FOXNews.com – Locked Up for Life, Part One: The Case of Clarence Aaron – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News
Three life sentences, without parole.

That’s how long Calvin Smith — part of the notorious Murder Inc. drug gang which terrorized Washington, D.C., in the 1990s — will be in jail for the cold-blooded murder of three people and for dealing drugs.

It’s how long Erick John Llorance will be in jail for three holiday-season armed robberies and a shooting in Houston in 2007.

It’s how long high school shooter Michael Carneal will be in jail for murdering three girls and injuring five other students while they were standing with their youth prayer group outside Heath High School in Kentucky in 1997.

Three life sentences, without parole, is also how long Clarence Aaron will be in jail — because he introduced two drug dealers, so that one could buy cocaine from the other.

Aaron got $1,500 for introducing the dealers.

In January 1993, after discovering that his apartment in Baton Rouge had been searched by the FBI, Aaron turned himself in and was charged with conspiracy to possess a controlled substance with the intent to distribute, possession of a controlled substance with the intent to distribute, and attempt to possess a controlled substance with intent to distribute.

He was released on bond and passed random drug tests for almost eight months.

He went on trial in August and was convicted on the three charges — possession, conspiracy and attempted possession — with the intent to distribute 24 kilos of crack cocaine.

That was 15 years ago, when Aaron was 24. He has been in prison ever since. He’s 39 years old now, and he will die in prison.

Aaron’s five co-conspirators, including the drug ring’s kingpin, Watts, were arrested before him and cut deals with federal prosecutors to testify against Aaron in exchange for reduced sentences.

On average, Aaron’s co-conspirators, career drug dealers who knew better how to work the system, will spend about eight years in prison.

But Clarence Aaron, once a high school and college football player, a church-going member of the Masons, will grow old and die behind bars.

Clarence Aaron is the legacy of Vice President-Elect Joe Biden’s sponsorship of mandatory minimum sentencing legislation in the 1980s.  If anyone deserves a presidential pardon from George Bush or Barack Obama, it is Clarence Aaron.