- Dwayne Appling was sentenced to more than 27 years in federal prison for overseeing an operation that moved heroin from Chicago to Iowa.
The movement for reduced drug sentences didn’t help Dwayne Appling.
It’s happened despite more than four decades of ever-tougher drug policies that have sent hundreds of thousands of offenders into state and federal prisons.
Prosecutors portrayed Appling as one of the dealers who encouraged and then capitalized on heroin habits. Appling grew up in Chicago before moving to Waterloo in 2001, where he worked as a hairdresser and began selling drugs. In 2004 he was convicted on a crack charge but paroled just a year later. By 2007 he had recruited at least eight others to sell heroin for him, according to court records.
Before the sentencing, Bell conceded that Appling was a low-level dealer but disputed the government’s claim that he was the “boss” or “kingpin” of a large-scale operation. When prosecutors argued that Appling should face at least 20 years in prison, Bell countered that they should “comply with the most recent Holder memos” and suggested a ten-year sentence.
