A Knock at Midnight(99)
Neither could my clients. Both Sharanda’s and Corey’s concern for those they’d left behind began almost the moment they got the clemency call. Sharanda had begun campaigning for Alice and others as soon as she stepped off prison grounds. I knew from my work with all of my clients and from the teachings of Bryan Stevenson and others that the best solutions come from those closest to the problem, those directly impacted. As I was planning my next move, it occurred to me that my best possible partners were the people right in front of me, the people I loved. Sharanda, Corey, and I set to work, and between the three of us, the Buried Alive Project was born.
Ultimately, we decided to focus the project on the area of the system in which the three of us had the most proximity and experience: the sentence of life without parole for federal drug offenses. There was something exceptionally unjust and cruel about a life sentence—different from a lengthy sentence in kind and degree. Short of execution, it was the most severe penalty permitted by law in America. It screamed that a person was beyond hope, beyond redemption. It suffocated mass potential as it buried people alive. It took a particular kind of grace and dignity to survive such a sentence; I knew because I’d seen it in my clients and friends. The scourge of mass incarceration would not be resolved by solving the issue of federal drug sentencing alone—we knew that. But it was our niche, and a niche gives you a handhold and the potential to make real systemic change in that area—in order to expand to others.
The Buried Alive Project’s mission would focus on freeing people serving life sentences today under yesterday’s drug laws. As lawyers we are often forced to work within the bounds of laws that are outside the bounds of moral consciousness. Progressive lawyering is a cornerstone of transformative justice. I wanted to build a team of lawyers to free everyone we could, even if we had to do it one by one. We wanted to salute the audacity and courage it takes to wake up every single day in the face of a life sentence. I had always worked in partnership with my clients on their freedom, and we wanted each person in prison represented by the Buried Alive Project to feel that they were a part of their own liberation strategy.
Equally important, though, was making the suffering and unfairness visited on those inside a much higher-profile issue. The irony of being buried alive is not just that we are dooming people to die, but that the problem itself is buried. When I spoke about my clients and their sentences, people were floored. They had no idea this was happening in America. As we launched the project, we aimed to merge statistics and stories in order to amplify the human element that was so often overlooked. Stories like Alice’s, like Chris’s—invisible to the public eye, yet so necessary to drive change. SMU law students had worked hard during my pop-up clinic to file clemency petitions under Obama’s initiative, and I saw the potential not just to harness their tremendous energy and dedication, but to begin early to influence their perception of those whose lives would soon be in their hands, and their own power to make change.
We began in the fall to organize at the newly launched Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center at my alma mater, SMU Dedman School of Law. Sharanda read and responded to hundreds of letters we received from people serving life sentences. Corey designed our logo and website. I worked to train pro bono lawyers to take on cases, and threw myself into more cases. The Deason Center served as a research partner and training operation, teaching advocacy skills to law students to help the Buried Alive Project maximize its work.
In the first four months of the project alone, a team of forty-five SMU law students devoted more than five hundred volunteer hours to helping us identify and research cases of hundreds of people serving life without parole sentences handed down under federal drug laws. SMU statistics students helped to analyze thirty years of data from the United States Sentencing Commission. English students with a focus on creative writing wrote powerful profile stories to humanize the narrative of those serving life without parole sentences. Both Chris and Alice, Sharanda’s dear friend from Carswell, were among the very first stories we featured on our website, and both were equal partners in making sure their stories were told in the way they wanted. Soon Alice’s story would move the world.
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I HADN’T EATEN all day. I sat in a New York City hotel room in the summer of 2018, feeling both elation and complete exhaustion. My navy blue suit was still hanging in the closet. I never got the chance to put it on. I was in New York for a full day of meetings to raise awareness about the Buried Alive Project, but I had canceled all of them. Alice Johnson was getting out of prison.
Our website’s photo of Alice showed her smiling with such grace that it was hard to believe she’d taken the picture in a prison uniform, from a federal penitentiary, while serving a mandatory life sentence. She’d been that way since the very first day I met her in person at Carswell: graceful and determined. Over the years, Alice had lost every appeal in court, and in January 2017, President Obama denied her clemency petition. I wasn’t Alice’s lawyer then, but I was always looking for ways to advocate for her freedom and to lift up the story of a woman who’d uplifted so many other incarcerated women. And I wasn’t alone; many criminal justice reform organizations had helped keep her name alive. Jennifer Turner, the lawyer who wrote the groundbreaking report for the ACLU featuring Sharanda and Mike, had remained in constant contact, searching for avenues for her freedom. We spent long hours on the phone strategizing, sending emails back and forth, reading case law and articles. “What about that Sentencing Commission’s drugs minus two amendment from 2014?” Jennifer would ask. “We can try to find a way to be creative with the amendment—let’s research how we can expand its reach to apply to Alice!” I’d say. We researched for months; ultimately, we kept hitting dead ends.