Corey Ladd smiled. The moment didn’t seem possible a few months earlier, when the 31-year-old sat in a cell in the Allen Correction Center, five years into a 20-year-sentence for marijuana possession.
But here he was in Metairie’s Lafreneire Park on a typically hot summer afternoon, smiling as his daughter Charlee, 5, talked excitedly about playing chase with him, an upcoming dance recital he will now be able to attend, and her father taking her to the first day of kindergarten.
Criminal District Court Judge Karen Herman ordered Ladd’s early release last month, swayed by the legislature’s passage of a series of criminal justice reforms aimed at reducing the state’s overflowing prison population.
Two weeks into his newfound freedom, Ladd seemed in a daze as he sat next to his daughter, trying to make sense of his five-year odyssey through the Louisiana penal system, including stints at Orleans Parish jail and four different prisons across the state.
Ladd takes responsibility for the reckless choices he has made, and how those decisions put him behind bars and kept him from his daughter’s life. But he also casts blame on what he called an unjust system that for decades has locked up people like himself: nonviolent drug users who need treatment and not incarceration.
“I missed a good five and a half years of my life. I probably could have a decent job right now where I’d be a little more financially stable for (Charlee),” Ladd said. “I wish they would see the impact this has on families, what really goes on after the sentence is handed over, and how hard it is for people when the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.”
Criminal justice reform advocates say Ladd’s early release sends a clear signal that policy makers are waking up to the damage of mass incarceration.
“I saw an uprising in public sentiment for change across the political spectrum, across the economic spectrum, across racial lines,” said Will Harrell, American Civil Liberties Union southern regional director. “This is why (Ladd’s case) is so important. His release was an acknowledgment that the paradigm has shifted and they needed to get with the program.”
false
When parents go to prison, children pay
There are an estimated 94,000 children in Louisiana who have experienced having a parent serve jail time.
*****
Ladd stood dressed in a white prison jumpsuit, his wrists and ankles shackled, and tried to contain his emotions as Judge Herman ordered his release.
In her June 11 ruling, she cited Ladd’s nonviolent history and the state’s recent criminal justice reforms that drastically reduced penalties for marijuana possession. If Ladd were convicted under the new laws, he would have served no more than two years.
“I shed some tears man, I really did,” Ladd remembered. “I got to go home with my family. That’s what I’ve been praying for, for such a long time.”
Five days later, Ladd walked out of Allen Correctional Center in Kinder. The first person he saw as a newly freed man was Charlee, followed by his parents, Lisa and Jelks Ladd.
During the three-hour drive back to his parents’ home in Kenner, Ladd said he sat with Charlee in the backseat as she talked his “ear off, telling me about all her toys and what we’re going to do. Just catching up,” he said, laughing.
Since his release, Ladd said his goal has been to establish a solid foundation for himself that will ensure his future success. He’s fielded employment offers and joined a Bible study group. For the most part, though, Ladd said he has spent the majority his time with his family.
“I’m just getting used to being around a lot more people. I was kind of hesitant to go into Walmart. I don’t know why,” he said. “It’s just a mental thing that happens when you get out. I’m still trying to transition back into real life.”
*****
Ladd hesitated at sharing too many details of his time behind bars. He first spent two years in now shuttered Orleans Parish Prison, awaiting trial after his August 2011 arrest for marijuana possession. He was crammed with 14 other people into a 10-man cell.
“It’s nothing I’d wish on anybody, not even my worst enemy,” he said. “It was horrible. It is definitely a dangerous place. I just prayed for protection.”
Angola, where he was sent immediately following his conviction, was a welcome change, Ladd said, detailing the wide variety of educational programs and counseling services available for inmates. It was a strange experience though, he added. The men he served time with, mainly inmates with life sentences for violent crimes, couldn’t believe he was there for marijuana possession.
“It was a shocker for them,” he said.
After eight months in Angola, Ladd served a short stint at the Caldwell Correctional Center in Grayson. He was next shipped to Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel. The location, an hour’s drive from his home, allowed his parents and daughter to visit several times a month.
“It was just beautiful man, to be able to finally see her and hold her and let her know who I am and get to know her,” he said of Charlee, who was born a few months after his arrest.
The prison population, however, is always churning, constantly adding new inmates, which requires the Department of Corrections to relocate the people in its custody on a regular basis. After two years at Elayn Hunt, Ladd was sent to Allen Correction Center — 188 miles from home, far too long a drive for his parents, both of whom suffer from significant health problems. And Allen, unlike Angola and Elayn Hunt, offers few rehabilitative programs, Ladd said.
