Chapter 7 Part 2
Everyone else has slowly begun to ghost me after I was convicted. Except my family - at that point - and a close friend of mine who hadn't missed a single day. He is actually more than a friend. He is family. I love him like my brother. He has earned that.
During the day I spent most of the time by myself. I had a select few guys who I kicked it with, but for the most part, I was in my own world.
I tried to spend as much time as I could with my family. Back then we were allowed one non-contact visit each week. It was in a booth, through a thick glass. It was tough for my family, man. so tough that I almost spared them the suffering by telling them not to come. I didn’t do it because I needed time with them. especially my younger sister and my nephews who were about two and a half years old each. I knew that once I went to prison I may not be able to see them if I ended up in Menard Correctional center. It was 8 hours from home. I knew I only had two options. Statesville Correctional Center or Menard. I wanted to make the most of our time just in case I was sent far away.
I’m glad that I did. I haven’t had a visit with my mom or my older sister and nephews since that visit in the county jail, 13 years ago. The last time I hugged them was during a visit at the Juvenile Detention Center 13 years ago as well while waiting for my sentencing hearing. I also spent a lot of the time visiting with Kevin and Eric. Much of it was preparing for my motion for a new trial, which is a motion that argues that I should receive a new trial based on errors that happen before or during my trial that deemed the whole process unfair. It was just another part of the trial process if you were convicted. It was a proforma. Kevin and Eric let me know that the motion would certainly be denied and we would go straight to sentencing. The importance of the motion was to preserve any potential issues for my appeal.
I asked Kevin and Eric if they would be willing to represent me on my appeal. They said they would have been happy to but couldn’t. They wanted me to have the best chance at success. They told me that ineffective assistance of trial counsel would potentially be my best chance of winning, and if they represented me I would not be able to raise any errors that they made. Then they told me to raise any and every issue that I could find where they made a mistake. This is probably rare. I doubt that any attorney likes being accused of making mistakes. Many would likely defend their conduct, ultimately making it harder for their former clients to get relief.
Aside from the meetings regarding my motion for a new trial and sentencing, there were several visits between Kevin and I. He would come through regularly to check on me. A lot of times I would send him a quick note and he would pop up. I leaned on him to help me get through that 6 months.
Everyone else has slowly begun to ghost me after I was convicted. Except my family - at that point - and a close friend of mine who hadn’t missed a single day. He is actually more than a friend. He is family. I love him like my brother. He has earned that.
By the time my sentencing hearing rolled around in October 2012, I was ready to get on with it. I was already looking past it, focusing on what was to come after. The months leading up to that point were HARD and filled with stress, anxiety, and sleepless nights. It was also depressing being around so many people who were going home on a regular basis, or fighting petty charges. I needed to know my fate so I didn’t have to think about it. So I could begin the fight for the rest of my life.
As Kevin and Eric had warned me, my motion for a new trial was denied. It really didn’t matter what issues I presented in that motion. There was zero chance that my judge was going to overturn my conviction. so, once he denied my motion it was time to get into the real reason we were there.
I could be wrong but I believe the prosecutor had asked my judge to sentence me to 90 years in prison. I’m not even sure how he came up with that number. My mandatory minimum sentence was 51 years. At least 20 years for the murder conviction. 20 was the minimum for that offense. I also faced a minimum of 6 years for aggravated battery with firearm offense. On top of those, I was also going to receive a mandatory 25-year enhancement because a firearm was used in the offenses. He could have asked for the minimum sentence and it would have been a de facto life sentence. Instead he asked for 90 years.
My attorneys did the best they could to try and persuade my judge to give me a sentence below the mandatory minimum. They referenced the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Miller versus Alabama which ordered that juvenile offenders could not receive life without parole in prison, even for serious crimes such as murder. The justices detailed how children were not miniature adults and should not and should receive certain protections when being sentenced in adult courts. It was the justices’ mercy and compassion in that case that would ultimately start the process of Juvenile Justice Reform in Illinois, resulting in changes in the laws. I would ultimately benefit from the changes and receive a second chance at life outside of prison. I’ll talk more about that later because It still took over a decade for me to receive that benefit.
