A Knock at Midnight(61)

One night in mid-November, about a week after “A Living Death” was published, I checked the mailbox after a long day of work and found the report I had been waiting for. It was thorough and glowing, evidencing Donel’s dedication to self-improvement since the day he had entered prison. As I paged through I felt the fierce urgency of freedom. I was going to get these clemency petitions finalized and filed. Tonight.

    I hopped in my car and headed back to Winstead. Just as I reached the office, my colleague Robert texted me, telling me he was about to cook his first dinner at home in weeks. We had both been clocking long days and late nights at the office. “Back at work,” I replied. “Donel’s progress report came. I’m going to finish these petitions TONIGHT!”

“I’ll be there in twenty,” he texted back. And he was, with takeout dinner for us both. It meant so much to me that he came. He could have been home, but he stayed with me for several hours as I prepared the petitions for printing. I had been holding them close, typing every word with as much love and intention as I could muster, just as my dad taught me. That night, I stood in the doorway of Robert’s office, which was next door to mine, and prepared to let them go.

“Okay,” I said, “they’re ready for you to proof.” Robert was known for his meticulous editing, and even though I knew in my heart they were ready, I needed a second pair of eyes on them. “But Robert,” I added. “Typos only.”

In the morning, I had both petitions printed with laminated covers and spiral binding, so that they would stand out when received by the Office of the Pardon Attorney in D.C. I printed a second, unbound version in case they needed to make copies. With the lengthy memo, supporting exhibits, and all of the support letters I had gathered, the clemency petitions were over two hundred pages long.

At the last minute, I had gone back to my office to grab my wallet. In one of the pockets, still folded in thirds, was the twenty-dollar bill that the older woman had pressed into my hand that day at Pastor Haynes’s church several months prior. I held it in my hand for a moment, remembering that woman’s smile, the warmth of her touch, the pride in her voice as she insisted I take her offering. There’s a proverb that says “I am because we are.” At moments like these, I felt all the love and support of my community. I paid for the binding on Sharanda’s and Donel’s petitions with that folded twenty-dollar bill.

    I was proud of those clemency petitions. The final copies looked professional and worthy of the Pardon Attorney’s most intensive scrutiny. I had faith in their contents and faith in the integrity of President Barack Obama. In my heart, I knew that we could not fail.

Still, when my assistant, Deborah, proudly took those packages herself to the mailroom to send them to the White House, my believing heart was in my throat. The weight of what the packages would carry was immeasurable. Two lives, to be lived in freedom or buried alive behind razor wire and concrete. Out of my hands, and into those of the president of the United States. I shut the door to my office and tried to breathe. In and out. Just breathe.

All we could do now was wait.



* * *



—

A MONTH LATER, six days before Christmas, President Obama finally exercised his executive power and announced eight clemencies in time for the holidays. Neither Sharanda nor Donel was among them.

I had submitted the clemency petitions only a month before, but of course I was disappointed. Still, that Obama had granted any clemencies at all was progress. Even more hopeful, the clemencies were targeted—all eight people who received commutations had been sentenced by what Obama described in his announcement as “an unfair system,” namely the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses. While eight clemencies was a woefully small number in comparison to the twenty-three thousand people serving time in the federal system for crack cocaine convictions, it was better than nothing. Whatever criteria had been used to select what the media soon dubbed “the Obama Eight,” both Sharanda and Donel met them.

    “If they had been sentenced under the current law,” President Obama said of his eight clemency recipients in a press conference he gave to mark the day, “many of them would have already served their time and paid their debt to society. Instead, because of a disparity in the law that is now recognized as unjust, they remain in prison, separated from their families and communities, at a cost of millions of taxpayer dollars a year.”

To hear the president of the United States—my president—give voice to the same argument I had just used in Donel’s and Sharanda’s clemency petitions energized me. It helped to mitigate the disappointment I felt over my clients’ being overlooked.

If the news hurt Sharanda, she didn’t let on. Just over a year had passed since her mother’s death, and her heartbreak seemed to be lifting. When I visited her after the announcement, she was brimming with her usual positivity. I was so relieved to see her almost back to her vibrant self, those dime-like dimples punctuating every smile. At the end of our visit she gave me a huge hug. “Merry Christmas, Brittany! This is our last one in here, I promise! I’m getting out!”

A guard standing near to us snorted in derision. “You been saying that forever, Jones,” he sneered.

Sharanda gave me another squeeze. “Haters,” she whispered, before turning to be buzzed back inside, where I knew guards waited to strip-search and insult her. She flashed her beautiful smile at the sneering guard as she passed him. “I’m getting out,” she said over her shoulder to me, then disappeared behind the thick steel doors.