This week, President Barack Obama granted commutation of sentence to 111 individuals, one of which was Deadhead Timothy Tyler, who used to follow the Grateful Dead on tour and was given a life sentence in 1994 after being caught selling pot and LSD. His family had been petitioning to get him released, and here’s more details on the situation from their campaign:
My brother Timothy Tyler was just 25 years old when he was sentenced to die in prison for a nonviolent drug offense. He’s watched murderers and rapists leave prison while he has no chance of ever leaving. He is now 45 years old and I want to bring him home.
Timothy was a young Grateful Dead fan, who in May of 1992, sold pot and LSD to a friend who turned out to be a police informant. He had never been to prison before, but a judge was forced to give him double life without the possiblity of parole because of two prior drug convictions — even though both those convictions resulted in probation.
Life without the possibility of parole means my brother will never have a chance to live outside of prison walls. It’s effectively a death sentence.
Tim made mistakes when he was young, but after 22 years in prison, he has more than paid his debt to society. He is not a threat to anyone. He wasn’t given a chance to get clean and sober to think about the damage he was doing to his life. They locked him up and threw away the key.
Tyler’s sentence will now end August 30, 2018, and he will need to enroll in residential drug treatment.
Last year, Obama called the Grateful Dead an “iconic American band.”