In the fall of 2001, Darryl Best was convicted of possession and intent to sell cocaine.  Darryl had been doing handy-work at his uncle’s house and signed for a Federal Express package that was addressed to his uncle’s neighbor.  The package contained a pound of cocaine.  The prosecutor offered Darryl a one-year plea bargain, if he admitted guilt.  Darryl refused to take the plea, insisting on his innocence and claiming he wanted to set an example of integrity and honesty for his children.  The judge apologized as he read Darryl Best his sentence, 15 years to life; the minimum sentence he could give Darryl under the Rockefeller Drug Laws.  I FOUGHT THE LAW bares witness to the devastating impact Darryl’s incarceration has had on his family and noble fight his wife Wanda launched in an effort to bring him home.

In the spring of 2003, the Best family got a glimmer of hope.  An unusual Coalition, helmed by Russell Simmons, Chairman of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN), assembled to fight the “War on Drugs” and declared that the first battle would be to draw attention to the unfairness of the Rockefeller Drug Laws.  The coalition included Andrew Cuomo, former cabinet manager in the Clinton Administration, comedian and long-time activist, Randy Credico, the co-founder of New York Mothers of the Disappeared, Dr. Benjamin Chavis, former head of the NAACP, and many other politician activists.  Filmmakers Michael Skolnik and Rebecca Chaiklin were given exclusive access to Russell and the Coalition as they orchestrated a high profile campaign to raise awareness around the Rockefeller Drug Laws with the intention of creating tremendous public pressure.  Russell recruited celebrities such as P Diddy, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Mariah Carey and Susan Sarandon to join the campaign, and they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, flooding hip-hop radio airwaves and television stations with public service announcements and holding press conferences and rallies with tens of thousands of people.  The filmmakers were present throughout the life of the Coalition, including the night Russell spent in heated behind-the-scenes negotiations with Governor Pataki and the State’s top politicians. 

Skolnik and Chaiklin also traveled at four o’clock in the morning on Prison Gap, a bus service transporting families to visit loved ones serving time inside Eastern Correctional Institute, a maximum-security prison in upstate New York.  And they witnessed the devastating impact on the Best children who were left fatherless when Darryl was incarcerated.