Her father went to prison for life for $20 of marijuana. Now she's homeless.
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In 2021, a BBC reporter asked me to connect him to Fate Winslow. Winslow had just been freed from Louisiana State Penitentiary—known as Angola—after a change in Louisiana law allowed Innocence Project New Orleans argue that despite being “guilty” of his crime, life without parole was an excessive sentence for selling $20 of pot to an undercover police officer.
Winslow had been in prison since 2008. That year, officers approached him when he was living on the street and asked him for “a girl.” When he said he couldn’t procure “a girl” the officer asked for pot. Winslow went to a dealer and got about $20 of weed—his cut was $5. At trial, prosecutors stacked charges. He’d had priors. All were nonviolent and decades apart, and clearly tied to addiction and homelessness. The most severe charge was burglary because he rifled through someone’s unlocked car. Still, the prosecution triggered Louisiana’s insane habitual offender law and he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
I was excited to connect the BBC reporter to Winslow. Finally, a good outcome (though I wouldn’t necessarily call more than a decade in prison a good outcome). Winslow was still learning the ropes of life on the outside, so the best way to reach him was through his daughter Faith Canada. She’d barely known her dad growing up, but once he got out, they bonded. He was excited to become a grandfather. I dialed her number and cheerfully said, “Hey! A BBC reporter wants to talk to your dad!” and she just started bawling. She had just found out her Dad was gunned down in an apparent robbery. The same police department that put her Dad away for much of her life has yet to find his killer.
She described the challenge of losing her father for the second time. "I just got him back. It hasn’t even been five months. You all just took my dad for a second time, but this time, he can’t come back,” she said. “I’m never going to hear his voice again or see his big smile.”
A few months ago, Faith lost her job. Then she lost her apartment. Faith and her baby son, Lennox, are homeless. She found a place that costs $400 to move in and $500 in rent and looks forward to finding another job once she’s settled.
Would consider donating to her GoFundMe? Look, it’s the state of Louisiana that should give her a mansion for what they did to her family. But that’s not the world we live in, and you can make a big difference here.
Thank you,
Tana
I donated.