Cindy Shank: Conviction, Clemency, and The Sentence

Cindy Shank is a Michigan mother and criminal justice reform advocate who served nine years of a 15-year federal drug conspiracy sentence tied to her murdered boyfriend’s cocaine operation in Lansing. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in November 2016, she walked out of prison in March 2017, and her brother’s HBO documentary about the family, The Sentence, won a Primetime Emmy in 2019.

Her case is one of the most cited examples of the “girlfriend problem” in federal drug sentencing: a woman with no prior record receiving a mandatory minimum sentence for her association with a partner’s drug ring rather than for running one herself.

Her Relationship With Alex Humphry

In early 1997, Shank — then Cynthia Valdez — moved in with Alex Humphry, a major Lansing drug dealer who operated out of a house at 1609 Comfort Street. The Humphry organization distributed cocaine, crack, and marijuana in large quantities.¹

Court records describe her role as counting drug money, receiving shipments, and holding the Comfort Street house, vehicles, and phones in her name. In January 1998, she and Humphry were stopped at a Michigan bus station carrying roughly $17,780 in cash.¹

On May 9, 2002, unidentified assailants ambushed and shot Humphry at the front door of the Comfort Street house around 4:30 a.m. He died at a hospital shortly afterward. A search of the house followed, and officials called it the largest drug seizure in Lansing history: 20 kilograms of powder cocaine, one kilogram of crack, roughly 40 pounds of marijuana, several firearms, and about $37,000 in cash.² Associates reportedly removed another $240,000 before police arrived, and court records indicate Shank received roughly $130,000 of those drug proceeds.¹ Humphry’s murder remains unsolved.³

Arrest and 15-Year Sentence

By the time federal agents came for her in 2007, Shank had left that world behind. She had married Adam Shank, had three young daughters, and had no criminal record.⁴

A grand jury in the Western District of Michigan indicted 13 defendants connected to the Humphry conspiracy, and the wider investigation eventually produced 28 federal convictions with sentences ranging from two to 24 years.² Shank was charged with four counts, including conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute, under 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 841(b)(1)(A), and 846.¹

She was tried alongside co-defendant Nathaniel Benson, one of Humphry’s main customers, in October 2007. She raised a duress defense, arguing that Humphry had kept her under constant pressure and physical abuse. The jury rejected it and convicted her on all counts.¹

On February 29, 2008, the district court sentenced her to 180 months: 120 months on each of three counts running concurrently, plus 60 months on the fourth running consecutively. The judge granted a 112-month downward variance from her calculated guidelines range, but the mandatory minimum locked in a 15-year floor.¹ Benson received 216 months.²

The Sixth Circuit affirmed her conviction and sentence on January 12, 2010 in United States v. Benson (Nos. 08-1131, 08-1358), rejecting her challenges to the admission of the 1998 bus-station evidence, to remarks by the prosecutor in closing, and to the length of her sentence.¹

Why the Sentence Was So Long

Federal drug sentencing turns primarily on the quantity of drugs attributed to the conspiracy, not on the specific role a defendant played. Under the doctrine set out in Pinkerton v. United States (1946), co-conspirators are vicariously liable for the foreseeable acts of other conspiracy members. That means a person who answered phones, let a partner use a car, or lived in a home where drugs were stored can face the same mandatory minimum as a high-level distributor.⁵

The usual way out of a mandatory minimum is cooperation with prosecutors in exchange for a reduced sentence. Reform advocates note that this route is often unavailable to women in Shank’s position because they lack the insider knowledge prosecutors want.⁵ Families Against Mandatory Minimums has described the pattern as one that has “saddled far too many women with long and unjust mandatory minimum sentences for the actions of other people in their lives.”⁶

Nine Years Inside

When Shank surrendered to prison, her daughters Autumn and Ava were toddlers, and her youngest, Annalise, was six weeks old. Her husband Adam became a single father for the duration of her imprisonment, and the children started therapy the same week she left.⁷

She was held at a federal facility in Florida while the family remained in Michigan, so they could visit only about once a year.⁸ In her 2019 congressional testimony, she said the incarceration “broke our young family apart and left permanent emotional and psychological scars on our daughters.”⁷

Obama’s Commutation

Shank’s release came through President Obama’s clemency initiative, launched in April 2014 to identify federal inmates, primarily nonviolent drug offenders, who would have received substantially lower sentences under current law. The initiative prioritized people who had served at least 10 years, had no significant criminal history, and had a good record inside.⁹ Obama granted 1,715 commutations over his presidency, most to drug offenders.¹⁰

On November 22, 2016, Obama commuted Shank’s sentence, setting it to expire on March 22, 2017, and remitted the unpaid balance of her $10,000 fine.¹¹ She left prison in March 2017 after roughly nine years in custody.⁷

The Documentary Made By Her Brother

In 2008, shortly after her arrest, Shank’s brother Rudy Valdez started filming her three young daughters. The idea began as home movies so Cindy would have a visual record of her children growing up.¹² Over nearly a decade it grew into a feature-length documentary.

The Sentence premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the U.S. Documentary Audience Award.¹³ HBO released it on October 15, 2018,¹⁴ and it won a 2019 Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking.

Valdez said he deliberately kept the film personal rather than policy-driven, aiming for a “hearts-and-minds” response that could cross partisan lines.¹⁴ Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey co-hosted a screening at the Kennedy Caucus Room in mid-July 2018 to build support for sentencing reform. Lee told attendees the film could be a “transformative event” that highlights issues “speeches and think-tank panels cannot.” Five months later, the FIRST STEP Act was signed into law.¹⁵

What She Does Now

Since her release, Shank has worked publicly on sentencing reform. On July 16, 2019, she testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security at a hearing titled “Women and Girls in the Criminal Justice System.” She told lawmakers she never felt safe around male prison guards, described watching other incarcerated mothers forced to sign over custody, and urged Congress to grant “a second chance” and relief from “excessive sentences” for women still in prison.¹⁶⁷

She has spoken at the Aspen Ideas Festival,¹⁷ and along with her brother has taken The Sentence to the White House and to law schools to reach future lawyers and judges.⁸ In her congressional testimony, she framed her advocacy as a way to “show my daughters how to be brave.”⁷

1
Findlaw. United States v. Benson, Nos. 08-1131, 08-1358
2
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. DEA Detroit Field Division Press Release
3
Lansing State Journal. Film on Lansing Family Wins Major Sundance Award
4
Rolling Stone. Mandatory Minimum Sentencing: The Girlfriend Problem
5
Georgetown Law. Women of Circumstance
6
Office of U.S. Representative Kamlager-Dove. Bipartisan Legislation To Address Treatment of Women
7
U.S. House of Representatives. Testimony of Cynthia Shank Before the House Judiciary Subcommittee
8
The Marshall Project. The Terrible Cost of The Sentence
9
U.S. Department of Justice. Obama Administration Clemency Initiative
10
U.S. Sentencing Commission. Inter-District Variation in Federal Sentencing
11
The White House. President Obama Grants Commutations
12
KCRW. Filmmaker Rudy Valdez on His Intimate Family Documentary The Sentence
13
Rudy Valdez. Bio
14
International Documentary Association. Doc Stars of the Month: Rudy Valdez and Cindy Shank
15
Variety. Senators Lee, Booker Screen The Sentence on Capitol Hill
16
ABC News. House Judiciary Subcommittee Discusses Growing Population of Women in Criminal Justice System
17
Aspen Ideas Festival. Cindy Shank