A Knock at Midnight(78)

    When Karen messaged me repeatedly last April about a potential new client, Corey Jacobs, I had been adamant in refusing. Donel had just been freed, but Mike was still in prison, and in any case there was no way I was taking another client until Sharanda was free. Plus Corey already had a lawyer, a renowned one, so what would I even be doing? My answer was no. I didn’t hear from Karen, who had found me on Facebook after the Washington Post article, again until the very same morning I got the call from the Pardon Attorney’s Office about Sharanda’s clemency. She couldn’t have known—the public announcement hadn’t been made yet. Still, there she was again, advocating for her old friend. A week later, she’d called again.

I sighed deeply and settled into the depths of the couch cushions, basking in the delicious smells of caramelized onions and simmering candied yams. There was something wonderfully comforting about chilling on Sharanda’s sofa while she cooked her heart out in her own kitchen.

“Well,” said Sharanda, “it wouldn’t hurt to talk to him, would it?”

I didn’t know. The emotional toll of the battle for Sharanda had drained my internal resources. And while her freedom had empowered and invigorated me, I had been hoping to refocus that energy into my corporate law career. My role at ORIX was growing by the day, but with all the pro bono work on criminal cases, I hadn’t had the time to immerse myself the way I wanted to in the business side of things. I’d been told from the beginning of my career that I was uniquely positioned for advancement because of my accounting background. Understanding both the legal and business sides of transactions gave me an edge. I wanted to use my free time now to enhance and sharpen my skills, to continue to climb the corporate ladder.

“Sometimes I just wish there were more of me,” I said through a mouthful of turkey burger.

“You’ve been talking about this a lot, though. Whenever you say you’re not taking any more cases I’m like yeah, right. If you ask me, I think you miss it.”

    “It’s just getting hard to manage my corporate career with casework.”

“Oh, I know how hard you go! But I also know how Corey feels right now. Even if you can’t take the case in the end, just the fact that you took the time to talk and listen will help him. Believe me. Just have the call.”

What could it hurt? I thought. At the very least, I could tell him myself that I couldn’t take him on as a client. He deserved that much.



* * *



—

WHEN I CALLED Corey Jacobs at Terre Haute United States Penitentiary in Indiana, where he was sixteen years into a life sentence, I explained that I wasn’t some big-time criminal defense lawyer. I’d had some luck, but I wasn’t like the high-profile lawyer he had already. I was corporate, I said, doing all this pro bono.

But Corey was undeterred. He didn’t take no for an answer, and he wouldn’t let me sell myself short, either. In contrast to the laid-back Southerners on the Wilson case, Corey had that New York hustle, an intensity you could feel all the way through the phone line, conveyed through a thick Bronx accent. He was forty-six now, his voice rich and smooth, and he spoke fast, with passion, punctuating his sentences with Know what I’m sayin’?

“Brittany,” he said. “You’re a fighter. You believe in your clients. I know you’re the one. Look, I got that lawyer because she’s supposed to be the best. She’s had success with clemencies. My friend agreed to help me, to pay her top dollar. But I’ve had this lawyer for over a year and nothing is happening.”

Corey told me that when his lawyer had finally visited him, the visit was totally demoralizing. “I looked in her eyes and saw—nothing. I was nothing to her. She even had the facts of my case wrong.”

    I could detect deep hurt in his voice. He told me he’d gone back to his cell feeling tired and low. He had laid low for a while, until his neighbor in the next cell brought him a newspaper from the library, telling him to read the cover article.

“I’ll be real, Brittany, I wasn’t feeling it that day,” Corey said. “I almost threw it out without looking at it. I just didn’t feel like reading, know what I’m saying? But I did. Beginning to end. It was you and Sharanda in The Washington Post. And I said that’s what I need. Someone from the culture. A believer, a fighter. Someone who will look at me and see me. I thought, with her in my corner, I know I’m getting out.”

I was touched, I told him. But I was at capacity, I tried to explain, with my responsibilities to my existing clients and to—

“Look, Brittany,” Corey cut me off. “I know you’re probably tired. And God knows you deserve rest. After all those years of fighting, I’m right here on your bumper, asking you to take my case now. I know it’s a big ask. But I’m fighting for my freedom. For my life. And you’re the one. You are the one.”

He took a deep breath—his first, it seemed, since we’d started talking. “I would greatly appreciate it if you took me on as your client.”

His eloquence, his enthusiasm, and his desperation deeply moved me. I could tell that Corey Jacobs was not a man who enjoyed asking for things. Before prison, he probably never had to. He was a proud man, with a powerful charisma I didn’t even have to be in his physical presence to feel.

Later that night, as I was getting ready to head home from work, I couldn’t stop thinking of Corey’s contagious enthusiasm, despite sixteen years in prison. I heard his voice—positive, hearty, upbeat—in my head. I remembered the way he’d paused before asking me to take his case. The way his boisterous voice got quiet, tentative, like this was his very last shot. And I thought about how I had felt talking to him. Awake and invigorated, maybe for the first time since the elation of Sharanda’s release. Inspired. Corey Jacobs was a force. An extraordinary, intelligent Black man, locked away from all the world for the prime of his life.