Sep 17 2024 91 mins 21
This week Savannah sits down with the wrongfully incarcerated, Alice Marie Johnson. Alice shares her unbelievable journey from growing up in a small town to falling in with the wrong crowd and serving 21 years in prison. They both discuss the unfairness of the United States prison system and how it impacted the trajectory of Alice’s life. Alice speaks a lot about the efforts she has made within and outside the prison walls, and talks about how she could not be where she is today without the help of former President Trump and the Kardashian family. Listen to this episode to hear more about Alice’s incredible story!
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About Alice Marie Johnson
Alice Marie Johnson is an American criminal justice reform advocate and former federal prisoner. She was convicted in 1996 for her involvement in a Memphis cocaine trafficking organization and sentenced to life imprisonment. In June 2018, after serving 21 years in prison, she was released from the Federal Correctional Institution, Aliceville, after President Donald Trump granted her clemency, thereby commuting her sentence, effective immediately.
Johnson was born in Mississippi, and her memoirs recount growing up as one of nine children of sharecroppers and becoming pregnant as a sophomore in high school. At the time of her arrest, she was a single mother of five children.Johnson was arrested in 1993 and convicted in 1996 of eight federal criminal counts relating to her involvement in a Memphis, Tennessee-based cocaine trafficking organization.In addition to drug conspiracy counts, she was convicted of money laundering and structuring, the latter crime because of her purchase of a house with a down payment structured to avoid hitting a $10,000 reporting threshold. The Memphis operation involved over a dozen individuals.The indictment, which named 16 defendants, described her as a leader in a multi-million dollar cocaine ring, and detailed dozens of drug transactions and deliveries. Evidence presented at trial showed that the Memphis operation was connected to Colombian drug dealers based in Texas. She was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in 1997. At the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Julia Gibbons said that Johnson was "the quintessential entrepreneur" in an operation that dealt in 2,000 to 3,000 kilograms of cocaine, with a "very significant" impact on the community. Co-defendants Curtis McDonald and Jerlean McNeil were sentenced to life and 19 years in federal prison, respectively. A number of other co-defendants who testified against Johnson received sentences between probation and 10 years. Following her conviction, Johnson acknowledged that she was an intermediary in the drug trafficking organization, but said she did not actually make deals or sell drugs.
