At 21, I was a full-time college student. I also sold drugs and carried guns. In the early morning hours of April 7, 2007, I was shot on a Bronx street along with two other people. I survived. One person did not. A third, who was badly wounded, testified at the trial suggesting that I had shot everyone, including myself. Accordingly, I was convicted on all charges.
I maintain my innocence, but I’m not here to convince you of that. Innocent-man stories often downplay the need for reform to help all people, including the guilty. Instead I want to tell you about the person I’ve become over the past 17 years in prison and the people I’ve met here.
At Sullivan Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in the Catskill Mountains in New York, I am incarcerated with men who have earned college degrees while incarcerated and who fill their days with volunteer work. Despite improving our lives — or aging out of criminal behavior — we have no chance to demonstrate our rehabilitation outside of parole hearings that may come decades into the future.
Lawmakers across the country have proposed so-called Second Look laws. The First Step Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2018, gives federal judges the discretion to reduce the sentences of people convicted of federal crimes when there is compelling evidence to do so.
In New York, state senator Julia Salazar has introduced legislation that could help reset past policies that contributed to ballooning populations in state prisons. The state’s Second Look law would allow judges to weigh factors such as victim impact statements, age, whether inmates were penalized for bringing their cases to trial (rather than accepting plea bargains). and participation in rehabilitation programming when considering sentence reductions.
The bill is getting plenty of support, including from people who will decide the fate of inmates, such as the chief justice of the New York Court of Appeals. Rowan Wilson. While running for re-election last year, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said“Finally, there may be individuals who are incarcerated on sentences that no longer meet today’s sensibilities of justice.”
After I was arrested in 2007, I waited at Rikers Island for four years before my case went to trial. I soon learned that the threat of violence, not necessarily the violence itself, earned respect. I found ways to earn money to pay my expenses like phone calls and legal fees by smuggling contraband like tobacco. It must have seemed as if I was a threat. Maybe I was. But I know I’m no longer the person who was frustrated at Rikers.
When my case finally went to trial, it only took six days. I was struck by the prosecutor’s statement, during his closing argument, that drug dealers are often both victims and perpetrators of violence. While sentencing, the same prosecutor argued that I had no redeemable qualities. The judge said that I have spent my whole life in crime.
It seemed that it was not just my freedom at the table. They also judged my humanity and predicted what I would become. I was given the maximum sentence: 50 years to life.
Days later, a corrections officer at Rikers woke me up at dawn. Upstate, it was time to go to jail. Even though I had carried a scalpel for the past four years to protect myself from other prisoners, I was in a struggle that morning. I didn’t want to be what the system thought I was. As I watched the sunrise, I prayed. Before I left the prison cell for the last time, I flushed the scalpel down the toilet.
In my new prison, I got a job in the law library, where a fellow inmate named Darnell Epps taught me law. He also gave me a model to follow in prison. Mr. Epps was enrolled in a Cornell college program, exercised religiously, and volunteered to speak to children in the Scared Straight program. He was serving a 17-year sentence for murder. Over time I adopted his routine: powerlifting meetings, college classes and volunteer work.
Since Mr. Epps’ release in 2017, he has graduated from Yale Law School and founded his own tech company. I know I can contribute to society like him. My college professor, Jamin Sewell, who teaches law and policy at St. Thomas Aquinas College, wants me to go to law school. But it won’t matter until I appear before the parole board in 2053 when I’m 67. Shouldn’t it matter sooner?
I wonder why the prosecutor suggested that my case was a typical story given that my sentence was much longer than the average sentence. According to the Department of Justice, the average time spent in prison for murder is 17.5 years. I wound up with a trial penalty, that is, I was punished not only for the crime, but also for receiving consecutive sentences, to assert my right to a trial.
Judges are not wrong in giving maximum sentence. I say the shock of my sentence was just what I needed at the time. It created an earthquake in my thinking and behavior.
But it would be wrong to think that the Second Look Act would give inmates “extra credit” for good behavior, as New York State Senator Anthony Palumbo put it. Given all the factors that will be reviewed by a judge, those with poor disciplinary records in prison are unlikely to be given serious consideration. Instead, the law will serve as a test of redemption for more than 6,000 people who would otherwise never receive any credit for their rehabilitation.
When we have no chance of ever getting out, we begin to believe that we have nothing to lose. Having a second chance will make people less likely to resort to violence from within.
In May, at a college graduation event held at Sullivan, New York State Department of Corrections Commissioner Daniel Martusello III told the audience, “I have every confidence that individuals in this community will not be judged based on their past, but on their present selves and significant others. are developing right in front of us.”
Studies of the life expectancy of New York inmates indicate that I will die at age 57, before I face the parole board. Research on correctional officers shows that they often struggle with their physical and mental health. Our well-being is interconnected. Disappointment and hopelessness are contagious and toxic—another reason the Second Look Act deserves serious consideration.
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