Central Park 5 – The Truth Wills Out

            Twenty-five years ago a young white woman left for a run through New York City’s Central Park. That run and the resulting brutal rape and beating she endured set in motion a chain of events that altered the lives of five young black men and their families.

            The attack on the victim quickly riveted the nation’s attention beyond its senseless viciousness. The young woman was an attractive, athletic white college graduate who was employed by a Wall Street firm. Almost, immediately after she was discovered beaten in the park the press began reporting her attackers were a roving gang of black youths preying on victims in a pack-like frenzy. Soon, the public was introduced to the word “wilding,” a term talking heads in the press created to describe such group attacks.

            New York’s Mayor and police commissioner vowed they would find the perpetrators and “bring them to justice.” Massive resources – police officers and the latest tools in criminal investigations – were employed to find the roving band. And America watched each day as reports came out about the victim: head trauma, broken bones. The horrendous details went on and on until … until justice was done.

            With great fanfare, New York’s finest announced the arrest of five African-American teenagers. The case was airtight; there was physical evidence and there were confessions.

            And it was life-imitating art, imitating life, the droning on about the racial makeup of victim and attacker.

            The five defendants – brutal, violent sociopaths, animalistic in their bloodlust – were tried and justice meted out. And the city was once again safe for pretty young white women to jog in …

            Except it was all wrong.

            In what would later turn out to be bad police work, the investigation wrongly focused on these five young men who actually had no physical connection to the attack, nor any physical evidence to even warrant any suspicion. The police used improper interview techniques and cajoled and coerced some of these five boys to give phony confessions implicating themselves and each other.

            And the poor victim who struggled to recover from the serious injuries she sustained was led to believe “these are the attackers.” These five young men, labeled rapists and sent to a New York maximum-security prison proclaimed their innocence … and no one listened.

            Two weeks ago, New York City announced a $40 million settlement with these men. The truth had come out years earlier. The truth about their innocence, the police malfeasance, it all came out and they were released and exonerated. The attacker a lone sex-predator – was in custody. His DNA matched the crime scene; his confession was airtight. There was no “wilding,” there was no “Central Park 5.” There were only five wrongly convicted men who were destroyed in the press and sent to prison.

            Forty million dollars. It sounds like a lot. But, consider that for years – even after the men were exonerated and released; even after it was admitted in court that the confessions were improperly obtained and evidence lacking – the city refused to acknowledge its mistakes. For years these men, these innocent men who had suffered through the hell of New York’s maximum security prison apparatus and who lost years from their lives, were never even given an apology.

            How much is your freedom worth? How much is your reputation, your name worth after it’s been smeared in the press? $40 million feels like thirty pieces of silver. And worse, the money these men received is more than ten times what a wrongly convicted person would receive in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The government doesn’t like admitting its missteps or adequately compensating the wrongly convicted.

            “J'accuse.” In 1894 a French military officer named Dreyfus was accused of conspiring with the hated Germans. Dreyfus was an easy target. He was Jewish and everyone in French military and political circles knew how “those Jews” couldn’t be trusted. Convicted of treason, he was sent to France’s notorious penal colony off Guyana, Devil’s Island, to pay for his crimes.

            The writer Emile Zola refused to accept the rush to judgment and the neatness of the investigation. “J'accuse” – “I accuse the authorities of betraying and convicting an innocent man.” And the truth willed out, Zola prevailed, and Dreyfus was freed from hell.

            In our rush to judge we often rely on our prejudices and our fears to direct our opinions. We forget the police, the government, are made up of fallible individuals who can be manipulated or are lazy, greedy, stupid, or just plain wrong. Perhaps that is why the great theologian Martin Luther, in response to his church’s call to recant – to accept the “political reality” of his times uttered “On the (God’s word) I stand. On this and no other.”

            The “Central Park 5” are free. Yet, like Dreyfus in 1894 innocent men and women still suffer when government rushes toward guilt. Consider that the next time our 24-hour news channels tell you the police have “broken a case.” Someday, you could be Dreyfus.

