Cedric Dean spent 28 years in prison. Tuesday, he’ll be at the State of the Union.
Cedric Dean spent more than 28 years in prison on two felony charges.
On Tuesday night Dean, now 46, will be in the House gallery while President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union Speech.
Dean will be the guest of U.S. Rep. Alma Adams, whose 12th District encompasses most of Mecklenburg County. He now works with the sheriff to deter young people from making the mistakes he did.
“I will send a message to President Trump and Congress that we need true reform in the criminal justice system,” Adams told a news conference at the Mecklenburg jail.
In December Congress passed and the president signed a law called the “First Step Act.” The law will allow thousands of federal inmates to be released from prison over 10 years and makes it easier for people convicted of crimes such as low-level drug offenses to be released.
Adams said she supports another phase of criminal justice reform.
“There are striking inequities within our criminal justice system,” she said Monday. “It is clear that we are over-criminalizing and over-processing certain communities and crimes.”
Dean was convicted of robbery at 16 and served five years in state prison. He said he was out for 11 months and then convicted of selling crack cocaine. For that he received a sentence of life plus five years. He was released in 2017 after serving nearly 23 years on the drug charge.
Now he runs a non-profit that works to keep young people out of prison. His message, he said, is that “redemption is real and that people can change.”
Dean, a self-described political junkie, said he’s looking forward to Tuesday’s speech.
“The State of the Union is a little like the Super Bowl to me,” he said.
This story was originally published February 4, 2019 at 1:21 PM.
