“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”
benjamin franklin
In 1982, a man in Alabama named Willie Simmons stole nine dollars. It was a street-corner scuffle: a man knocked down, his wallet grabbed, a few crumpled bills taken. There was no weapon, no blood, no lasting injury, only poverty, addiction, and desperation. But because Simmons had three prior non-violent felonies, Alabama’s Habitual Felony Offender Act (HFOA) sealed his fate. The judge had no discretion. Simmons was sentenced to life without parole.
For stealing nine dollars, Willie Simmons would die in prison.
More than forty years later, Simmons is still there. Grey-haired now, his body breaking down inside a system that measures justice in calendar pages and cruelty. He earns pennies a day, reads borrowed books, and occasionally grants interviews to people who cannot believe such a sentence is real in a country that calls itself free.
And then, there’s George Santos.
The Price of Nine Dollars vs. the Cost of a Lie
George Santos, disgraced congressman, serial fabulist, and now beneficiary of presidential mercy. He was convicted in April 2025 of wire fraud, identity theft, and campaign finance violations. He siphoned donor money, fabricated his life story, and violated the public trust at nearly every opportunity. A federal judge sentenced him to just over seven years in prison. It seemed, briefly, like the system would hold him accountable.
But three months later, in an act that shocked even the most cynical, President Donald Trump commuted Santos’s sentence. No parole board, no legal reform movement, no moral awakening, just Trump’s pen. Santos walked free, boasting of his “slice of humble pie,” while Willie Simmons remained locked behind iron for a theft smaller than a fast-food combo meal.
The contrast is obscene. One man rots for a crime of poverty. The other thrives despite crimes of privilege.
The Law and the Ladder
The Habitual Felony Offender Act was born of a moral panic, the 1970s fantasy that “tough on crime” laws could scrub away poverty, addiction, and despair through sentencing brutality. Alabama’s version of the act left no room for humanity: four strikes and you’re done. Judges could not weigh the value of the stolen item, the circumstances of the theft, or the possibility of rehabilitation. Justice was automated. Mercy was subtracted from the equation.
When Simmons appealed, the courts shrugged. The law was the law. And so he stayed.
Meanwhile, Santos’s escape was not through law but through power. Clemency is an ancient prerogative, once reserved only for kings. It was meant to temper justice with mercy. But mercy in America flows uphill. Santos had connections, attention, and usefulness to those in power. Simmons had none and thus granting him mercy was never politically profitable.
This is the ladder of American justice: rungs made of influence, greased by wealth, and impossible to climb from the bottom.
American Justice as Spectacle
There’s a line often used to defend these contradictions: “The system works.”
But what does it mean for the system to work when its outcomes are so grotesquely unequal?
If a Black man in Alabama is sentenced to die in prison for $9, the system is functioning precisely as designed. For him.
And if a white-collar political fraudster walks free after a commutation from the president he once idolized, the system is functioning precisely as designed for him, too.
The problem isn’t that the law is broken. The problem is that it was built to bend for some and break others.
The United States has the moral audacity to lecture other nations about human rights while sustaining the largest prison population on Earth. It tells the poor to pull themselves up by bootstraps, then jails them for trying to steal shoes. It tells the rich that failure is a lesson, not a sentence.
And so the ritual continues: mugshots for the powerless, memoirs for the powerful.
The Myth of Equal Justice
When people protest these inequalities, they are told, “The law applies to everyone equally.”
But equality without equity is a sham. Simmons and Santos both faced the law, yes. But the law met them on very different terms.
Simmons faced a mechanized statute that demanded no thought, no compassion, no context. Santos faced a president whose idea of justice was whatever made him feel clever that morning. One was crushed by rigidity; the other was saved on a whim.
Equality before the law is meaningless if mercy, clemency, and opportunity are distributed by political favor. A country that claims to stand for freedom cannot survive long when justice depends on proximity to power.
The Realities, Racial and Economic
Willie Simmons is a Black man who grew up poor in Alabama. His story is not unique; it is part of the tapestry of American punishment, where Black men are sentenced to life for petty thefts, and poor defendants accept plea deals they do not understand just to escape harsher terms.
George Santos, by contrast, is a product of privilege in the guise of underdog: educated, connected, and protected by the inertia of a political movement that has turned hypocrisy into policy. When his lies collapsed under their own absurdity, his punishment was temporary, his redemption practically instantaneous.
If justice were really colorblind, Simmons would have walked decades ago. If justice were meritocratic, Santos would still be in a cell. But in America, justice is not blind; it is winking.
