Thoughts When Mom Yelled “Guilty!”
We can’t predict what will evoke memories.
“GUILTY!” Mom hollered out to me from the front door as I was planting a pair of Muhly Grasses by the front gates.
At that moment, I was sweeping the blades up and off to one side, surprising myself with the visual reminder of the defendant.
“Keep on planting,” I said to myself.
As a person convicted of umpteen violent felonies, I felt a sense of vindication less for myself than for the fellow prisoners I knew to be innocent. All black.
I think about the black boys he used his money and access to taunt with threats of a needle filled with poison designed to end their young lives for something they didn’t do. Was the death penalty even used then in New York? I don’t know.
But neither did those poor black boys, I’ll bet. All of whom were later found innocent.
My friend Julian was innocent, too, and the life-plus-sixty-five years he received as a fifteen-year-old never broke him. By the time I met him in prison, he had defended me on more than a few occasions.
Julian pulled about 22 years. We worked hard to put a case together for the parole board. We hired a lawyer with money made from selling weed we smuggled into Nottoway Correctional…
