Liar, Cheater, Sinner, Saint

I think a fair bit about why I did what I did.  Was I a good man who made a series of bad decisions?  A sociopath who betrayed those who loved and depended on me?  A sufferer of a mental disorder (way to go Catherine Zeta Jones!)? Over the last three years I’ve accepted I did very stupid, self-destructive things that hurt people I love.  And, I accept there was no reason to do them.  I knew they were wrong.  So why’d I do it?

Two Northeastern University psychologists have offered a surprising study on character.  Character, they argue is a dynamic process. Character isn’t set in stone.  There is a constant tension between our desires of short term and long term goals and our moral compass.  We’re not talking good and evil.  We’re talking “acting out of character” when faced with certain circumstances.  And, the two professors argue, anyone can act much more “out of character” than we think. 

I recently saw an interview with philosopher/political theoretician Christopher Hitchins.  Hitchins, at one point in his career attacked Mother Teresa’s character.  “She accepted donations from some of the world’s most repressive regimes and known narcoterrorists…that’s immoral.”

The authors would argue Mother Teresa placed her short term goal – feeding the poor of Calcutta – ahead of her moral judgment – taking “blood money”.  And she’s not the only example:  Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, U.S. Olympic athlete Marion Jones, Tiger Woods.  All had “everything going for them” and all made short-sighted, corrupt, bad decisions.

I understand human failure and weakness more now than I ever did.  I am especially on guard when I hear people refer to themselves as good.  Many times during the past few years I’ve been attacked by people near and dear to me that I am loathsome and despicable.  But they, on the other hand “are good”.

I find support for these two doctors’ research in my study of the Bible.  The Bible, after all, is a story of very human people, doing very human things and a God who has every reason in the world to condemn us, yet loves and forgives us.

This morning I read two powerful sections in the Gospel of Matthew.  In the first, Jesus is explaining to Peter that he is required to forgive “seven time seventy”.  Failure to forgive, as often as is necessary, is condemnable.  “Just as God has forgiven you, so must you forgive.”

In the very next chapter Jesus explains what God expects in marriage.  It’s simple and blunt “you don’t divorce unless there’s adultery”.  The “good people”, the Pharisees are shocked by this pronouncement.  They shouldn’t have been.  God’s moral code is pretty straight forward.  “Walk humbly before your God and treat each other the way you want to be treated.”

We all make bad decisions.  We all put self interest ahead of what we know in our hearts is the right thing to do, the moral thing to do, the Godly thing to do.

These researchers helped me come to terms with why I did what I did.  I wasn’t heinous.  In fact, as most people who have met me will attest, I’m a decent, caring, loving man.  But when faced with a particular dilemma, I chose expedience over right.  The researchers also gave me a reason to believe my new found compassion for those who’ve made a mess of their lives is well-founded.  The lesson, I think is simply this:  we can all be a little more loving; a little more understanding; a little more forgiving.

On “Good Friday” about two thousand years ago the good people had had enough of a troublesome itinerant preacher.  He kept telling them their view of morality was not God’s view.  They condemned Him to death.  But thankfully, that wasn’t the end of the story.  It was just the beginning.  No one’s character is set in stone.  We all fall short.  And by God’s grace we can all be redeemed.

Perhaps there’s someone in your life who screwed up and hurt you.  Now may be the time to put that behind you.  I know it is for me.

Tiger Transfer

This week, Tiger Woods gave an interview to Newsweek Magazine that coincided with the one year anniversary of his infamous auto accident which led to his public humiliation and eventual divorce. The Tiger in the Newsweek interview is not the same brash arrogant man who dominated golf for the past few years. The “new” Tiger is introspective, wiser and sadder.



I understand Tiger’s words. I appreciate his pain and sadness. Though our lives are light years different, in a weird way we have a common bond that comes from the dramatic fall and loss we’ve both endured.


The other morning, I was called over the intercom by the officer in the booth. “A96, go to property.” I froze. Calls to property that early in the morning almost always mean one thing: “you need to pack up. You’re being transferred to another prison”.


