BY STU WHITNEY
South Dakota News Watch
TEA, S.D. – Greg Sands spent the longest night of his life at a federal prison in Oklahoma, running out of chances as the darkness rolled in.
He was 31 years old and facing a 10-year sentence for cocaine distribution in South Dakota after years of reckless behavior and a rock-bottom sense of self-worth.
Sands, these days a major player in the Sioux Falls construction trade and a member of the South Dakota Hall of Fame, was a newly arrived inmate at the crowded El Reno correctional facility that night in 1989.
Placed on a cot on the fringes of the cellblock, he listened to the slamming of steel doors and wailing of inmates as he lay weeping, snowflakes fluttering from broken windows above.
“I was terrified,” said Sands, 66, who later appealed his sentence and was released after two years to deal with drug and alcohol addictions. “I had all the feelings you would expect from a man who had ruined his life.”
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