“I was in prison, and you came to me”—Gospel of St. Matthew 25:36
There was a young woman from a remote East Tennessee county who had been traveling through Knoxville with her boyfriend. She was a passenger in his car. He was a low-level methamphetamine dealer – more like a peddler, doling out enough to satisfy his dealer into letting him keep a gram or so for himself and his girlfriend, whom I will call May. They got caught–not dealing, just being in the car with the meth in it. The car happened to be within 1000 feet of a public park, although they didn’t know that and had just been looking for somebody. But the Tennessee Legislature has codified that distance as a reason for more severe punishment for people who get caught with drugs inside a 1000-foot radius of a park, or school, or daycare center.
May was barely inside her twenties, had never graduated from high school, and had grown up in abject poverty. She had the spectral look of a meth addict, and the defeated, listless affect of a war refugee. When May was arrested, she was six months pregnant with her first baby.
Pregnant drug addicts present a real conflict for people in the justice system. Judges and prosecutors think primarily about protecting the baby from continued substance abuse. I understand that. I didn’t want May’s baby to be born a drug addict, or with drug-induced deformities. But I also didn’t want May’s baby to be born in jail. And neither did May. She hoped to get clean and be a good mom. I’m the person who has a duty to believe her when she makes that promise.
Pregnancy or no pregnancy, the bond for a “zone” case – a drug case within that 1000-foot radius – is always high, especially if the drug is methamphetamine. There was no way on heaven or earth, or in hell, that May would have ever been able to make bond. Even the more predatory bonding companies would hesitate to write out a poor addict from outside Knox County. But none of that even mattered. Her home county, where May was on probation for a misdemeanor, issued a probation violation warrant and placed a hold on her. Even if she’d been able to afford bond, she would have been transported to that county’s jail.
With no other alternatives, May begged for as a quick a plea deal as I could manage. She was terrified of having her baby in jail, afraid the baby would be taken away from her forever. She had plans to break free of her bad relationship, to get clean, start a new life. She saw her baby as a gift from God to steer her in a new direction. She might have been naïve about how easy that would be for her, but she really believed it.
Here’s some legal calculus for you: Poor + Addicted + Pregnant + Prior Conviction = Zero Leverage. May’s luck – not that she ever had any – also turned up one of the most inflexible prosecutors in the county. I don’t remember what sort of deal she got, as good an indication as any that it wasn’t much of one. She got some kind of probation, but not in time for it to matter.
I got a call from a preacher one day asking me if a furlough could be arranged for May. Now in her eighth month of pregnancy and still in jail, she had gone into labor. She had lost the baby. The preacher was the pastor of a Baptist church not far from the Detention Facility. He often ministered to inmates there. He had helped May cope with her fear and loneliness by counseling her. Now he was trying to help her bury her baby.
I was not sure she could get a furlough because of that hold from another county. After talking to a few people up the chain of command at the DF, I drafted an order directing a deputy to take her to the graveyard of that country Baptist church, a couple miles from the DF, where the preacher had arranged for a burial. She would be shackled and handcuffed in addition to being escorted. That was official policy. The preacher’s plan was to hold a burial service for May’s baby, whom she had named Neveah (the baby’s real name, heaven spelled backwards). I ran the furlough order through the gauntlet of signatures and approvals, filed it, and a clerk faxed a copy to the DF.
I remember noticing the weather outside as I drove back to my office, because I imagined what that burial scene must be like on such a cold day, one of those bleak gray East Tennessee days that slog from late winter to the brink of spring. The wind in that part of Knox County near the DF seems more active than anywhere else, more blustery, weightier. The ground is hard and colorless.
Neveah had a little funeral that day. Her mother was not present. That county hold was the reason given by some administrator in the chain who stopped the furlough. May had been transported to the hospital for her baby’s premature delivery, hours after she had started bleeding. They got her to the ER in time for the stillbirth. The county hold hadn’t stopped that, of course, emergency and all.
If there is any hero in this story, it is that preacher who did make it to the burial that he had arranged, who carried out his promise, who saw the humanity in May and counseled her until the day the other county finally came to pick her up. I do not know what became of her. I do not know if Neveah’s grave is even marked.
“I was in prison, and you came to me”—Gospel of St. Matthew 25:36
The public has always tended to assume that inmates are bad people. They are criminals, after all, right? The public seems unaware that at least here in Knox County’s jail and detention center, the inmates have merely been charged with crimes – mostly nonviolent offenses – and they are there because they are just too poor to bond out. Bail bonds cost money. When people in more fortunate financial circumstances get into trouble, they can bond out. They can hire expensive lawyers and live their lives while their cases wend through the system. They can go on living in comfort in their homes and with their families, getting enough to eat and enjoying the advantages of freedom as long as they show up for court on the appointed day. They go to work, go to school, keep moving.
But the poor remain incarcerated--not because they are criminals, but because they are poor. And they live at the mercy of a system that has been inculcated with the medieval notion that in order to keep inmates in line, their humanity cannot be recognized. Basic comfort is too good for them. A few ounces of food a day is enough for them to eat. Their pain is not real. They are not real people. Or if they are people, they are bad people.
I do not believe that a criminal conviction operates as some sort of light switch that turns a human being into something else. It just means he or she has a criminal conviction. If it’s for something bad enough, then prison will hold that person for a long time, maybe forever. But for as long as it takes, that person is still a fellow human.
I want to tell some of the stories of people I have known in my years as a public defender. I am changing their names and some non-material biographical information to protect their identities. I do not wish to exploit anybody. I want to honor the humanity of the incarcerated by offering readers a glimpse into their lives before and after they went to jail.
Blogger and columnist Mark Shea has a marvelous piece that expands upon the theme of this week's conversation: how do we "ransom the captive" in our modern day and age? We hope you enjoy Mark's take on the question as much as we do!
Our conversation about the Corporal Works of Mercy continues with an exploration of what it means to "ransom the captive". What types of slavery or captivity exist in our day and age? How can we truly put this command of the Lord into practice? These and many other questions await in this 30-minute conversation on Living Stones!
