What happens to a little boy who runs away from at the age of twelve? What do six years of struggling for his very life against a cold and often hostile world cost him?
Well, in my case, it cost me everything. I'd like to share my story with you, and ask you not to judge me forever by the worst thing I've ever done. And, at the end of it all, maybe you can come to understand what awaits those lost souls who don't grow up with the normal advantages most Americans take for granted. Not that I blame that for how how I've fallen. Not anymore. I've learned to accept responsibility for my own actions, these days.
The story I'd like to share with you isn't like any other that I know. I grew up in a large family, with five kids. My parents' divorce was finalized the day before I was born. So I was conceived in wedlock, but born a bastard. And it was all downhill from there.
I can go into more details as I write this blog, but for now it's enough to tell you that I have been in prison for the last twenty-five years for a crime I committed when I was eighteen. An older man approached me after a night of underage drinking, and asked me to go along on a robbery he had planned. I would give anything to to be able to go back in time and take back what happened that night, but no matter how remorseful I am, I can't change history. No one can.
The robbery turned bad, and became a murder. I went on the run, but eventually turned myself in to pay for the wrong I had done. Little did I know, but California had around that time begun a "tough-on-crime" spree, mandating a mandatory minimum sentence of death by incarceration (aka "Life Without The Possibility of Parole"), for any murder committed during a robbery. I was shocked to find that I'd face that kind of sentence, because I'd always considered myself to be a basically good person. To know that society felt I was irredeemable garbage, at such a tender age, came as a bit of a shock.
Having lived on the streets since the age of twelve, I had very little chance to live any kind of "real" life. Now, there was absolutely no chance for any kind of life. Or at least that's what I thought at the time. It would be almost two decades before I could really come to grips with the fact that everyone is doing time, in one way or another. That's when I began rebuilding my life, a step at a time. But more on that later.
I had spent the beginning of my sentence acting out. I was frustrated, hurt, and angry. And I got in every kind of trouble it is possible to get into while incarcerated, in what were America's toughest prisons. I did around ten years in solitary confinement, all told. And I did a lot of things I am not proud of, in order to rise towards the top of prison society, which is all I felt I had left available to me at the time.
But then I grew up. I got my head out of my behind, and saw that there was more to life than prison gangs and being the toughest con on the yard. I began to go on a quest of self-improvement. I'm still on it. And I've come a very long way.
So has society. Studies by Stanford University and many other respected institutions have shown that the decision making portion of a young male's brain is nowhere near done developing when he's eighteen. In fact, your brain does not stop maturing until around the age of twenty-five. And that's seven years after I had committed my crime.
The Supreme Court and the California State Legislature have both recently begun reducing sentences for kids who were under eighteen when they committed their crimes. And SB 261 is in the state Senate right now. It will up the age where kids are considered too young to throw away, to twenty-three. It doesn't apply to "life without" sentences, but it is a real start. I can always ask the Governor to commute my sentence from death by incarceration to twenty-five years to life. That would immediately make me eligible for parole. Of course, the experts on the Parole Board would still have to deem me fit to re-enter society, but it is a ray of hope where none existed before. And that ain't too shabby.
I am no longer the that eighteen year old child of the streets. I have really put in a lot of work towards becoming the kind of person I should have originally been. I give back to society in very I can. I am enrolled in college courses with a 4.0 GPA. I take part in numerous self-help groups, both in prison and through the mail. That growth is why friends of mine have gotten together and helped me get and maintain this blog. I couldn't do it without them.
You will get to see some of my artwork and read some of my writings. I hope you like them. And if, after you get to know me, you feel that I am no longer the treat to world that I once was, perhaps you will help me to petition the Governor to ask him, or her, to grant me clemency (to reduce my sentence to one where I will actually have a meaningful opportunity to prove to the experts that I am worth a second chance.)
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and please come back again to see a more in-depth telling of my story, instead of the brief highlights you read here.
There are myriad characters and events, including hobos, prostitutes, train hopping that I will share in entries to come.
follow the progress of California Senate Bill 261