Mercy for the Crowned, None for the Commoner
Presidential commutation is a form of royal mercy, the stroke of a pen that transforms guilt into grace. When wielded with moral clarity, it can right old wrongs: mass pardons for non-violent drug offenders, clemency for the unjustly imprisoned. But when used to reward cronies or celebrities, it mutates into a crown’s indulgence, a return to monarchy under democratic disguise.
Trump’s commutation of George Santos’s sentence was not mercy. It was mockery. It told the nation, “Power forgives its own.” It reminded us that in America, the king may be elected, but he still chooses his court.
Meanwhile, Willie Simmons waits for mercy that does not come. His letters to advocacy groups and journalists are polite, almost apologetic. “I’ve made peace with God,” he once said, “but I’d still like a chance to walk outside again.” The state of Alabama has ignored him for four decades. His appeals are buried in bureaucratic silence.
When mercy is withheld from the worthy and bestowed upon the corrupt, it ceases to be mercy at all. It becomes proof of rot.
What We Choose to Defend
Defenders of harsh sentencing will say:
Simmons knew the law. He made his choices.
Defenders of Santos will say:
He’s suffered enough; he’s been humiliated.
Both arguments are masks for cowardice. One excuses cruelty, the other excuses corruption.
We are told to respect the rule of law, but the rule of law without conscience is tyranny. Justice requires discernment. It requires outrage at imbalance. It requires citizens who refuse to let power define morality.
The point is not to replace one injustice with another, to jail Santos longer just to prove a point. The point is to expose the moral absurdity of a nation where mercy and punishment are so divorced from meaning.
Our American Monarchy
When presidents act as kings, when courts operate as machines, and when the public accepts both as natural, the republic is already hollow.
Santos is not the first to be pardoned for proximity; he will not be the last. But every such act chips away at the illusion that we are ruled by laws and not by men.
And Willie Simmons, lost in the machinery of a system that does not care to notice him, becomes the other face of that monarchy: the forgotten subject, the peasant condemned by the sovereign’s indifference.
The irony is almost Biblical. A man who stole nine dollars will die in a cold prison; a man who stole a nation’s trust will dine in fine restaurants.
If Defy the Crown has a creed, it is this: corruptpower deserves mockery, not worship. Kings deserve exile, not deference. Every act of mercy for the powerful must be met with louder mercy for the powerless.
Willie Simmons has served over four decades for $9. The state that caged him still calls this justice. The president who freed Santos still calls himself a patriot.
Both cannot be true.
One man’s clemency reveals another’s captivity. And in that tension lies the measure of our national soul.
So ask yourself – not as a partisan, but as a citizen – what kind of country jails a man for life for nine dollars, then celebrates the liberation of a liar who sold out his office? What kind of justice worships order but forgets humanity?
When false kings seize power, they rarely wear actual crowns.
Sometimes they wear flags.
Sometimes they hold pens.
And sometimes, they smile as they sign another man’s freedom and ignore some nobody languishing in an Alabama prison.
Postscript
Willie Simmons remains incarcerated at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. He has been denied parole hearings because his sentence carries none. His advocates continue to petition for clemency or legislative reform of the Habitual Felony Offender Act.
George Santos, released from custody in October 2025, now hosts a political podcast and sells autographed “Free George” merchandise.
Use your own words, or copy and personalize this message:
Subject: Clemency for Willie Junior Simmons (AIS #112862)
Message: Governor Ivey, I urge you to review the case of Willie Junior Simmons, serving life without parole for a $9 robbery under the Habitual Felony Offender Act. He has already served more than 40 years — far beyond any reasonable measure of justice. Please use your authority to grant clemency or reconsideration. Justice demands mercy.
3. Write to Willie Simmons
Let him know he is not forgotten.
Letters remind him that the world still believes in justice.
Willie Junior Simmons
AIS #112862
St. Clair Correctional Facility
1000 St. Clair Rd
Springville, AL 35146
Mail should be handwritten or printed, with no staples or tape. Words of encouragement, articles printed on plain paper, and short personal notes are welcome.
4. Support the Justice Campaign
The official campaign site — justiceforwilliesimmons.org — provides updates, donation options, and advocacy materials.
Ways to help:
Donate to Willie’s canteen fund (instructions on site).
Share his story on social media with #FreeWillieSimmons.
Encourage media outlets and civic groups to cover the case.
Educate others about Alabama’s Habitual Felony Offender Act and efforts to repeal it.
