After serving 27 years, Walter Johnson, once known on Brooklyn streets as the gunman King Tut, was released from prison last week by Frederic Block, the federal judge who had intended for Johnson to die behind bars. The story of why Block looked at the sentence anew is propelled by multiple people — judges and citizens alike — having a remarkable change of heart.
On Dec. 8, 1997, a Brooklyn federal jury in the Eastern District of New York, with Block presiding, convicted Johnson on charges of robbery, narcotics trafficking conspiracy and witness tampering. Block noted during sentencing that Johnson was a legendary criminal in the world of hip-hop. In the 1994 diss track “Against All Odds,” Tupac Shakur used Johnson’s street name, Tut, to implicate him in the Manhattan Quad Studios robbery and shooting that left Shakur without his jewelry and nearly without his life after he was shot five times.
Johnson was a convicted criminal who had used a gun in the commission of a crime, and as such, he fell under the “three strikes” rule mandated in the 1984 Armed Career Criminal Act. Block took the opportunity to sentence him to five concurrent life sentences.
But this year, Block decided he had been too harsh. “Second chances are always about redemption,” said Block, whose new book, “A Second Chance: A Federal Judge Decides Who Deserves It” offers insight on his shift. Block emphasized the importance of a prison reform bill, the First Step Act, passed in Congress in 2018.
“I especially embrace that part of the [First Step Act] that gives me the discretion to reconsider a previously imposed sentence,” he wrote. “I believe in the biblical concept of redemption and that the First Step Act appropriately provides a path to allow a worthy prisoner a second chance to live a law-abiding life.”
Shepherded through the Senate by Democrats Richard Durbin of Illinois and Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Republicans Charles Grassley of Iowa and Mike Lee of Utah, the First Step Act allowed inmates to appeal directly to judges for early compassionate release under “extraordinary and compelling circumstances.”
“It changed the landscape,” Block told Truthdig. He noted that it applies only to federal cases. “The states need to move in this direction too.”
Liz Komar, sentencing reform counsel for the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization that advocates for ending “extreme punishments,” said the First Step Act is a landmark law. “It’s had a profound impact, especially in increasing the number of requests for compassionate release,” Komar said.
With Block’s decision, Johnson was a free man. The judge, Johnson told the New York Times, “gave me a gift I never thought was coming.” Following his release from the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, N.Y., Johnson went to a bar in New York City with rapper 50 Cent.
It took an act of forgiveness by one of Johnson’s victims for Block to embrace the redemption.
According to court filings, Block denied a compassionate release motion from Johnson on July 24, 2023, even though that motion included the Otisville warden’s testimony to the exceptional self-improvement that Johnson demonstrated while incarcerated.
What new evidence prompted Block to change his mind?
“I have also come to a place of forgiveness.”
On Sept. 16, 2024, while preparing to rule on Johnson’s latest compassionate release motion, Block received a victim statement from Crystal Winslow. Johnson had been charged with raping Winslow during the robbery for which Block sentenced him. (A jury couldn’t agree on the evidence to convict him.) Winslow wrote, “While I understand the severity of his crimes and their profound impact on me, I have also come to a place of forgiveness. … I believe that Mr. Johnson has served a substantial sentence and has had ample time to reflect on his actions. Given the opportunity and with the proper support, he has the potential to become a productive and positive member of society.”
In his Oct. 24 order releasing Johnson, Block suggested that Winslow’s forgiveness, as expressed in her letter, was the tipping point in his viewing Johnson as worthy of a second chance.
“We need to rethink people’s ability to change, and the role of compassion,” said Jason Williamson of the Center on Race, Inequality and the Law at New York University’s School of Law. “Ms. Winslow didn’t have to write that letter. She’s a model of not defining people by the worst thing they’ve done. She’s a powerful reminder that forgiveness has a role to play in the execution of justice.”
Maybe there’s a second chance for all of us who are interested in living in a safer society — without defining our fellow citizens by their worst moments. Perhaps there’s a second chance to move beyond the binary of crime and punishment, an evolution to a new space of understanding, mutuality, tolerance, respect for past mistakes and realization that people can change for the better. This spirit of understanding was the undercurrent in Block’s filing that gave Johnson a second chance.
“Just like prisoners who have evolved into better human beings during their lengthy periods of incarceration,” Block wrote, “judges also evolve with the passage of years on the bench.”
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