Locked Up for Life After ‘Two Strikes’

The FRONTLINE Dispatch

GBH

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2023

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Two Strikes, a documentary from FRONTLINE, The Marshall Project, and Firelight Media, tells the story of Mark Jones, a former West Point cadet serving a life sentence in Florida after an attempted carjacking.

The film’s director and producer Ursula Liang, a 2021 FRONTLINE/Firelight Filmmaker Fellow, and reporter Cary Aspinwall of The Marshall Project, join The FRONTLINE Dispatch to unpack the story behind Jones’ sentence — and a law that increases prison time for certain repeat offenders. Florida’s so-called “two-strikes” law allows prosecutors to seek the maximum sentence for people found guilty of felonies within three years of a prison release.

In some cases, like Jones’, that can mean life in prison for crimes in which no one was physically injured. Florida has virtually abolished parole.

“Florida has almost a quarter of the nation's population of life-without-parole prisoners,” Aspinwall told The FRONTLINE Dispatch host Raney Aronson-Rath, a statistic she calls “staggering.”

Two Strikes is streaming on FRONTLINE’s website, FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel, and the PBS App.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This call is from a corrections facility and is subject to monitoring and recording.
0:04.8	My sense is life without the possibility of rules. I'm in here until I die.
0:09.2	In collaboration with the Marshall Project and Firelight Media,
0:12.8	our latest documentary Two Strikes, examines Florida's repeat offender law.
0:17.8	We could call this bill, though we really mean it this time bill.
0:21.6	Sort of a Two Strikes and you're out, if you will.
0:23.6	And tell us the story of Mark Jones, a former West Point cadet,
0:27.4	now living out a life sentence in prison without the possibility of parole.
0:32.4	It still doesn't seem real. When you're in this kind of a place, you miss simple things.
0:36.6	Director and producer Ursula Leon joins me to talk about the film,
0:41.0	as well as co-producer Carrie Essman-Wall, a reporter with the Marshall Project.
0:46.0	The population of Florida, lying without parole, prisoners, it's just massive.
0:49.8	I'm Rainier and Sinrof, Editor-in-Chief and Executive Producer of Frontline.
0:53.6	And this is the Frontline Dispatch.
0:59.4	The Frontline Dispatch is made possible by the Abrams Foundation,
1:03.0	committed to excellence in journalism, and by the Frontline Journalism Fund,
1:07.4	with major support from John and Joanne Hagueller.
1:10.4	Support for Frontline Dispatch comes from the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center,
1:14.6	dedicated to providing compassionate care and cancer specialists
1:17.4	who are experienced in the cancer you have.
1:19.4	When you hear the word cancer, their team is ready.
1:22.0	Learn more at massgeneral.org slash cancer.
	...

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