"It’s a Tuesday morning in August, but Betty Chism wraps 23 Christmas presents on her day off. Her son, Kevin Ott, is set to be released from the Oklahoma prison system this week, though no one has told her exactly when. Still, Chism, 75, wants to be prepared before she makes the two-and-a-half-hour drive to pick up her son from his prison.
Ott, 56, has been in prison since 1996 and sentenced to life without parole the following year under Oklahoma’s three strikes law for non-violent drug-related convictions. Like many others caught in the net of America’s prison system, and in his case in the state known as the “world’s prison capital”, he has a history of offenses ranging from a failure to display a tax stamp on controlled dangerous substances to two felonies related to drug possession.
His final conviction for drug-trafficking three and a half ounces of methamphetamines led to his life in prison sentence."
Out of prison after 23 years, thanks to his mother and a documentary
Ott, 56, has been in prison since 1996 and sentenced to life without parole the following year under Oklahoma’s three strikes law for non-violent drug-related convictions. Like many others caught in the net of America’s prison system, and in his case in the state known as the “world’s prison capital”, he has a history of offenses ranging from a failure to display a tax stamp on controlled dangerous substances to two felonies related to drug possession.
His final conviction for drug-trafficking three and a half ounces of methamphetamines led to his life in prison sentence."
Out of prison after 23 years, thanks to his mother and a documentary
