Judge Frees Man 27 Years After Sentencing Him to 5 Life Terms

A New York federal judge freed a man who spent 27 years behind bars after he initially sentenced the convicted robber to five life terms.

U.S. District Judge Frederic Block reduced Walter Johnson’s sentence to time served plus three years of supervised release. Johnson was released on Thursday from a federal prison in Otisville, nearly a two-hour drive northwest of Brooklyn, where Johnson is from.

Johnson, who once had the street name “King Tut,” served nearly three decades in prison on robbery and drug charges. He was the only person ever sentenced to mandatory life in prison out of the Eastern District of New York, which covers Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, under a federal statute known as the Three Strikes law, which targets repeat offenders, according to Mia Eisner-Grynberg, deputy attorney-in-charge of Federal Defenders of New York, which represented Johnson.

During his time in prison, Johnson had no disciplinary infractions, helped create programs for prisoners and received praise from prison officials for his positive leadership, according to court documents filed by Eisner-Grynberg.

“I now believe that my sentences, though lawfully rendered, were excessively harsh,” Block wrote in his ruling. “Just like prisoners who have evolved into better human beings during their lengthy periods of incarceration, judges also evolve with the passage of years on the bench.”

Block said the 2018 First Step Act allowed judges to reconsider prior sentences and prisoners to seek early release.

Eisner-Grynberg argued in court documents that Johnson would’ve never gotten five life terms under current judicial standards.

Johnson, now 61 years old, said he will live with his family in Brooklyn and give back to his community by “mentoring young men to steer clear” of the choices he made, according to Eisner-Grynberg.

“We are grateful for the humanity and the humility that Judge Block exercised in reconsidering Mr. Johnson’s life sentence,” Eisner-Grynberg told the Associated Press. “Mr. Johnson’s extraordinary rehabilitation in the face of a death-in-prison sentence is a testament to his character and reflects his growth and change.”

Federal prosecutors who opposed Johnson’s early release detailed the violent robberies that he and others were arrested in connection with between 1995 and 1996.

“Nothing about the defendant’s current circumstances or time in prison support a sentence reduction given the heinous nature of these crimes,” prosecutors wrote in a letter to Block in April.

One of the main victims of those crimes, who prosecutors said Johnson robbed multiple times and sexually assaulted, however, supported Johnson’s reduced prison sentence.

“This sentence has given me an opportunity to do a great deal of introspection and to reinvent myself,” Johnson wrote in a letter to Block in March, seeking his early release. “I now take responsibility for the pain that I caused in society when I was ignorant, reckless and selfish.”

“Please give me a chance to lead a life of peace and joy and giving back, like Nelson Mandela did,” he wrote, citing the South African leader who served 27 years in prison.

This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.