Raised in Liberty City, Darryl Richardson attended Miami Northwestern Senior High School but dropped out.
Instead, he graduated into small-time drug dealing, leading to some minor scrapes with the law — until a few jail snitches hoping to spend less time behind bars accused him of hauling loads of cocaine from Miami to Atlanta. After two Miami federal juries deadlocked on his fate, a third jury convicted Richardson in 2006 of conspiring to distribute more than five kilos of cocaine.
U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz imposed a 30-year prison term under then-mandatory sentencing guidelines. On Thursday, Richardson and Seitz came together again as defendant and judge, but under dramatically different circumstances. Seitz formally ended Richardson’s five-year supervised release early, following his completion of a shortened, 17-year sentence in 2021.
Richardson’s release came about through CARE Court, a court-assisted re-entry program launched eight years agoto help former prison inmates at high risk of recidivism get back on their feet. Judges, the Federal Public Defender’s Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Probation Office in South Florida are all involved.