“It’s pretty much like being in (Orleans Parish Prison),” Ladd said. “There is nothing positive to do whatsoever. A lot of violence. You got to really have a strong mind to be in a place like that if you’re focusing on change.”
Ladd said he focused his time in Allen on changing his life.
Before his 2011 arrest, Ladd said he “never really did too much good” with his life. It was all one big party, he said. The last job he held was working the door at Temptations strip club on Bourbon Street.
During his time in prison, however, Ladd said he learned about the fleeting nature of life. His grandmother died, his mother almost died due to complications from lymphedema, a condition that causes the retention of fluids and tissue swelling, and his younger brother, Jonathan, died of a drug overdose.
“They gave me a phone call saying, ‘You need to call you mother,'” Ladd said, describing how he found out about his brother. “I called and she just told me everything that happened and I started crying because I’ve been in the situation with addiction. I wonder, why him and not me?”
His brother’s death and Charlee’s birth, coupled with the two-decade prison sentence that prevented him from experiencing either, forced Ladd to reassess his priorities. He said he wanted to be the type of person worthy of being a father and a son.
Orleans judge orders release of father sentenced to 17 years for drugs
“I want you to have every opportunity to be able to hold your child and help your parents,” Judge Karen Herman said.
*****
Ladd’s release, however, was never a certainty as officials within the criminal justice system appeared intent on keeping him behind bars for as long as possible.
He was convicted in May, 2013 of possessing a half-ounce of marijuana. But because he had two previous felony convictions – one for possession of LSD and one for possession of a single hydrocodone pill – Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s office chose to prosecute Ladd under the state’s habitual offender law, which required the court to sentence him to between 13 and 40 years.
Ladd successfully convinced the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to order Herman to reconsider his 20-year sentence. She reduced it by three years, prompting Ladd to file another appeal. Cannizzaro’s office responded by filing a writ with the Louisiana Supreme Court in an attempt to prevent any further reduction.
While these legal challenges worked their way through the courts, the state was in the process of overhauling the criminal justice system with a focus on reducing its world-leading incarceration rate. In 2015, former Gov. Bobby Jindal signed a bill that decreases the penalties for marijuana possession. During this year’s regular legislative session, lawmakers enacted a comprehensive package of reforms that, among other things, allow people convicted of three drug felonies to be sentenced to mental health or substance abuse treatment as opposed to prison. The package also reduced maximum sentences for marijuana, cocaine and other drugs, and gave judges the ability to shorten or suspend sentences for third time felons.
All of these reforms would have significantly impacted Ladd’s sentence if they were in effect at the time of his conviction four years ago, a fact not lost on Herman or Cannizzaro when it came time to resentence him in June.
Cannizzaro, whose writ was rejected by the state Supreme Court, agreed to vacate Ladd’s conviction under the habitual offender law. Spokesman Christopher Bowman said the district attorney “took into account the recent legislative changes made regarding the penalties associated with the possession of marijuana.”
Bowman added that Ladd’s attorney, public defender Kenneth Hardin, “presented an impressive binder of information that contained information regarding the rehabilitative programming in which Mr. Ladd had participated while in custody. As a result, the DA believed that Mr. Ladd did not pose the same public safety risk to the community as he had when he was originally convicted and sentenced.”
With Cannizzaro’s challenge dropped, Herman had leeway to drastically reduce Ladd’s sentence. She was not, however, legally obligated to do so as the new reforms were not made retroactive, and therefore didn’t cover people, such as Ladd, sentenced under the old laws. That she chose to do so anyway is significant, said Harrell with the ACLU.
“Up until about 10 years ago it was blasphemous to speak of reducing penalties related to drug crimes,” he said. “I think Louisiana will continue on this trajectory and become no longer the national disgrace it’s been for decades, but a model.
“The upside to having the worst incarceration record in the nation is you end up with a whole lot of angry people who are ready to go to the capital, to call their legislators, to send emails and insist on change.”
Looking back at the five years he spent in prison, Ladd said he doesn’t harbor any anger, just regret that more people like him remain behind bars, with no hope of release. In 2015, out of the 365 people prosecuted under the habitual offender law in Louisiana, 138 were drug offenders, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts report. The best way to honor those people, and his newly gifted freedom, is to make sure he never returns, he said.
“She demands attention, all the time, so that’s where my focus is and that’s really going to help me,” Ladd said as he watched Charlee wave a silver, star-topped wand. “I know I’m not going back to prison.”