 In 1998, Lawrence Garrison and his brother Lamont were students at Howard University in Washington. They both worked for the Justice Department and planned to attend law school. But a man who had fixed their car was arrested on drug charges. He told investigators that the Garrisons had been involved. And they questioned it. That's when they showed me pictures of Tito Bear. They asked, have you ever seen this guy? I said, yeah, he fixed my car. The repair man could have received a 10-year jail sentence for drug distribution. The only way to reduce that sentence was to say someone else was involved. Critics of mandatory sentences say people suspected of violating drug laws often falsely accuse others. Julie Stewart is president of Families Against Mandatory Minimum Sentences. Have a shorter sentence, and so they'll give someone up. Other times people actually even make up names and say, well, yeah, so-and-so did this. I know I saw him one time. Lamont Garrison remembers being given the chance to reduce his sentence. And they said, OK, Mr. Garrison, it's your opportunity to help yourself. And I said, well, help myself out. What do you mean? Well, you know what this is about, you guys are doing wrong, XYZ. You've got to tell us what you were doing. I said, well, I wasn't doing anything wrong, so it's nothing to talk about. They call it the best tool in their arsenal. Because they can hold that hammer over a defendant's head and say, if you don't either give us more information, you're going to get this 5 or 10-year sentence. I think this might be the latest one. The garrisons were never charged with drug possession, just conspiracy. A federal jury in Virginia ruled against them because of the statements of the repairman and his brother. Government lawyers presented no other evidence. So there was such an enormous sensitivity around the crack cocaine issue that I think you could have taken just about anybody to trial and charged them with some sort of crack cocaine offense and found them guilty. Lawrence Garrison served 12 years in jail. His brother served almost 14. The repairman was sentenced to 18 months. The garrisons no longer have any interest in the law. They say the system is corrupt. I'm Jim Tedder.