A Knock at Midnight(49)



    “Brittany, I just couldn’t believe it,” De-Ann said as we sat in my apartment one day not long after our first call. “I was numb. First off, they gave us the sentences in months. Wayland, four hundred and forty-four. Donel, four twenty. Terry, three forty-eight. We just sat there trying to do the math in our heads. One by one it would be like—Oh my fucking God that means thirty-five years in prison? And then it came to me. Life, the judge said. Life! And for Mike, too. I mean, shit, they were all so long, they might as well have all been life sentences. The whole time I just thought, This cannot be happening.”

For a first-time drug offense built on a questionable case, every single one of my new clients had been handed a sentence longer than the number of years they had been alive.



* * *





THE EXTREME DIVERGENCE in the work that filled every waking moment of my life was leading to an almost surreal double consciousness. On the one hand, I continued to excel at Winstead, working on deals that were all-consuming—that is, until I got home and immersed myself in federal drug law and appellant processes, my emails from Sharanda, or potentially relevant articles or cases sent to me by Wayland, who really was a hell of a jailhouse lawyer. I hadn’t lost sight of my career path, which continued to develop as I got to see more women like Melissa Stewart in action. I had set a new goal for myself: to make partner.

    Black lawyers make up less than two percent of partners in big law firms. Winstead was no exception. In fact, their numbers were even worse: zero. Perhaps sensing my intention from my drive at work, two women partners took me under their wings. Emeline Yang and Jennifer Knapek had both been at the firm for nearly twenty years. They personally coached me as I assumed more first-chair roles on deals, helping shape my confidence to take charge of negotiations, positioning me for advancement. With the help of these generous and passionate women who were determined to reach back and help younger women lawyers like myself climb the ranks, I set my sights on navigating the eight-year partnership track.

The sky was the limit. At least that’s how it felt to me. But I was also keenly aware that for my clients there was no sky, only the water-stained, concrete ceiling of their prison cells. The weight of their sentences was like a chain I carried with me, out of view, under my growing collection of business suits. It was with me all the time. Until they were free, I would not truly be, either. No matter how intense the demands of corporate life, I had to push forward, to find the key to unlock these human cages. There was no turning back now.

And maybe, just maybe, the same call that had connected me to the Wilsons would be the key I needed. What I had already learned about the criminal justice system had shown that even a lawyer with deep experience would need a miracle in order to obtain relief in the courts. I had chipped away at Keyon’s sentence, but we needed a fast track—the same one that De-Ann had taken. I started to wonder, if De-Ann could get clemency, why couldn’t Mike, or Donel? Or Sharanda? I remembered the surge of hope I felt on President Obama’s inauguration day, that sense that anything was possible. Could the first Black president of the United States be our saving grace? I could work the courts, sure. But increasingly I was thinking about a new strategy: going straight to the commander in chief.





Chapter 10


GIRLS EMBRACING MOTHERS


The ACLU calls Carswell Federal Medical Center a “hospital of horrors”—and for good reason. Women are sent there with diagnoses requiring urgent medical care and then are routinely denied treatment. Prescriptions are thrown out upon arrival until new tests can be ordered—tests that are often put off for months, at which point the woman’s health has declined to the point of no return. Carswell is the only medical facility for women in federal prison, but from the beginning it was obvious the prison hospital was ill-equipped to handle a situation as severe as Genice Stribling’s.

Within days of her arrival, the untrained prison aides assigned to help Genice rolled her out of bed incorrectly and broke her ankle. A day later, her toe. They put her in a full-body lift-sling and hoisted her high in the air onto a cot, but didn’t fasten the sling correctly; Genice fell out and broke her tailbone. Prison doctors deemed treatment unnecessary, as Genice “couldn’t feel it anyway.” Her body swelled so severely they kept her in a compression brace for twenty-four hours a day, rushing her to an outside hospital only when the swelling compromised her internal organs. When she was released back to Carswell, medical staff refused to use Genice’s method to move her bowels despite their method not working. Utterly dependent on her caregivers, Genice went for weeks without a bowel movement.

    “Ms. Stribling,” the prison doctor who oversaw her first traumatic months at Carswell leaned over and whispered in her ear, “we cannot care for you here. File the compassionate release paperwork and I’ll recommend you for home confinement.” But when Genice’s attorney reached out to him for the recommendation, something had changed. The doctor just shook his head. “I’m sorry, I can’t do it,” he said, and refused to comment further. Another doctor quit after three weeks on Genice’s unit after unsuccessfully arguing that they couldn’t possibly meet her needs. “Nothing they’re doing at that prison is ethical,” she told a family member later.

Carswell’s reputation extended well beyond its walls. “I took an oath. Just being in that place betrayed it,” Kathleen Rumpf of the Catholic Workers Association lamented. “I have never seen anything like the corruption and cruelty at Carswell Women’s Prison Hospital.” A former medical officer at Carswell, Dr. Roger Guthrie, even filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel in which he detailed substandard care, medical mistakes, and delays in treatment leading to numerous cases of prisoner death and endangerment. He documented repeated incidences of falsified medical records and documents, the rape and sexual abuse of women prisoners, and misappropriation of funds intended to provide medical care for incarcerated women.

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