A Knock at Midnight(64)
“Can you believe that, Brittany? That’s freedom!” He looked back down at his plate, emotion washing across his handsome face. “That’s freedom.”
At six o’clock that morning, wearing a crisp white polo shirt, plaid shorts, and gleaming white sneakers, looking the clean-cut family man he’d always been, Donel had finally signed out of the halfway house where he’d spent three months, sleeping in a bunk bed in a dorm room shared with eighteen other men. The reality of the halfway house had been a shock. When his sister picked him up from the prison in Seagoville, Donel had thought he was stepping into a new life, one in which, after twenty-two years, he’d finally have control over his time and personal space, finally get to hold and see his loved ones. But the rules of the halfway house didn’t allow for that. He could leave only to look for a job or go to church. He was subject to random drug tests and was not allowed a smartphone or other Internet access. Visiting hours in the halfway house were severely restricted. And when he went to job interviews or, later, to work, he had to report in every few hours from a landline, the halfway house version of a standing count in prison.
Worse, Donel was forced to cope with the culture shock and adjustment of life on the outside without his daily coping mechanism, running. Even in prison he’d been able to use the makeshift track, running three miles a day without fail, unless the unit was on lockdown. It kept his mind calm and his body healthy, he said, his emotions in check. At the halfway house, they wouldn’t even give him permission to run around the block.
Now he was free. “Finally, I can run!” he’d said as we toasted his release with our glasses of iced tea and water. As of today he would no longer be subject to midnight dorm shakedowns and check-in telephone calls, though he still had four more years on supervised release, with restricted travel, random drug tests, and home searches. But at least he could run.
Donel looked out over the park again, a small smile playing at his lips. Regardless of the challenges, there was the pleasant breeze, the green of the leaves, the shouts and giggles of running children. “You know, Brittany,” he said, “when I read the president’s letter to me, I could hear every word in his voice. Just as clear as if he was standing in front of me.”
President Obama had taken the time to personally write letters to clemency recipients. “Remember,” he wrote to Donel, “that you have the capacity to make good choices. By doing so, you will affect not only your own life, but those closest to you. You will also influence, through your own example, the possibility that others in your circumstances get their own second chance in the future. I believe in your ability to prove the doubters wrong. So good luck and Godspeed.”
Donel took that responsibility seriously, for himself and for those who, in his view, he had left behind.
“I feel horrible about Mike and Wayland,” Donel said, struggling with the pepper grinder, shaking instead of grinding. “And Sharanda. I mean, man, at least I had a release date. I think about them all the time.”
I reached over and gently showed Donel how to grind the pepper. He laughed in embarrassment. “It’s things like this,” he said, “that make me think, Does everybody know where I’ve been? Can they see it? I mean, man.” He laughed, examining the pepper grinder. “I’ve never seen one of these in my life.”
“I filed a sentence reduction motion for Mike in the courts,” I said. “It’s been a few months, so I hope we hear something soon. And I’m wrapping up a clemency petition for Wayland.”
Donel looked relieved. “Thank God,” he said. “It’s not right for me to be out here and they’re still in there. Mike tried to get me not to do it. ‘This ain’t for you,’ he said, more than once. I begged him to let me come work for him.”
Mike’s motion had been on my mind a lot. I’d started on a clemency petition for him but had a hard time reaching him to get the details I needed to finish it. It wasn’t his fault. Mike was housed at USP Victorville, a high-security federal penitentiary in Southern California notorious for the violence and mayhem that ruled the yard. Mike once told me, “You can lose your life or your sanity in this place any second.” Frequently, I would hear nothing from him for weeks at a time when the entire prison went on lockdown after a fresh spate of killings or stabbings.
As that process crawled along, I continued to seek avenues for Mike through the courts. A year before, in July 2014, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to once again retroactively modify the federal sentencing guidelines, this time reducing the base offense level used to calculate all drug offenses by two points. It was a modest but, significantly, a retroactive change, and every day of freedom recovered mattered. Keyon qualified for another sentence reduction under the amended guidelines, and we chipped away at his sentence a bit more. But even with the new amendment, the drug quantity threshold was still a hurdle in Mike’s case since the judge had held him accountable for more than fifty kilograms of crack.
When I dug back into his case files, though, I found inconsistencies that might lean in his favor. His presentence report held him accountable for over fifty kilograms of crack, but at one point during his sentencing hearing, the judge cited “over fifteen kilograms.” When the quantity findings are ambiguous, courts typically go with the most conservative number, and based on the smaller quantity, Mike’s new sentencing range under the amended guidelines was 292–365 months. I filed a motion arguing for him to be sentenced to the low end of the range, which would be time served. It was worth a shot.