           

Letters to the Soul

Our college students in the student development class were given the assignment to write a letter to their younger self ten to twenty years ago with words of advice about what these years since have meant. Letter writing is an outdated form of communication for most. In here, however, it’s the way many of us communicate. And, writing to yourself? It’s tough. Three days after my arrest I began keeping a journal, a daily recitation of my life in here. This blog grew out of that journal – almost 1500 pages front and back to date. I began the journal so I’d remember all of this and in the hope that after I’m gone someone – my sons perhaps – would read those pages and understand what “this” really is.

            Letters to your younger selves. That’s a hard assignment. It’s tough looking back critically without saying “if only I …” because “if only I” doesn’t exist. The past is closed and unchangeable. We can learn from it, but there is no “Groundhog Day.” We don’t get second, third or even fourth chances at our past; there’s only the present and the future.

            I waited to see what these men would write. My expectations were not very high. Most of the guys in here don’t disclose their true selves. Fears and failures are both embarrassing and dangerous in a place like this. So bullshit is the chief form of oration in here. I expected more of the same. What I read and heard instead was profound. These men opened their souls on paper. Their stories echo in my head. They are gut wrenching, and oh, so human. As I read and edited. I felt moved. I went to one young man, Matt – a vet – and told him as an editor I found his syntax and grammar persuasive. As a father, I hugged him.

            Here are brief glimpses in these men’s stories: Matt wrote of watching his best friend die in a firefight in Iraq. “When this happens to you, remember to forgive yourself. You did all you could and you helped load his body on the plane to return to his mother.” I read about his nightmares, and his anger, and his guilt and I thought about my own support of a war my sons never had to fight. It was – it always is – the Matts of this country, the blue-collar kids, who fight, bleed, and die for America while those of us with education and money talk of geopolitical conflict and politics without a shred of sacrifice.

            My friend “O” wrote about his parent’s desperate travel to this country illegally to escape the horrors of El Salvador with its leftist guerrillas and its rightist death squads killing, bleeding the country to death. “They sacrificed so much, became citizens, worked for their children to have a better life and in my arrogance and impulsiveness I let them down.”

            As I read his words, flowing with Spanish colloquialisms, I felt shame. Thousands of children being sent to our borders as families seek to save their young lives. How are they met? By flag-waving protesters crying “go home.” We are pissing on the plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty.

            “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …”

            Yeah right; F- you Lady Liberty. O knows; his family lived it. And in spite of the Nativists (as is anyone really can claim “native” status in this country) and their ignorant protests people will still come. Ignorance can never kill hope.

            I read papers from Cubby, and B, and John Wayne, and Bugsy who told their younger selves about watching friends die from drug abuse. Drugs, alcohol, quitting school; these men all saw a part of life I never experienced. And in this class they felt free to talk about it. “Drugs kill.” “I drank too much and repeated the same behavior my mother did.” “He died in the chair next to me, overdosing on heroin.”

            There was Mike. Locked up since he turned fifteen for first degree murder; charged and convicted as an adult; given fifty years. He stayed in juvenile custody until age 17 then he was shipped within days of his birthday, to Southampton. Southampton (closed in 2006) was known for holding Virginia’s violent, youthful offenders. Gang rapes were commonplace as were brawls, stabbings, extortion. Everything you think you know about prison could be summed up in Southampton and fueled by youth it was a zoo on speed.

            And Mike, Mike wasn’t your typical teen killer. He wasn’t black, in a gang, poor, or on drugs. He was a white, middle-class kid with two educated, employed parents. He was smart, very smart; he was a loner … and he did a horrible thing. Strange, I look at Mike and wonder why, how he did what he did.

            They tested him after his arrest. Everyone wanted to know if he was a sociopath. TV shows called his parents, “Let us interview you. We want to figure out why he did it.” Know what the doctors found? He was just like any other fifteen-year-old kid … and he took a knife and stabbed a neighbor teen to death … 

            Mike wrote to his 17 year old self and said the following: “You’re soon going to head to Southampton and it is scary. You’ll be afraid and face a number of occasions when your humanity is tested. No matter what, be the decent man you will grow to be.”

