All Hip Hop icon and business mogul Jay-Z is trying to do is free Black people who are sitting in prison cells for selling weed now that the Cannabis game is legal and booming. And what are the feds doing in response? Well, they’re apparently playing around in Black people’s faces and conjuring up any excuse they can think of to keep them locked up.
Source: JUSTIN TALLIS / Getty
Last September, we reported that Shawn Carter himself got his legal team together to file a plea for release on behalf of Valon Vailes, who, in 2007, was sentenced to 20 years in prison followed by 10 years of supervised parole after he was convicted of attempting to sell a ton of marijuana from 2003-2007.
Now, a hater might claim that one person selling a full ton of weed was doing too much and maybe deserved his sentence, but how many tons of marijuana are moving through legitimized retailers right now because white AF governments finally came to glory on the fact that a certain illegal substance should never have been criminalized in the first place?
Anyway, according to TMZ, Hov is ready to reintroduce his foot in the feds a**** because federal prosecutors are coming up with petty reasons to keep Vailes locked up. Team Roc attorney Alex Spiro said the now-56-year-old more than meets the qualifications for compassionate release, but court documents show that the feds are holding him over “ticky-tac” prison offenses—like sneaking leftover chicken from the mess hall to his cell.
I’m just going to say it: Keeping a Black man in prison over chicken is racist AF. You’re telling me guards are doing routine cell checks for KFC contraband? Are they looking for watermelon rinds too? If white people are also being denied early release for violating a prison’s unwashed legs policy, I might be willing to believe the chicken thing is legitimate—but nah, this sounds like some bull.
Spiro also cited documents that state Vailes violated another arbitrary-a** prison policy by using a piece of his prison uniform as “workout equipment.”
Seriously, what is up with these petty policies? What reason could there possibly be to prohibit inmates from turning their uniform into a make-shift Planet Fitness in their cells? It’s almost as if the feds are looking to keep people in prison for as long as possible regardless of whether or not they actually belong there.
From TMZ:
Jay and Team Roc are incensed because they say Vailes, who’s now 56, has been a model inmate in every way possible — he’s earned his GED — and has a “mentally ill” brother at home who needs a caretaker. Vailes’ mother had been taking care of the brother, but she died in 2020.
In his letter to Jay, Vailes discussed his frustration with watching corporations and individuals make billions off legalized marijuana, while he rots in prison over it.
Spiro is requesting that a federal judge reduce Vailes’ sentence to time served and release him immediately.
The truth is no one should ever have spent a day in prison for selling weed of any quantity. The eventual legalization of the substance and the fact that it’s now a multi-billion dollar industry proves this.
Free them all.
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