Headphone Epiphany

This was a weird week leading up to Christmas.  It was a week I learned a major lesson in growth and grace.  It all started typically enough.  Tuesday evening “Big S” had to work for 5^th period school (he’s a vocational aide and recently named computer aide to work with me and the new IT students).  Big S has been working out five days a week with “Jah”.  No big deal, so far.

He gets to work Tuesday night and his left arm – forearm, bicep and elbow – are swelled to three times their normal size.  His arm is blotchy and discolored.  A workout injury?  Possibly, except he and Jah hadn’t lifted since Sunday.  His instructor calls medical for him and at 7:00 pm he’s down with the nurses.

I’m sitting on my bunk doing, well, what I do almost every evening:  watching a “Seinfeld” re-run while reading “USA Today”.  Three officers move into the cut and open “S’s” locker and start packing him up.   I know the officers and one says “they’ve got him at medical.  Keeping him overnight.”

As I’ve described before in this blog – and in an accompanying piece this week – medical care in prison is abysmal.  All of us were worried – what’s up with Big S?

Side theme:  they have him completely packed up and “LA” comes by to see me.  LA because he’s from Los Angeles.  A bright young guy, LA nonetheless has way too much con in him, especially for a 24 year old who’s lost five years of his life to prison.  “Heh, Larry, did they take the other set of headphones?”  “What headphones?” I replied.  “I left a set on his bed.  Guy in 6 building needs repaired.”  Now Big S knew nothing about the repair or the headphones on his bunk.

Wednesday morning and Big S pushes his cart back in.  The diagnosis:  a bug bite (spider?) caused a massive infection in his arm.  High doses of antibiotics (and ten days of “pill call”) and he’ll be fine.  He’s going through his stuff and sees the extra set of headphones.  I explain the entire LA conversation.  That afternoon, Big S takes the phones to work and an electrical aide rewires and builds a new headclip (the phones we are allowed to buy have thin, cheap brittle plastic on the top.  They always crack within days of purchase. A guy in the shop makes a heavier, more pliable headpiece).  Big S gives the phones to LA for return to building 6.  Thursday afternoon two guys come running into the building looking for Big S.

“Gomez” (the guy in building 6) says someone switched out the speakers.  The name and number are scratched out and the earcovers (foam) are worn out.  Big S is perplexed.  The electrical aide had repaired a new set. The set Gomez sent back over for Big S to examine was old and worn.

So Big S goes to confront LA.  And, LA denies, and denies and then finally admits the truth.  He’d switched the speakers (earphone part) to sell before he leaves.  How do I say this other than Big S was pissed!

A couple of things to remember:  prisons are notorious places for cons to be run.  Guys try and get things over unsuspecting inmates all the time.  Conversely, you expect the guys you befriend; you help, to shoot straight with you.  Numerous times I’ve been, shall we say, let down by guys in here who have asked for help and then done slimy things.  You get used to it and you don’t let it change how you behave and who you are. 

The second thing to remember is Big S is a pretty big guy and “pp” (pre-prison) he was a fighter.  He worked nights as a bouncer at a few Richmond area bars and participated in a half-dozen UFC fights.  He also had a quick temper.

I watched LA stammer and stutter his way through before finally, with head down, going back to his bunk area and retrieving the good phones.  And, I watched Big S, jaw clenched, angry, trying to control his visceral reaction which was to break LA into a dozen pieces. 

Big S came back to the cut, obviously upset.  I climbed off my bunk and listened as he explained everything that had taken place.

“So what are you gonna do?”  I asked Big S.  “Forgive him.  Isn’t that what you’re always tellin me God expects us to do?  It’s not worth fighting over.  LA hasn’t figured it out yet.  He’s doomed to come back unless he does.”  “Forgive him.”  Can you imagine?  We throw terms like “forgiveness” around so easily and yet our initial reaction is to, well react.  Big S somehow decided the reaction wasn’t worth it.  Something else was required.  How much baggage, how much anger do we bottle up inside seeking “satisfaction” for wrongs perpetuated against us when the right thing to do is say “OK, I forgive you.”

Does that mean people will stop conning you, hurting you, trying to take advantage of you?  Probably not.  LA, he’s six weeks from going home and he’s still running cons.  He was willing to sell out his relationship with Big S for a few bucks.  LA was/is one of the high-risk recidivism offenders.  He’s done five years this bid on drug distribution and gun charges.  He’d been in and out of juvenile detention and twice did short jail terms.  He claims “I’m never coming back”.  But, how you behave in this environment largely dictates how you’ll be on the street.  In LA’s case, the prognosis isn’t good.

Will Big S’s handling of the situation suddenly cause a light bulb to go off over LA’s head and he’ll begin “doing the right thing”?  I don’t know.  But I know this:  the old way of doing things doesn’t work.

