Southern New Hampshire University
Jordyn Martin
CJ 120 Module Five Assignment One
Southern New Hampshire University Loden's Wheel Factor
Prevalent Factors
Sharanda Jones Case
1. Socioeconomic Status
- "Too poor to afford a so-called "dope lawyer" for her jury trial, she pleaded not guilty." (Martyn, 2015).
- "Jones had grown up poor, raised by her grandmother after her mother was left quadriplegic by a car crash." (Horwitz, Khan, 2015).
- "Like Jones, Clark grew up poor and received a lengthy sentence for his first conviction." (Martyn, 2015)
2.Race
- "For her final paper, Byrd wanted to write about the disparity between crack-cocaine and powder-cocaine sentences and the disparate effect on African Americans and Hispanics, but she needed real cases to humanize her argument." (Horwitz, Khan, 2015).
- "About 100,000 federal inmates - or nearly half - are serving time for drug offenses, among them thousands of nonviolent offenders sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Most are poor, and four in five are African American or Hispanic." (Horwitz, Khan, 2015)
- "Her case began in November 1997 when the Kaufman County Sheriff's Department conducted a large drug sweep in the city of Terrell, about 30 miles east of Dallas, netting more than 100 people, all of them black." (Horwitz, Khan, 2015).
3. Political Events
- "Her sentence was then made even more severe with a punishment tool introduced at the height of the drug war that allowed judges in certain cases to "enhance" sentences - or make them longer." (Horwitz, Khan, 2015).
"On March 31, Obama granted sentence commutations to 22 prisoners ...Then, in July, Obama granted clemency to 46 more prisoners." (Martyn, 2015).
Southern New Hampshire University
References:
Martyn, A. (2021, September 29). New reforms bypass Dallas inmate sentenced to life for first drug arrest. Dallas Observer. Retrieved September 29, 2021, from https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/new-reforms-bypass-dallas-inmate-sentenced-to- life-for-first-drug-arrest-7680480.
Povah, A. R. (2016, December 7). Sharanda Purlette Jones - serving life received clemency on 12/18/15 - can-do.justice through clemency. CAN. Retrieved September 29, 2021, from https://www.candoclemency.com/sharanda-purlette-jones/.
Sari Horwitz, & Nikki Kahn. (7 C.E., Winter 2015). From a first arrest to a life sentence. Washington Post, The.
Reflection: After reviewing all the resources, I found it was relatively easy to find quotes to align
with the factors I chose for Loden's Wheel. There were a few factors that I had initially chosen
that I later changed after not being able to find quotes to align well. I do think that it was more
difficult to find examples for certain factors. Mostly because those factors just did not pertain to
this particular case There were a few quotes that I found within the resources that could have
been used for multiple factors within that one quote. I also did find multiple examples for some
factors such as socioeconomic status, race, and political events. Some factors were more
prevalent than others because of the nature of this ca