A Knock at Midnight(95)

    Chris walked with a limp due to avascular necrosis in his hip caused by his sickle cell; he minimized its effect by adopting something akin to an old-school gangster lean, one shoulder lowered, all the swag. Koshy, the prosecutor, would point out his walk as a sign of disrespect to the courts in his closing, but anyone paying attention could see that one of Chris’s legs was essentially shorter than the other, due to a lack of oxygen getting to the bone during pain crises. He stood tall as he could before the bench, shoulders squared, and greeted the court.

“First and foremost, I’d like to say thank you, Your Honorable Judge Sharp, and to the courts for letting me speak today,” he began. “I hope everyone here has been having a good morning.”

Then Chris launched into the speech he’d been practicing for months, speaking at a rapid-fire, rhythmic pace.

“Before I was found guilty at trial I had planned on coming here impressing you, Judge Sharp, leaving you disposed to me, showing you that these four years I’ve been incarcerated I’ve been studious with my time, taking copious notes. To accomplish this I was going to speak on a variety of topics, one of which being American history. I’m familiar that William Penn purchased Pennsylvania from the Delaware Native Americans, how Washington disbanded the troops in 1783, how on March 16, 1783, Washington delivered the speech that made the troops avert their plans—”

Gently, Judge Sharp intervened. “I don’t want to interrupt you, but can I stop you for a second and slow you down a little bit so that I can catch what you’re saying? I want to listen to you, and, also, the court reporter has to take it down.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You may have a speed that you have to do this in,” Judge Sharp said. “But if you can slow down, it would help me because I want to hear what you have to say.”

    “Thank you for listening,” Chris said. And he picked up where he’d left off: “—how Pass and Stow recast the Liberty Bell the first time it was cracked, how Frederic Bartholdi designed the Statue of Liberty, how John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1826, how Constantino Brumidi consummated the fresco of George Washington that’s at the Capitol in 1865, how at the beginning of the twentieth century the whole world was in civil and political uproar leading to the assassination of a few political figures, including our own twenty-fifth president, McKinley, how in 1913 the Federal Reserve system was established, how in 1934 the SEC was established. I’m familiar with President Nixon and the Watergate scandal, how 1960 to 1970 was the greatest economical decade in our country’s history, the GNP doubling and nearly tripling. I’m familiar with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan’s theory on the government’s role in society, the 1987 Wall Street crash…”

When I first read Chris’s opening in the transcripts, I noticed his sentences had a perfect rhythm, no doubt a part of his memorization. When my surprise abated I began to sink into the content—a list, but a fascinatingly coherent and thematically linked list, of scholars, inventors, and historical figures and their accomplishments. His speech lasted for twenty-five transcript pages—forty-five minutes at the podium—and was truly extraordinary. In it, Chris spoke of Nero, Van Gogh, Cromwell, Descartes. He described the amazement he’d felt when he’d learned in prison that the CEOs of McDonald’s, Carnival Cruise Lines, and American Express were all Black men, and the impact that discovery had on his vision for his own future. He shared stories from his childhood, rife with poverty and trauma: constant pain from sickle cell anemia, weekly baths at the neighbors’ when the water got turned off, his mother’s crack addiction and abuse at the hands of her boyfriend, his discovery of Robert’s suicide. He recounted the extreme lack of financial resources and social pressures that led to selling drugs at a young age, and his goals and dreams if given the chance.

    In all the transcripts I’d scoured, I had never seen a defendant stake his claim in this way. Not to plead his innocence, or to ask for relief. Simply to state, in his own words, how he came to be in this place, and what he might accomplish if he got out “in a reasonable amount of time.” To say “I’m here. If the point of jail is rehabilitation, in my four years in county I have accomplished this. I am Chris Young. Know me.”

At the end of his speech, Judge Sharp thanked him, and he recommended a few books Chris might like to read based on some of the people he’d mentioned in his speech.

“Thank you,” Chris said, “for treating me like a man and looking at me like a man. Some people naturally look at us like we’re something else just because we’ve made mistakes and we’ve ended up on the other side of the law.”

Judge Sharp nodded. Then came the inevitable. He sentenced Chris to life in prison without the possibility of parole.



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WHEN I FLEW to Nashville to meet with Judge Sharp, four years after Chris’s trial, he still vividly remembered that speech. I had been fascinated by Judge Sharp from the moment I read Taylor’s Vice article. In all of my other cases, I’d appealed to judges to write letters on behalf of my clients with fingers crossed, practically begging. Here was a federal judge speaking out of his own accord on excessive sentencing in the federal courts. A man who had left the prestige of a lifetime appointment in protest. This was a man I knew I needed to meet. I found his email on his firm’s website and reached out, telling him I was representing Chris Young and would love to arrange a meeting with him. He responded within the hour and invited me to Nashville.