At the time of my sentencing hearing the Supreme Court’s ruling was still fresh. It had been decided earlier that that same year and trial courts were still trying to digest the full meaning of their order. So while my attorneys were asking my trial judge to sentence me well below the mandatory minimum, my judge responded saying that his hands were tied because the law mandated I receive a minimum of 51 years. He couldn’t disregard the law no matter how young I was.
As for the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Miller versus Alabama, He mentioned that their order did not allow him to go below the mandatory minimums. The court’s order only protected me from receiving an actual sentence of life without parole. Because 51 years or even 90 years is not identified in the court’s ruling as de facto life sentences, they were still allowed to be applied to me.
In the end my judge sentenced me to 61 years in prison. He gave me 26 years for the murder conviction, 10 years for the aggravated battery, plus the mandatory 25-year firearm enhancement. I looked at him as if I didn’t care. He looked back at me and was probably thinking about how I had no idea of what I was up against moving forward.
The truth is, that I didn’t care about the 61-year sentence. He could have given me the 90 years and it would have been the same to me, a life sentence in prison that I intended to challenge until I won or died in the prison. I could not accept his sentence as my final fate. I believed in my heart that the sentence would not stand. Part of it was hope, mixed with some fear. The rest was divine intuition.
Believe it or not, I was happy to finally have my 61-year sentence. It meant that I would be on my way to prison and on to my appeal. My judge had ordered the sheriff to facilitate my transfer to IDOC. He also ordered that my appeal be handled by the Office of the State Appellate Defender who are essentially the public defenders for Indigent appellates.
Two weeks later I would be on my way to Statesville Northern reception/classification unit.
Thanks for reading! Getting the word out about my memoir takes people like you. It would mean the world to me if you would consider sharing it with someone you think may be interested in reading it too. With gratitude, Dre.
Dre, every time you let us into another stretch of this story, the scale of what you’ve carried becomes even clearer.
What is most striking in this piece is the way you hold two truths at once… how much you needed those last visits, and how much you wanted to spare your family the suffering of coming. The image of you choosing to keep seeing your mom, sister, and nephews through thick glass, knowing it might be the last time for years, and then realizing it was the last time for more than a decade, that’s something most people will never even think to imagine. Naming that you almost told them not to come, and didn’t, is its own kind of courage. You protected your bond with them even while you were trying to protect them from pain.
The way you write about Kevin and Eric here is powerful, too. Them telling you, “raise every issue you can find where we made a mistake”, and stepping back so ineffective assistance could be part of your appeal, is not how most people picture lawyers. It shows how much they saw you as a person, not just a case, and how deeply they understood that their role was to give you the best possible chance at a future, even if that meant inviting you to scrutinize their own work. The fact that you leaned on Kevin to get through those six months, and that he kept showing up when others started to ghost you, says a lot about what real advocacy looks like.
And then there’s the sentencing. The detail about the prosecutor asking for 90 years when 51 would already have been a de facto life sentence, the way Miller v. Alabama was “fresh” and yet still not enough to protect you from a number that meant dying in prison — those pieces will help a lot of people understand how the law can name mercy in theory while still allowing sentences that erase whole lifetimes in practice. Your reaction…, feeling almost relieved to finally have the 61 years because it meant you could stop living in suspense and start “the fight for the rest of my life”, is something families in our community will recognize. It is that strange moment when a terrible outcome feels like a door opening, simply because you can finally see what you’re up against.
The quiet faith you name at the end. That you could not accept 61 years as your final fate, that part of you believed it would not stand, that “divine intuition” sat beside your fear and hope, is going to matter to a lot of people reading this while they wait on appeals of their own, or their loved ones’ cases. You’re showing them that it’s possible to look directly at a number that long, refuse to let it define you, and still keep fighting day after day until something shifts.
Thank you for continuing to tell this story with this level of honesty and detail. For your family, for other families living through similar sentences, and for people who have never set foot in a courtroom, these chapters are not just information… they’re a way to understand what a human life looks like when the system has tried to write its ending, and the person inside refuses to stop writing.