter, but I’ll never forgive myself as a mother,” Katina said. The government had wiretaps of her talking about drug money and 14 witnesses lined up to testify against her. Her own lawyer never called a single witness. The jury deliberated for an hour. “She’s a good mother with so many factors in her favor,” the lawyer pleaded at sentencing, but the only factors that mattered were working against her.
The mandatory minimum sentence laws passed by Congress for drug offenses were an abomination. Joe Biden voted for those laws. I would like to think he may have played some role in getting Obama to extend clemency to a handful of the victims of this ongoing jurisprudential atrocity, and that his regret for the role he played in this story continues to guide his actions today.