A Knock at Midnight(29)
I had done my research, had all the data. But I needed more than that to make my classmates truly understand the cruelty of the drug war’s senseless sacrifice of human capital. I would have to show my classmates the heartbeats behind the numbers. I wanted them to know Keyon as I did. And I wanted to find other cases that would remind us all that these were real people, real lives cut short for the same poor decisions that many SMU undergrads made every Friday night at the school’s notorious frat parties.
I found one. Clarence Aaron’s case was eerily similar to Keyon’s. In 1993, Clarence, a star athlete, was a twenty-three-year-old college junior at Southern University in Louisiana. Clarence worked his way through college, paying his own expenses and sending money home to his grandparents in Mobile, Alabama. His beloved grandfather’s sudden diagnosis of terminal cancer and then rapid decline and death while Clarence was away at school left him distraught. He made a fatal mistake. For fifteen hundred dollars, Clarence Aaron introduced a high school football buddy to one of his college classmates. The classmate’s brother was a drug dealer. With Clarence present, the two made a deal.
This was Clarence’s sole foray into the drug world. Arrested and charged in the ensuing indictment, he went on trial for his first-ever offense. Just as in Keyon’s case, there was no physical evidence presented at Clarence’s trial. Just as in Keyon’s case, the entire case against Clarence was based on the testimony of codefendants who received significantly lesser sentences for their cooperation. The two dealers that Clarence introduced for fifteen hundred dollars testified that he had been a “middleman” of the entire operation. The prosecution sought multiple enhancements, and ultimately Clarence was convicted on three charges—possession, conspiracy, and attempted possession—with the intent to distribute twenty-four kilos of crack cocaine. His punishment? Three natural life sentences without parole.
Clarence’s and Keyon’s stories were both compelling, but would they be enough? I didn’t think so. I needed one more human face to underscore what was beginning to look to me more and more like an absolute travesty of justice. And this time, I wanted a woman. In Google, I typed “woman, life sentence, drugs.” The first hit was a YouTube video featuring Sharanda Jones.
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SHE WAS FAMILIAR to me in every way, from her soft, slow manner of speaking to the stoic way she tried to cover her pain with a small smile to the prison number on her khakis that rocketed me back to the pain of my own mother’s incarceration. Sharanda was forty-two years old, a mother, a former beautician and restaurant owner, serving a life sentence for conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. At the time the video was made, Sharanda Jones had already spent more than ten years in prison. An entire decade.
When I wrote about Sharanda in my paper I tried to let the facts of her case speak for themselves. I presented my findings to my classmates and was encouraged by the discussions that ensued. Just seeing Sharanda’s, Keyon’s, and Clarence’s faces on the PowerPoint and hearing their stories did seem to bring the horror of life sentences more closely into view for my classmates. But for me, a deep pain had been triggered. Inside I was reeling, both from my own memories and from my sudden understanding of what exactly a life sentence in federal prison meant—for Keyon, and for Mr. Mitchell. For Sharanda, and for her daughter, Clenesha.
Mama had stayed in prison for two years and that had seemed like an eternity. She had been released on parole the year before and was working incredibly hard to get her life on track. Most important, she stayed sober. We were all so relieved that the dual nightmares of addiction and prison were over that any other issue paled in comparison. Still, the trauma of Mama’s incarceration haunted us all. For me, it manifested in moments like these—a library, a paper, research, an image, a voice, a number. Each time, a gut punch. And if she had received life? I couldn’t fathom it. I couldn’t fathom it for Sharanda Jones, either. Now that I knew about her case, now that I had spoken her name aloud in my classroom presentation, I couldn’t just let her die in prison. To let her waste away in there was unconscionable. I mailed Sharanda a card telling her that I was a law student and that I wanted to try to help her.
Her response was kind, but distant. A lot of people had offered their help, she wrote in a letter, the round swoops of her handwriting containing a calm and measured energy all their own. Sometimes they interviewed her and got a lot of grant money for this campaign or that one, but no one spent any time on the case. She thanked me and wished me the best in my future studies. Said she’d pray for me. It was clear she wasn’t impressed by my statement of solidarity. But she could not deter me. I was thrilled to get her response, as cool as it was. I had never imagined myself ever setting foot inside another prison, and yet I found myself determined to do everything I could for this woman, whose story struck me at my core.
I think it probable that just learning about Sharanda would have been enough to make me intent on helping her in some way, any way. But there was something else, too. The thin line between us, a proximity born of circumstances beyond our control. I just could not let go.
And so I decided to pay Sharanda a visit.
Chapter 7
I AM SHARANDA JONES
I sat nervously in the visiting room of the Carswell women’s prison in Fort Worth, watching tearful reunions take place each time an unseen guard buzzed one of the doors that led to the cells. It was late fall and I’d driven down from Dallas after classes on a Monday evening. Usually weekdays are quieter, but maybe because we were so close to Christmas, several visitors waited in the line before me in security.