            Letters to selves before they head the wrong way. My dear friend DC let me read his. I so often forget the man DC was. He was for years – one of Virginia’s worst offenders. He was violent and predatory. Twice the commonwealth prosecuted him for murders committed inside the notorious “walls,” Virginia’s since destroyed penitentiary on Spring Street in Richmond. Twice they tried to have him executed; twice he escaped the death chamber.

            He was in the midst of twelve years in solitary confinement at Mecklenburg Virginia’s Super Max facility. They moved him and fifteen others (the worst sixteen the state had) in the middle of the night with dozens of heavily armed state police – and he wrote his parents and his wife: “I will die in here. Forget me …” DC’s soul was dead; he was cold, his heart black; life was nothing to him. He was, in penitentiary – speak (old style violent cons still know this term) “down-in-law.” That meant he lived by his own accord. He took, he killed, he was the law for himself and being close to him was a life sentence, or worse.

            “Your Pops will show up at Mecklenburg and the officers will drag you from your cell to see him. And your Pops – the man you love and respect more than anyone in the world will tear into you. He’ll tell you being a man means doing right even if the load you up with fifty or sixty years. ‘You made this mess, you clean it up,’ he’ll say. ‘And don’t even think you can walk away from your responsibilities as a husband, a father, a son, a man.’”

            Forty-two years behind bars and I read his letter and know what happened afterward – that day DC gave up his life of violence, and anger, and death. “It won’t be easy but you can do it,” he writes. And all the respect and brotherly love I have for this remarkable man wells up inside of me.

            I realize as I read these letters that no man is beyond redemption. So many times in my old life I said I believed that. After all, isn’t that the point of the cross – that God’s grace can redeem even the darkest hearts, the most hopeless of lives? I read and know grace, true God-given grace is real.

            DC asked me what I thought of his letter. I recite to him William Ernest Henley’s poem, “Invictus.”

            Beyond this place of wrath and tears

            Looms but the Horror of the shade,

            And yet the menace of the years

            Finds and shall find me unafraid

            It matters not how strait the gate

            How charged with punishments the scroll

            I am the master of my fate

            I am the captain of my soul.

It's Alright

I hadn’t thought much about my reaction. Truth is, I’d always kept that little bit of hope, that micro-glimmer – if there is even such a thing – of hope deep in the recesses of my mind that there’d be a “we” again. The card in tonight’s mail disabused me of that dream.

            It was from a friend saying he knew “Friday” (that’s tomorrow!) would be a difficult day but he knew I am “stronger” than I think and I will “endure” this.

            Strength; endurance; great words. Words of hope, and perseverance, and grace. Like I said, I hadn’t thought much about my reaction. Then I read the card and I felt the air go out of me … for a brief moment. Then I did the unexpected, at least to the old me. I opened my Bible and read Psalm 103. For six years that Psalm, “Bless the Lord O my soul and all that is within me bless His holy name,” has sustained me. I read that Psalm moments after I decided, sitting in that cell at the jail when all was lost, that I would go on because God expected me to never give up.

            There was something about those words that told me to endure, persevere, overcome. Every difficult decision, every bad day … or night, I’ve turned to Psalm 103. The pain, the sorrow and emptiness is still there, but it’s ok.

            “How does it feel

            How does it feel      

            To be on your own

            With no direction home

            A complete unknown

            Like a rolling stone”

            Dylan is blaring through my headphones. It’s always Dylan tunes on nights like this. Before I had my CD player in here I just wrote his lyrics down from memory, dozens of his songs, as if those words would suddenly open my minds-eye to what all this means. So I play “Like A Rolling Stone” a dozen times; I hear “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright;” I’m listening to Bob and the Band sing “I Shall Be Released” –

            “They say every man must need protection

            They say every man must fall.

            But I swear I see my reflection

            So high above this wall.

            I see my light come shining

            From the west down to the east

            Any day now, any day now

            I shall be released.”

            And of course, I play “Forever Young” over and over. How could I not? Those words were the first words I spoke/sang to both our sons moments after they entered their new world. “Our” sons; “Our” wedding; “Our” grief; “Our” is no more.

