Cracking Open

In 1988, the D.C. police and the FBI went after Tribble, who was working with a network of dealers in the Woodridge neighborhood in Northeast. The FBI planned to have undercover agents supply the dealers with cellphones in exchange for crack cocaine and to record their conversations. At the time, cellphones were rare and expensive; you needed good credit to get one, something most drug dealers didn't have.

A few days before Christmas in 1989, an undercover FBI agent showed up to collect a monthly cellphone payment in crack from a dealer named Norman Brown. Brown told the agent to drive over to his "man" and collect the drugs. On this day, his man was Mike Short. Mike handed the agent a paper bag containing 63 grams of crack cocaine. The agent gave him $1,800.

In 1990, after a two-year investigation, federal authorities charged Mike, then 19, and 28 others with selling powder cocaine and crack as part of a sprawling drug ring. Nearly two decades later, McColl called Mike "a very minor player." Mike said he had never been suspended from school. Unlike some of his codefendants, he had worked steadily, including helping his father at Mattress Discounters in Langley Park.

Meanwhile, Brian Tribble agreed to cooperate with authorities in exchange for a reduced sentence. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute powder cocaine, admitting that he and associates had sold more than 110 pounds of drugs in an 18-month period. He was sentenced to 10 years, almost exactly half the length of Mike's crack sentence of 19 years and seven months. In addition to the 63 grams Mike handed to the undercover agent, the court held him accountable for helping to distribute another five kilos of crack, based on witness testimony, which added considerably to his sentence.

AFTER HE WAS FREED, MIKE RETURNED TO WASHINGTON ON THE NIGHT OF DECEMBER 18, 2007, on a Trailways bus from West Virginia, wearing a prison-issue sweat suit and a denim jacket that whipped in the wind. He had ridden since morning, staring out the window, too anxious to sleep. He felt like everyone was looking at him, like they all knew that he had just been released from prison.

He was released just ahead of a stream of crack offenders expected to get out an average of two years early under changes enacted last fall by the Sentencing Commission. About 20,000 federal crack inmates will be eligible for the reductions over the next 30 years. The largest number -- about 1,400 -- were sentenced in the Eastern District of Virginia; 279 were sentenced in Maryland and 269 in the District.

On average, they are male, black and 35 years old, a profile that Mike fit almost exactly, and many will return to neighborhoods scarred by drugs. The Anacostia halfway house where Mike would spend the next six weeks sat across from a rundown apartment complex on a desolate street. It was called Hope Village, but he quickly sized up the neighborhood. "You would find your choice of drugs around there, easy," he said.

He had been behind bars for nearly 16 years, most of it in Petersburg, Va. His mother had died in 1997, and he had gone to her funeral in his khaki inmate's uniform, chained at the waist and ankles, escorted by corrections officers. Mike's father, whom he had seen periodically over the years, also attended the funeral, along with Mike's brother, sister and nephews. His father sometimes visited him in prison, and the two developed a closer relationship, though they were never as close as he and his mother had been.

At first, he was angry -- at the people who'd testified against him, at the government and at his lawyer. Having never been much of a churchgoer, he blamed God. Then somewhere along the way, he grew tired of the repetitive drone of his own rage. "I didn't want to come out of prison being bitter, hating anyone," he said. "I wasn't raised like that, and I didn't want to come home like that."

Vowing not to waste a day, he earned an associate's degree in business management and worked long hours in a prison business office.

"Why did you go to prison for so long?" Mike recalls his nephew asking when he visited. "Did you kill anybody?"

"I sold drugs," Mike told him.