Isaac Wright Jr.

Wright was arrested on July 25, 1989, in Passaic, New Jersey, for buying two pounds of cocaine from a co-defendant.[4] In April 1991 he was convicted of various drug charges (though his conviction was years later overturned on the basis that police concealed evidence of an illegal search and seizure of drugs presented at his trial and that the prosecutor knew of a favorable plea agreement with one of his co-defendants who was a witness at his trial).[5] He was convicted by a 12-person jury in Somerset County, New Jersey, after a five-week trial on 10 drug charges involving the sale of cocaine, and in 1991 he was sentenced to mandatory life in prison under New Jersey's drug kingpin laws.[5][4][6] His wife served nine months after pleading guilty to drug charges in the case.[4] Wright appealed his convictions and sentence, and in 1995 the New Jersey Appellate Division affirmed all of his convictions except the one based on the charge that he led a cocaine trafficking network that distributed cocaine in Franklin, New Jersey, and New Brunswick, New Jersey, holding that the instructions to the jury were not adequate on that charge.[6][4][5] The Supreme Court of New Jersey affirmed that decision.[5]

While incarcerated, he worked as a paralegal with the prison paralegal organization the Inmate Legal Assn. in New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, New Jersey, and represented other prisoners on infractions that they were charged with committing within the prison yard and prepared supplemental legal briefs on appeals of their criminal cases.[7] According to Wright, he helped to overturn the wrongful convictions of twenty of his fellow inmates.[8] In 1996, Wright and his lawyer, Francis Hartman, successfully petitioned for a hearing to overturn his own convictions, and he was freed on bail.[9][10][8] In December 1997, after litigation brought by him and his lawyer,[11] the trial court reversed his remaining convictions, on the basis that Somerset County law-enforcement officials concealed evidence of an illegal search and seizure of cocaine used at his trial, and that the Somerset County Prosecutor was aware of but concealed the terms of a favorable plea agreement with one of his co-defendants who was a witness at his trial.[5] The court therefore dismissed the indictment against Wright.[5][3][12][13] The ABC legal drama For Life is inspired by his life.[3][14]

After being released from prison, he graduated from Thomas Edison State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in human services in 2002.[15] He eventually earned a Juris Doctor from the St. Thomas University School of Law in 2007 in Miami, Florida. He passed the New Jersey bar in 2008. After a nine-year investigation into his character, the New Jersey State Bar Association's Committee on Character approved his application, and he became a licensed attorney in New Jersey in 2017.[16][17] He is now a lawyer with the New Jersey law firm of Hunt, Hamlin & Ridley.[18]

In December 2020, Wright announced that he would run for mayor of New York City as a Democrat. He said that criminal justice and police reform would be the centerpieces of his campaign, but that he would also focus on taxes, school desegregation, homelessness, and transit issues. Shortly after Wright announced his candidacy, rapper 50 Cent said of Wright in a tweet that "He is the real deal. We need people like him."[19]