Dawn Michelle Hunt loved sweepstakes. A 42-year-old temp worker in Chicago, she entered almost every contest she encountered. So when she got an email from someone who described himself as a British lawyer saying she had won a trip to Australia, she was elated.
“I hit it big,” she told her father after the plane ticket arrived.
The trip took her through China to pick up the prize documents, along with handbags that she was instructed to carry on to Australia. The British lawyer had promised in an email to meet her there. “My dear Dawn,” he called her.
But sewn into the lining of the bags was more than two kilos, or 4.5 pounds, of methamphetamines, Chinese authorities say. Instead of a resort in Australia, Ms. Hunt landed in a Chinese prison, sentenced to death, with a two-year reprieve. Ms. Hunt’s sentence, handed down in 2017, was later commuted to life.
Ms. Hunt and her family say that she was an unwitting victim of an elaborate drug trafficking scheme, versions of which have ensnared people around the world, including a number of older Americans.
Courts in some cases have handed down reduced sentences, recognizing that the offenders had been duped into being drug mules. China is known for its strict drug laws, and a review of several cases there with similar circumstances — in which foreign offenders may have been scammed or set up — indicates that courts are not so lenient in such cases.
In a ruling on Ms. Hunt’s case, a judge acknowledged the ruse, but concluded that she was smart enough to have realized what was really happening by the time she arrived in Asia.
Her family says the American government needs to intervene with China on Ms. Hunt’s behalf. “They’re part of the problem,” said her father, Gene Hunt.
Her family initially worried that Ms. Hunt, now 53, would be punished if they had spoken up. Now, a decade into her time behind bars, they are going public because her health is declining.
Her father said that she was raped by guards at a detention facility. Her brother, Tim Hunt, said she has been mistreated in prison for being Black. She has tumors in her ovaries and uterus, a possible symptom of cancer, according to a medical consent form the family received from the prison. China’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment on Ms. Hunt’s case.
Ms. Hunt’s situation raises questions about the duty of the United States government to help Americans who have broken the law while overseas, inadvertently or otherwise.
Americans in legal trouble abroad are entitled to consular help. People who meet certain criteria can be declared wrongfully detained, making them a priority for the State Department in discussions with the Chinese government. Ms. Hunt’s family has not pushed for the designation, which can take years to obtain. The criteria include being held by a foreign government for the purposes of influencing U.S. policy or extracting concessions, and being held in a country that the State Department has said lacks an independent judicial system.
A State Department spokeswoman, Lisa K. Heller, said in an emailed response that consular officers regularly visit Ms. Hunt, and did so most recently in July. “We take seriously our commitment to assist U.S. citizens abroad and stand ready to provide consular assistance,” she said.
John Kamm, founder of the Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights group in San Francisco, says the State Department should do more for Hunt and other Americans held in China. That includes pushing for them to get longer phone calls and more visits with their families, better access to lawyers and for consular officials to check on prisoners more frequently.
Ms. Hunt grew up in a middle-class Chicago neighborhood, the daughter of police officers. Artistic and hard-working, she loved sewing and studied textile design. She thrived on pop culture, reading People magazine and tracking celebrities like Anthony Bourdain, and had no prior criminal record.
In 2014, Ms. Hunt heard she had won the contest.
She first flew to Hong Kong, where her hosts put her up at a hotel and let her order room service while waiting for a Chinese visa, Tim Hunt said. She continued to Guangzhou, in southern China. Just before her flight out of that city, she was taken to a leather market and given the meth-lined bags, according to the Chinese court ruling.
In prison, Ms. Hunt has wrestled with being convicted of a crime she says she didn’t knowingly commit. “What is the definition of Guilty in China?” she wrote in one letter home.
Courts in other countries have dealt with cases like Ms. Hunt’s in a range of ways. An American jury last year returned a not-guilty verdict for an 80-year-old man who was found carrying methamphetamines through an airport after a trip to Mexico City. In Malaysia, a court freed an Australian woman in 2019 who said she had fallen for a scam that involved picking up drugs in Shanghai. She had been sentenced to death but was released after five years, following an appeal.
But in Spain in 2020, a court sentenced an American man to seven and a half years in prison after he was found with cocaine sewn into jackets in his luggage, even though U.S. investigators told Spanish authorities that the man appeared to have been cajoled and deceived.
Tim Hunt will speak as a witness at a Sept. 18 hearing held by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, a bipartisan group of lawmakers focused on monitoring human rights in China.
In June, he flew to Guangzhou to visit his sister. She was worn and reticent, he said. A prison staffer hovered over her, taking notes.
Prison doctors have told Ms. Hunt that she may need surgery for her tumors, he said. She refused treatment because she didn’t trust the prison.
