Ferlando Esco hasn’t been home in nearly 20 years.
The former Canton resident is serving a life sentence in Mississippi’s prisons not because he was convicted of killing or seriously hurting anyone. The 50-year-old received that sentence under the state’s habitual offender law.
That law states that two prior, separate felony convictions that resulted in a prison sentence of at least one year in state or federal prison can result in a life conviction without the possibility of parole. Only one of the felonies has to be a violent crime.
His daughter, Ferlandria Porter, 30, has been fighting for his release and is calling on the state Legislature to pass laws that give people like her father a chance at parole – a chance to come home.
“I’m still fighting and praying that the laws change, that the habitual offender law changes,” Esco said in a phone interview from a Colorado prison, where he was transferred last year and remains in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Porter is collecting signatures for a petition asking for changes to the habitual offender law. In the petition, she writes the state’s habitual offender law significantly affects those like Esco who committed a felony in adolescence and leaves them without hope.