Photo: Twitter/INPO
Guy Frank, 67, has been freed after serving 20 years in prison for stealing two shirts from a Saks Fifth Avenue in New Orleans, reported News 18.
Frank, who was a waiter, was arrested in September of 2000 after walking out of a Saks Fifth Avenue store of Canal Street in New Orleans with two shirts from the Men’s Department of the store. He was immediately held under suspicion of theft, the shirts were returned to store and Frank was then arrested.
Booked on one count of theft of goods valued at less than $500, a misdemeanor today, at the time of Frank’s arrest, the charge was considered a felony. Frank was struggling with addiction issues at the time of the arrest and pled guilty to the crime.
The Innocence Project New Orleans (INPO) identified Frank’s case for its Unjust Punishment Project believing that he was given an unfair sentence under Louisiana’s habitual offender “three strikes” law which can sentence to non-violent offenders to decades in prison.
Prior to the theft of the shirts at Saks, Frank had been arrested 36 times beginning in 1975. He was convicted for a few thefts, cocaine possession charges, and served a three-year stint in the 1990s on an undetermined charge.
The INPO said Frank’s case demonstrated the systemic racism built in the criminal justice system where Black defendants are given harsher sentences compared to their white counterparts. They said that Frank’s two-decade sentence was unjust when he “had done nothing more than steal in small amounts.”
“Even though he accepted responsibility for his crime, lawyers at District Attorney Harry Connick’s office asked that the judge find him to be a multiple offender, because he had been convicted of theft multiple times before, and to enhance his sentence. Judge Sharon Hunter imposed on him a sentence of 23 years in the Department of Corrections without the possibility of parole,” INPO said in a statement.
INPO celebrated Frank’s release with a Twitter post that read, “Guy Frank walked out of prison via IPNO’s Unjust Punishment Project today after serving 20 years for stealing 2 shirts from Saks 5th Avenue in New Orleans in 2000. His case shows how poor Black people are disproportionately affected by multiple offender laws. Welcome home, sir.”
While he was in prison, Frank lost his wife, son, mother and two brothers. A GoFundMe fundraiser has been set up to help with the expenses of rebuilding his life following his release.