Conversation with Jerry Lee

I was out on the track the other day finishing up my workout when Jerry Lee asked if he could walk a few laps with me. I’ve gotten to know a great deal about Jerry Lee in my time here. I’ve written about him before. He and I come from different worlds, yet have a deep bond between us. I’ve met his daughters, his mother, and his fiancé. I respect his opinion immensely.



He wanted to talk about his still pending pardon application to the Governor that I filed for him three months ago. We are both cautiously hopeful that the Governor will do the right thing, the just thing, and free him.


Jerry Lee recently “celebrated” his 18th year in the penitentiary. He also just turned 40. When he was convicted and sentenced back in 1992 to 35 years, the judge specifically announced “if you remain as remorseful as you appear, with Virginia’s lenient parole rules, you’ll be released early”. Three years later, in a quirk of the Virginia penal system, DOC determined his eight robberies, committed over nine days to support a staggering drug habit, constituted multiple convictions and made him a “three time loser”, thereby making him ineligible for discretionary parole (i.e. early release). Jerry Lee has a mandatory parole date of 2016.


Anyway, Jerry Lee’s time in the system has given him amazing insight into people and the inevitable circumstances we all find ourselves in. He’s not a deeply religious man – not as society defines religious – yet he’s somehow managed to become a very good father (his oldest just graduated seminary last June and has been to Haiti twice since the earthquake). He also has a deeper understanding of the human condition than any of the supposed “educated” folks I used to socialize with.


Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never felt the frustration of dealing with blatant ignorance I frequently feel in here, while hanging with the folks I used to be around. But, there isn’t as much hypocrisy with guys locked up.


Like it or not, when you’re living 96 to a building, when you can’t even go to the bathroom with any privacy, you learn rather quickly life isn’t all about you. For better – or worse – you learn to live and let live.


That explains in large part, how you can have a flamboyant homosexual in the bunk on one side (I’m talking guys who cut and sew their t-shirts and underwear to resemble bra and pantie sets), and a rabid Nation of Islam follower on the other side and not lose a moments sleep.


We walked and talked and he matter of fact like brought up Moses. He said, “You know, Moses was a murderer. He fled; stayed away a whole lot of years, then God said ‘I got something for you to do.’ So he does it, only it’s not easy. Ten times Pharaoh says ‘up yours,’ and his own people bitch, but he hangs in there. And, he helps the folks. What do they do? Bitch some more. Forty years wandering around, never getting into the Promised Land. Never quit believing in his God or his people, even when they bitched.”


Jerry Lee got his point across to me, and it meant more to me than almost any sermon I ever heard in church.


Sometimes the circumstances we find ourselves in don’t make much sense. Whether we’re in a hell we created (like embezzling $2 million over 12 years) or when it’s thrust upon us (like how my ex-wife and kids had to deal with the news of my arrest). It’s at those times we’ve got to do what God directs, not what our hearts tell us to do.


Jerry Lee told me good men struggle, they question, they have regret over the decisions they made “But”, he said, “You’ve got to see the purpose. Look how many men you’ve helped in school and in court. You don’t think God put you here for a reason?” Funny, I didn’t even know he was talking about me when we first started our conversation.


Yes, sometimes the path God takes too get us where He wants us to be doesn’t go according to our understanding. Sometimes the people we most love and most abandon and betray us, but somehow God keeps moving us forward.


A great deal of news coverage was focused this week on Tiger Woods’ divorce. I couldn’t help but think – as I heard his ex give her “People” magazine interview about justifying her decision to divorce him –about the Chinese Philosopher Lao Tzu who said “marriage is three parts love and seven parts forgiveness of sins.”


Observing the broken, twisted lives of so many of the men in here, I realized Lao Tzu’s quote doesn’t just apply to marriage. Life really is about love and forgiveness. Unfortunately, those are the very two things we usually refuse to give out unconditionally.


Like the former Mrs. Woods, we can spend hours, days, months, even years, convincing ourselves we were right to “fall out of love”, right to reject someone, condemn someone, not open our heart and forgive someone. But that’s not what God is calling us to do.


Just like the woman caught in adultery whom Jesus announces “he that is free of sin, cast the first stone,” if God gives second, third, twentieth chances, shouldn’t we?


Jerry Lee hit me at a point when I was struggling to decide if I’d help a young, black inmate. He had asked me to handle a pardon application for him and even got me to speak to his mom on the phone (she’s an evangelical preacher in South Philadelphia).


My problem arose from his crime. He has done 8 years of an 18 year sentence for rape. He was a sailor in Norfolk living in an apartment off base with two shipmates. A female sailor he knew ran into him at McDonalds. They went back to the apartment and started drinking. One of the roommates kept making her drinks stronger. She headed back to the bedroom with the roommate.


A short while later the roommate called the other two back to the bedroom. He had a video camera set up.


“Join in. She’s a freak.” All three guys had sex with a semi-conscious female, and videotaped the entire thing. When she awoke later she saw the videotape and left the apartment and flagged down a police car.


All three guys were arrested. Everything I detailed came right from the young man’s confession, without a lawyer, given immediately after his arrest.


The two roommates took plea deals and received five years. This guy turned it down (“I did wrong, but I didn’t ever mean to hurt her”), went to trial and got 18 years.


I read his transcript and told him, point blank, if I had a daughter I would have wanted to see him beaten within an inch of his life. I had an immediate visceral reaction and I let him know it.


But, here was where it gets tricky. In his file was a letter from the victim. She wrote him after sentencing and told him “I know you’re a good guy. I don’t want you to suffer with such a long sentence. What you did was wrong, but I forgive you.” The victim forgives, yet society punishes.


I’m still torn. But, as I walked the track with Jerry Lee and considered the path God has put me on, I kept coming back to that young woman’s profound, yet simple words. If she could see beyond the act, to the heart of the man, shouldn’t I do the same?


If God didn’t give up on me – even when almost everyone I knew did – don’t I owe the same to a remorseful young man? Maybe Jerry Lee and I can get another walk in.