President Obama gave SC drug dealer clemency and freedom. It didn’t last

It was supposed to be redemption.

But after getting clemency from President Obama and an early release from a 20-year federal prison sentence, Daron Swygert broke bad. Again.

By October 2016, Swygert had failed three drug tests, testing positive for cocaine and marijuana. He had been to counseling to break him of addiction. But it didn’t work.

Last January, Swygert, 44, was dealing crack cocaine again on Columbia streets, selling little white rocks of the drug to a Richland County undercover operative – according to warrants in the Richland County Courthouse.

In July, sheriff’s deputies swooped down on Swygert on Earlewood Drive and found enough crack cocaine – 12.5 grams –to charge him with drug trafficking, according to warrants. He has been in jail since.

On Wednesday in a small federal courtroom, U.S. Judge Joe Anderson said he had no other choice than to send Swygert back to federal prison, this time for 33 additional months for violating terms of his release.

“I’ll be honest with you,” Anderson told Swygert, a stocky man with a shaved head who wore a red jail jump suit and chains. “You quite possibly could have gotten more time.”

Before Anderson pronounced sentence, assistant U.S. Attorney Jane Taylor told the judge that Swygert had “misrepresented” his situation in his clemency petition to Obama.

Swygert had told Obama he basically was an addict and not really a hard-line drug trafficker, Taylor told Anderson.

That wasn’t true, Taylor said. Swygert was arrested in 2001 after selling crack cocaine several times to an undercover agent of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. When arrested him, Swygert had some 70 grams of crack on him, said Taylor.

“He was a dealer who sold to other dealers,” Taylor told the judge. “Now, he’s out, doing exactly what he was doing in 2000.”

“You’d think they’d do some fact-checking,” Anderson responded.

Taylor said Swygert deserves no mercy. “He was given a break by President Obama that not many people would be given.”

By the strict federal sentencing guidelines in use in 2001, Swygert wound up with a 20-year prison sentence.

The idea that Swygert was an addict played into Obama’s policy of releasing non-violent drug-related offenders who had received lengthy prison sentences but whose major problem was addiction. That focus on treating addiction is part of a reform movement in the criminal justice system aimed at avoiding overly harsh sentences for some drug offenses.

Federal public defender Katherine Evatt told Anderson that Swygert had been addicted to crack cocaine since he was 16. When he was released from prison in 2016, he intending to go straight, even starting his own cleaning services company.

But he never got the help that he needed, Evatt said. “He has some deep-seated addiction problems that have not been addressed,”

Swygert told Anderson that the 12 grams of crack cocaine he was arrested for in July wasn’t much, adding he had no support once out of prison. “I was sent home, and when I got here, everybody I knew was gone. The first people I really came upon were people on the street.”

Anderson was not impressed. “You say it was a small amount of cocaine, but that small amount could get someone addicted to it.”

This story was originally published October 25, 2017 at 5:04 PM with the headline "President Obama gave SC drug dealer clemency and freedom. It didn’t last."