Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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Shortly after midnight on September 14, 2000, James Ghent slipped out of his Miami home, climbed into his car with a suit, a toothbrush, and a change of underwear, and drove nearly 500 miles to Tallahassee to ask Jeb Bush for his rights back.
The journey, he hoped, would help him close the door on a fraught relationship with the law that stretched back to the mid-1960s. As a teenager, Ghent had experimented with drugs and racked up a criminal record; after returning to Florida from a combat tour in Vietnam, he got hooked on crack cocaine. He turned to stealing to finance his habit and spent the 1980s in and out of prison for a string of burglaries.
One day in 1989, he was released from prison in the morning, attempted to steal a car in the afternoon, and was back behind bars by the evening. "You got to be a dumb MF," an officer told him. "You just got out this morning."
How Jeb Bush became a player in one of the South's darkest traditions
This is a lengthy read and you won't be happy if you are a Bush supporter. But it showcases how this is an arbitrary process.
The journey, he hoped, would help him close the door on a fraught relationship with the law that stretched back to the mid-1960s. As a teenager, Ghent had experimented with drugs and racked up a criminal record; after returning to Florida from a combat tour in Vietnam, he got hooked on crack cocaine. He turned to stealing to finance his habit and spent the 1980s in and out of prison for a string of burglaries.
One day in 1989, he was released from prison in the morning, attempted to steal a car in the afternoon, and was back behind bars by the evening. "You got to be a dumb MF," an officer told him. "You just got out this morning."
How Jeb Bush became a player in one of the South's darkest traditions
This is a lengthy read and you won't be happy if you are a Bush supporter. But it showcases how this is an arbitrary process.