            As I write this, it is the eve of her remarriage. It was inevitable and I’ve accepted it (funny, like I could do anything to convince her otherwise). Every night since that August day in 2008 I’ve finished my day with prayers. They’ve always included her and her happiness and well being. I never prayed for reconciliation. Oh, I hoped for it; I daydreamed about her coming to see me, telling me she really did love me. Those were dreams. But my prayers – I knew what had to happen. So I asked God to watch over her, let her be happy.

            I’m not a strong man. I am weak and I am broken. God, however, in His infinite wisdom keeps telling me to go on. I do. I’m not sure why; I just know I can’t go back, I can’t stay here, I have to go on. I work out five days each week with a young Salvador-American. “O” is cut like a running back. We move weight the likes of which I never imagined I could lift. I’m his “project,” rebuilding me, muscle by muscle. Everyone around here notices how lean and muscular I’ve become. My body no longer looks like that of a 55 year-old man.

            Other guys have worked with us and quit. “Too intense,” they’ve said. I tell O “I’m not a quitter. I won’t give in; I’ll die first.” I have a quote pinned inside my locker from Ernest Hemingway. He wrote,

            “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

            I love Hemingway’s simple understanding of the human condition. I see those words as I jot this down. Hemingway, you fucking genius! You know what I’m saying.

            I never got to tell her goodbye. I never got to say how sorry I am and how I only ever wanted her to be happy and love me. I don’t think she ever understood how I felt/feel about her, how I can’t listen to “Shelter From the Storm” without seeing her and wishing, wishing things were different.

            That’s not in the cards. Maybe that’s why I turned to Psalm 103. It says God is bigger than all this and He’s to be trusted. Maybe it’s just a placebo, but I always turn to Psalm 103 and I always go on, and this time is no different.

            “When you go nothing

            You got nothing to lose”

            Bob is right you know. It’s easy standing strong when there’s nothing left to pull at you and say “but what if …” The toughest thing for me these past six years was not reacting, not fighting back, not playing “what if.” So many times in the last year I wanted to write her and say, “please don’t” when I learned she was moving on. But, I couldn’t. “In love.” I learned what those words meant after August 2008. You love someone, they break your heart, still you do what has to be done. My friends tell me how courageous I’ve been; how strong. No one knows how much energy it takes to not write, not fight, not get angry, not quit.

            I look at my watch and know the vows are being exchanged. So, I open my Bible to Job:

            “Naked I came from my mother’s womb,

            And naked shall I return there.

            The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;

            Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

            And, I’m ok because I know what Job is talking about. I get it. My buddy DC checks on me. “Main man, you good?” He is always there, a brother I wouldn’t have recognized in his days of death and destruction, days of violence and a dead heart; here he is, a man who I love like a brother who knows what tonight is. He sees my smile and he knows I’m good, I’m through this.

            I’m thinking of Jim Croce. It’s November 1981 and my best man’s fiancé; a beautiful girl with huge expressive eyes and the voice of an angel is singing “our” song, “Time in a Bottle.” The song ends, the organist hits the first note and I look to the back of the church and I see her for the first time that day … and she is more beautiful than I could imagine. My life is in front of me; my life is perfect.

            Jim Croce died in a plane crash, too young and too soon. I think of him singing tonight, but it isn’t “our” song, it’s “Operator.”

            “Operator, oh could you help me place this call?

            Cause I can’t read the number you just gave me

            There’s something in my eyes, you know it happens every time

            I think about the love that I thought would save me”

            He laments the loss of his love and wants so badly to call and say “I’m good; I’m happy.” But, he then realizes there isn’t any reason to call her, to say what’s on his heart.

            “Operator, oh let’s forget about this call

            There’s no one there I really wanted to talk to …”

            No one there. Yeah, Jim, you were right. What was so long ago isn’t anymore. And that’s alright. All I can do is move on from here, be the best me I can be, and live, love and forgive. Don’t think twice about it; it’s alright.

            “So long honey babe

            Where I’m bound. I can’t tell

            Goodbye is too good a word babe

            So I’ll just say fare thee well

            I ain’t sayin you treated me unkind

            You could have done better

            But I don’t mind

            You just wasted my precious time

            Don’t think twice, it’s alright”