I walked down to property and saw “Ms. H”, the on duty officer. “You called me?” I quietly asked.


“Got a book for you.”


“Whew. I thought you were moving me.”


“Honey. We ain’t sendin’ you anywhere. You’re too nice and helpful to get run from here.”


I went back to the building, new law book in hand (thanks cousin!) and headed to work.


At work I was pulled aside by the principal’s chief aide. “They’re starting a college dorm. ‘Ms. C’ wants you to be a dorm aide, help the guys with their studies, serve as a mentor. She respects the work you do with the men. She loves the way you’ve gotten the writing program going. Hell, everyone here respects you.”


I went back to the building and my friend “Black” pulled up beside me. “Lotta guys thought we were seeing the end of ‘lawyer Larry’. Guys were worried you were leaving. You’d be missed.”


Strange. It took public humiliation, scorn, ridicule, having my wife and sons abandon me, for me to get my head out of my butt and find the real me. I’ve realized over these past two years a great deal about myself. I was always helpful, but always extremely prideful and judgmental. I thought I knew everything I needed to know. I was so sure of myself, or so I pretended.


I learned during this struggle I came across as an arrogant “know it all” to mask the insecurities I felt. Funny, but I really never thought I was very good at much. I always had doubts about my wife’s love for me, my friends loyalty to me. I learned that many of my insecurities were well founded (which is rather ironic).


For the last few years before my arrest my wife would “suggest” we open eHarmony accounts, take the survey, to see if we were compatible. Candidly, her suggestion ticked me off. It reinforced all the negatives I felt about myself, that somehow, I wasn’t “just right” for her. I’m sure she’s now an active participant in a match making web service. She’ll search for a “perfect match”. But, she won’t find a perfect fit, a perfect match. She won’t find anyone who will just love her. She had that and she let it go.


As Tiger has found over his struggles the past year, he was never the man people thought he was before the accident. He’s a different, but real man, after.


There is a sense of inner peace that develops when you face the abyss, when all seems lost and you realize you are broken. Somehow at that moment you decide to go forward, to fight through the pain and be the person you were always meant to be.


I like the man I’ve become in prison. I’m kinder, less judgmental, more humble. I also know I deserve to be loved. I’ve realized I am a loving, giving person. I proved that to myself at my worst, at my lowest.


So, I’m respected and admired by this prison community. Given how my friends and wife and sons have left me, being told “you made a difference for me” by a guy in state blues isn’t all that bad.


The other day, the GED exam was given. I’d been working for months with a guy who, incidentally, lives in my building. For five years he’s been trying and failing to pass the GED exam. “I’ll never pass. I’m not book smart.” I refused to accept that. I cajoled him, praised him, gave him practice exams. I’m not sure why I put so much time in with him; I just thought it was worth it.


I walked into class yesterday afternoon. There was Jackson, standing beside “Ms. W”, beaming. “I passed!” The look on that man’s face was worth a month of loneliness and despair in here.


There’s a lot worse things you can do with your life than teach inmates while you serve your own prison sentence. We have a bad habit of judging each other, being a little too cocky and a little less loving than we should be.


There’s a Bible verse I think about quite frequently. In it, the Apostle Paul writes that we need to be kind to strangers. You never know when you’re in the presence of angels. He also instructs believers to remember and sustain those in prison. I’m one of those guys in prison. I meet an awful lot of unlovable, some downright nasty men in here (and they make me wonder exactly what an angel would look like!). There is a good deal of anger, despair, and loneliness in so many of these men. Hope, for so many, seems in short supply.


Somehow, I discovered, I matter to many of these guys who had decided to give up. In small ways, I’m making a difference.


My wife gave up on me, she thought our wedding vow was just, well, words. Friends quit on me. When I needed love & encouragement most, I was left. And still I found my way. Thanks to a group of guys most of society gave up on, I found the real me.


While I wish I wasn’t in here, while I wish I was still married with my sons and friends beside me, at least I know for these men in these circumstances I’m giving them hope. It’s not the same, but it’s OK.


Like Tiger, I’m a little wiser, a little sadder, a bit more humble, and I know the real man that I am.

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.