That all this took place on the eve of celebrating the birth of Emmanuel – “God with us” – came as no great surprise.  Big S just did what that birth was all about. He looked at the world through God’s eyes and said “that’s alright.  I forgive you.”  How odd that I saw that play out in prison.  Then again, “He came to set the prisoner’s free and open the eyes of the blind.”  And it all started with some headphones.  

God Bless Justice Stevens

I have a friend in here – “Cali” (from Los Angeles) who I’ve been working with the past few months. Cali is three years into a twenty-six year sentence. You would expect that to receive that many years Cali must have murdered someone in cold blood or abused and violated children. If you thought that, you’d be wrong. Cali received that extremely harsh sentence for (1) intent to distribute marijuana, and (2) conspiracy to distribute.



He and a co-defendant were staying at a hotel near Virginia Beach in two rooms reserved by a local friend. The rooms were at opposite ends of the hall. In one room (the co-defendant’s) twelve pounds of weed were found. In Cali’s room $200,000 in cash.


I could write a legal brief on the problems with Cali’s prosecution (in fact, I did): the prosecution’s star witness was the hotel manager, a woman who was an admitted drug user and was paid a percentage of the cash taken from Cali’s room (under drug forfeiture statutes); the false statements contained in the police request for issuance of a search warrant, or the fact that no evidence was introduced that the cash in Cali’s possession came from drug sales (in fact, there was no evidence of any drug sales). For my purposes here, I’ll assume everything the police did was “by the book”.


But, was justice served? Cali’s co-defendant took a plea and got, hold on, three years. He’s already out. Cali on the other hand, has twenty-three more years to go for the exact same charges.


My experience in meeting guys like Cali in here has awakened me to a stark reality. For a country that professes to believe “in justice for all”, we fall terribly short of the mark. That’s where Justice John Paul Stevens comes in.


The 92 year old Stevens recently retired from service as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court ending a tenure as the third longest serving Justice in history. Justice Stevens, a moderate Republican appointed by President Ford soon found himself relegated to being a leading dissenter as the court swung even more to the right.


Stevens believed in “justice for all”. His life was built around that concept and for good reason. Stevens was raised in a prosperous Chicago family. His father built the largest hotel in the city. When Stevens was twelve, his father was arrested and convicted of embezzlement. Eventually his father’s conviction was overturned on appeal.


“I knew my father was a good man. I also knew, even at that age that the system could be wrong.” It was at that point Stevens decided he wanted to be a judge to guarantee justice was done.


Stevens has taken some very unpopular positions in cases involving the accused, especially in post 9/11 America where the general consensus in society has become that security from terrorists is more important than the rule of the law.


In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, he argued that terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay were held in U.S. custody on U.S. soil and, therefore, guaranteed minimal constitutional protection. In Padilla v. U.S., he argued that Padilla – a United States citizen arrested on terrorism allegations and detained in a military brig for four years without access to courts or lawyers and without formal charges being brought, had his fundamental 4th, 5th, 6th and 14th amendment rights violated.


Even for those accused of being terrorists, without the guarantee of constitutional protection, he argued, this nation could too easily slip into “rule by tyrants”. That is a very powerful, and courageous, and lonely stand for anyone in this age of fear.


I’ve lost my freedom. I’ve seen the power of the state used personally. Conspiracy theories run rampant in prisons. If you want to understand why, just look honestly at the criminal justice system. The government has a virtually unlimited budget to prosecute. In its quest to close crime investigations (notice I didn’t say “solve crimes and bring justice”); the government will make deals, use false evidence, lie, cheat, or steal its way to a conviction. Don’t believe me? Look at the number of convictions that are set aside each year for police or prosecutorial misconduct.


The system is overwhelmed. And, because the system has a human face, it is subject to the prejudices and personality ups and downs of the judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys. Fact is, most defendants don’t create a favorable impression. They’re paraded on TV or in the paper when arrested and the general perception is “they must be guilty or the police wouldn’t be after them”.


But, that perception is exactly opposite what our system is founded on. The founding fathers knew the dangers inherent in a government able to convict on a whim. They understood that the most fundamental, God given right of all, was the right to be free. Depriving someone of their personal freedom was recognized as tyranny. The safeguards to shield an individual from the power of the state were deep and significant.


Yet, somehow middle America has forgotten that. Somehow “law abiding” citizens believe those “technicalities” are just there to protect the criminals. They couldn’t be further from the truth.


Guys like Cali come into this soul breaking, meat grinder each and every day. Some are innocent, others guilty yet the punishment way too severe. For the vast majority of “good citizens” it doesn’t matter. Thank God for the courageous few, like Justice Stevens, who understand justice and freedom are too precious to be pushed aside by a society convinced that safety and security are just one prison, one conviction, from reality, those lone voices who remind us over and over there is no safe haven, no perfectly secure place without justice and freedom.


Thank you Justice Stevens for your courage, your compassion, your sense of justice.