Duane Jennings

Duane Jennings: A federal judge sentenced Jennings to five years in prison, the lowest sentence allowed by law.
Jennings, 31, who formerly lived on Old Kennedy Road, was by all accounts the secondary participant in the attempt to buy cocaine from a dealer who turned out to be a government informant. The sham deal took place at a Meriden hotel on the evening of June 22.
Jarvis Terry, 36, formerly of Brewster Road in Windsor, had negotiated the purchase in previous telephone calls with the informant.
But prosecutor Geoffrey M. Stone told Judge Mark R. Kravitz in New Haven's U.S. District Court that when Terry and Jennings arrived at the hotel "they were almost equally involved in trying to consummate the transaction."
The two men arrived at the hotel with more than $23,000.
Like Jennings, Terry pleaded guilty in the case. Senior Judge Alan H. Nevas, who sits in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport, sentenced Terry in November to 70 months, or almost six years, in federal prison.
Both men had reason to know better. Each has two prior felony narcotics convictions, court records show.
Federal sentencing guidelines prescribed identical sentence ranges for them, 70 to 87 months in prison.
Kravitz cited two reasons for giving Jennings a reduced sentence.
The first was that his sentence range under the guidelines was pushed up a notch by a disorderly-conduct conviction stemming from an incident that occurred when his father was being arrested a dozen years ago. Jennings was 19 at the time.
The judge said he wouldn't have given Jennings a break for a drug conviction when he was 19. But he said the disorderly conduct conviction was unrelated to drug activity.
The second reason was that Jennings played a smaller role in the cocaine deal than Terry, although the judge acknowledged that "on the day in question it was of the same dimension."
The 10-month break from the judge was the second - and the smaller - of the two breaks Jennings has received in the case.
Federal prosecutors gave him the first break by agreeing, as part of his plea bargain, not to file a formal notice of his prior narcotics convictions with the court. That would have raised his minimum sentence to 10 years in prison.
Jennings can earn more breaks in prison, where he will be eligible for a nine month, or 15 percent, reduction in his time behind bars for good behavior. Kravitz also recommended that the federal Bureau of Prisons consider him for a 500-hour drug treatment program that can reduce his sentence by up to an additional year.
And Jennings will be eligible for release to a halfway house when he has six months to go on his prison term.
But when he gets out of prison, Jennings will be on probation for four years, with three more years of possible prison time hanging over his head if he violates court-ordered conditions.
In light of Jennings' record, Kravitz acknowledged, there is a risk that he will commit more crimes when he is released.
The judge ended the hearing with words of almost fatherly advice.
If Jennings returns to drug dealing when he gets out of prison, Kravitz said, there will be two possibilities: He could end up dead because drug dealing is a dangerous business. Or he will be arrested again and receive a significantly longer prison sentence.
If the latter happens, the judge said, "You will never see your children grow up. If you won't do it for yourself, do it for them."