15 Facing Life
Chapter 7 Part 1
The moments after hearing my verdict I became completely resigned to my fate. I didn't have the mental energy to process what my guilty verdict meant. I was finally staring at the reality that deep down I had known was inevitable. It felt surreal. Almost like it couldn't have been happening, and there had to be some last minute miracle that would save me.
I did not want to go back to my cell. I wanted to stay in the courtroom with Kevin and Eric. The last thing I wanted to do was be alone. So, when the officer shut the door on me back in segregation, I couldn’t do anything except stand there for a minute. I didn’t know what to think or what to do next. It was almost midnight.
I sat on my bunk for a while. The only reason I was able to fall asleep was exhaustion.
As you can imagine, I woke up the following morning feeling extreme depression and anxiety. I felt defeated. I had to allow myself to let go and be vulnerable because I didn’t know how to respond to what just happened. The trial was over and I had been convicted. I was going to prison, potentially for the rest of my life. I knew that there was an appeal process, but I knew nothing about how that process worked. Besides, I didn’t even have enough hope to see that far into the future. I struggled to form a coherent thought about anything. It wasn’t helpful that I was trapped in that cell for 23 hours each day. Fortunately, I only had to do two more days in segregation before it was taken back to the classification unit.
I was happy to be leaving segregation. It had been a long 60 days. I had lost at least 10 lb. I came out of there looking like a completely different person. I thought it was interesting that I was placed in the Cell by myself. That was rare considering the issue of overcrowding in the jail. I remember being annoyed at the fact that my cell was directly in front of the officer’s desk. It allowed no privacy to use the bathroom. But also, there was just too much eye contact between me and the officer at the desk. It felt like every time I looked up he was looking right at me. It was weird as hell.
I would find out later that afternoon that I was actually on suicide watch, again. A mental health professional came to check on me asking a series of questions before she could take me off watch. I told her I was good and didn’t need to be on suicide watch. She didn’t seem to care either way. She took me off watch and was gone. A couple of days later I was moved back into the general population.
It felt good being back in general pop because I was able to move around and clear my head when I needed to. I had been boxed in during my trial with nothing but my stress and anxiety. I had no one to talk to because I didn’t have any access to the phone, except one hour per day, usually early in the morning before my day of trial began.
I was also able to buy food. Although, my family didn’t have much money so I wasn’t able to buy much food. The commissary was for me a hit or miss. It really was a humbling experience.
Being back in general pop I began to find some balance. My Hope tank was beginning to fill up a little bit at a time, as the days went by. I wasn’t delusional anymore. I knew that I was going to prison, likely with a life sentence. At times the thought of that made me really sad and scared a little bit. However, I use these moments to fuel my courage as I usually went into self-preservation mode immediately after. I was able to accept the fact that I’ve been convicted and would be sentenced to prison. I had firmly committed though that I would not accept whatever my sentence was as being my final fate. I would fight for my freedom for the rest of my life if I had to. I began to focus on what would give me an opportunity to do that, which was the appeal process.and knew nothing about how the process worked. I just knew it existed and could potentially allow me to challenge my conviction. Man, I lost count of how many times people told me that I would win or on my appeal and I would be right back. This usually came from people who meant well, but had never had to go through the process.
As I would learn, the reality is that Criminal Appeals of convictions are very, very, very hard to win. It is very rare, especially if you’re convicted of a violent crime. Once someone has a conviction and sentence it’s probably a 95% chance that they will serve that time. That’s my opinion only. To me it appears that it is consistently becoming harder to win favorable appellate rulings at every level of the Appellate process. rules and rights appear to be changed or blurred in an effort to close the doors that led to relief for criminal appeals.Having hope and something to look forward to was everything for me and still is to this day.
Don’t get me wrong, I had hope building and I wasn’t focusing on my future appeal, but things were different knowing that I had a conviction versus the idea of being threatened by one. I was still extremely, extremely stressed and anxious everyday. carrying that weight and trying to think of how I could get it off of me. Many days I felt melancholy, or dejected, but had to keep my head up and a smile on my face. The time where I struggled the most was when we had to lock down at night. I dreaded having to lay down for bed because I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
I suffered from insomnia. It started once I made it back into the general population. The first couple of nights I laid in bed for hours trying to sleep. I couldn’t go to sleep no matter how tired my body was. Even if I wasn’t feeling stressed or thinking about my case, sleep would not come to me. I would lay there squeezing my eyes shut, tossing and turning. Then breakfast would show up. I’d eat and go through the same routine. I wouldn’t actually go to sleep until the sun began to rise. I’d sleep for about an hour until the morning shift officer would wake us up for cell cleaning. There was no going back to sleep after that. Once the day room opened up at 8:00 a.m. our doors were open and flush against the wall there was no chance that I would be able to take a nap. not with my door being wide open. It didn’t feel safe, not to mention the noise coming from the day room.
My sentence hearing was 6 months away, and I didn’t sleep through the night not once.
Dre, thank you for letting us inside this part of the story. What you have written here is doing something almost nothing else does — it is letting readers stand inside the actual hours after a verdict, the actual cell, the actual six months of insomnia, the actual I didn’t even have enough hope to see that far into the future. That is not a sentence a person can write from the outside. And, it is exactly the sentence so many of the families we walk alongside have needed to read.
What strikes us most is the quiet honesty around hope. You did not pretend it returned all at once. You let us watch it come back the way it actually comes back — a little bit at a time, as the days went by. That is the truth of it. Hope is not a feeling that arrives. It is a discipline that gets practiced, in small private moments, by people the world has decided to stop seeing. The fact that you practiced it, and are still practicing it, and are now sharing the practice with the rest of us — that matters more than you may ever know.
For the families reading this, and there will be many, your words give them something they almost never get — the inside of the experience their loved one is living through and rarely has the language to describe. The wife waiting for the phone call now knows a little more about the night before that call. The mother carrying a son’s silence now has a little more company for the silence. The child who does not know what her father is going through is one day going to read your words and understand. That is not a small gift. That is a gift only someone living it can give.
We are grateful for the work. We are grateful for the courage. We are grateful for the truth-telling. Please keep going.