Reason First: The Redemption of Richard Cephas

The case of Richard Cephas ought to be a bellwether for future convictions based on drug charges. Because he distributed cocaine, he found himself behind prison walls. This should enrage everyone to fight against drug laws. Cephas suffers from neutropenia that could worsen with a disease like COVID-19. So he shrugged. He broke free from the prison bars and fled from North Carolina where he had been locked up for his distribution charge. He escaped to his home state of Delaware.

There are thousands of inmates like Cephas who violated no one’s rights yet sit behind bars. And with life-threatening conditions that could be made worse by the novel coronavirus, it only lends itself to a messy concoction of injustice. There’s little nobility in dealing cocaine, but that should not make it a crime. For felons like Cephas who have become afflicted with other illnesses to be compromised by COVID-19 would be vicious.

Firstly, he shouldn’t have been imprisoned for his “crime.” Yes, in the books it is illegal to concern oneself with the manufacture, distribution, sale and use of scheduled substances. Yes, it is wrong for Cephas to have escaped. But what options did he have? To stay in with the rest of the sick inmates in one of the hotbed locations for the virus would be suicide...or manslaughter.

What Cephas did constitutes self-preservation. He has shown his rational self-interest in fighting the disease that could, once combined with the virus, kill him. His selfishness ought to be rewarded. This man escaped and subsisted on the refuse from trash cans and found shelter wherever he could. He didn’t want to run away from his “debt to society” only the prospect that he could die because of close quarters with other ill inmates.

Cephas’ willingness to be nabbed again and sent to a facility that would accommodate him is all that he is focused on, at this point. His ability to escape his captors required smarts and a thirst to live. Now that he is back in custody, he seeks to be placed in a unit where he will be away from sick inmates. Cephas is symbolic whether he wants to be or not. He is a metaphor for our corrupt and backwards penal system. A man who sold ounces of that white stuff on the corner ought to be able to live in freedom. Society has not advanced enough to regard these actions as non-criminal. Cephas’ intentions could have been to become a kingpin and sell thousands of kilos a day and that still would have been alright. Because of his illness, Cephas should be treated with more care and understanding than an inmate that has committed fraud, pedophilia, rape, or murder. He should be cared for and permitted to have far more liberties than the people behind the wall who committed actual crimes.

The prisoners who have violated individual rights should receive no special treatment. For Cephas, he should be able to be freed from his non-crime. If an adult accepts his sale of cocaine, where is the harm in that? That’s the internal flaw of the War on Drugs. It does little to discriminate against people who just traffic the drug and those who seek to take, money, lives, or create mayhem based on a certain substance.

Cephas is in a peculiar position. He has run away which could tack on years to his sentence. But if he had not made a prison break, would years have been tacked onto his life? What he should do now is continue to be a model prisoner until the legislators discover morality and permit Cephas and others likd him to be liberated.