When I arrived at Federal Medical Center, Carswell, in July 1998, I had to swallow my disappointment. I saw big buildings, razor wire, steel, and concrete floors. Since this was the only medical center for prisoners with special medical and mental health needs, it was filled with sick women. As I looked around, I saw women in wheelchairs, prisoners on crutches, and highly medicated people with dazed looks on their faces.
I was dismayed. I’d gotten comfortable in my California prison, made friends, and created a space there for myself in which I was valuable. Needed, even. Suddenly I was lonely and uncomfortable, and my family still wasn’t able to come visit me all the way in Texas. That night, I climbed into my bed, closed my eyes, and began to pray. I sought the Lord more than ever during that first month at Carswell.
Bloom where you’re planted. God knows where you are.
If it was true at Dublin, I told myself, it had to be true at Carswell.
I began reading the Bible even more earnestly while I was at this new prison. Sometimes I’d follow a “read the Bible in a year” pattern; other times, I’d pick a topic after a word or phrase would hit me. I would go to the library and dig into the references. I might study one aspect of God for months. I had the time. Slowly, my sadness over leaving FCI Dublin lifted.
“You don’t act like a person with a life sentence,” everyone from staff to prisoners said to me after I adjusted to the new prison. “I had no idea,” they would say. I even had one person tell me, “Something must be wrong with you. How can you be happy sitting on a life sentence? What kind of medication do you take?”
“I don’t take medication,” I said, realizing they were detecting the joy of the Lord in me—not mere happiness. “What do I take? I take in the Word of God, and I eat it.”
And feed me He did. My typical day at Carswell began at five thirty. We had to wait until count was completed before leaving our rooms, so I’d take some time in prayer and was out of my cell around six o’clock. I’d head to the showers, where there would be long lines of women waiting for their turn. That took some getting used to. In California, the showers were scattered around—there might be two stalls here and two there. But in Texas, the showers were situated all together, and there was always a long line.
Breakfasts at the chow hall included all-bran cereal, grits, fruit, and oatmeal. I usually ate something, then headed to work until lunch break. I always worked, using the twelve-cents-per-hour salary to help pay for long-distance calls. For lunch, they served a slice of pizza or an artificial chicken patty. In my mind, I could imagine my mama looking at that chicken and saying, “Slop.”
Although the food wouldn’t have met my mother’s exacting standards, it was fine. Unfortunately, I developed an allergy to Red Dye 40 and peanuts. That meant some days I actually couldn’t eat what they served, so I’d have to make something in my unit. My family kindly made sure I had enough money to buy snacks from the commissary. There, for a little more money than the real-world cost, I could buy rice, tortillas, coffee, ramen soups, cookies, crackers, pudding, ice cream, chips, canned meat, cheese, condiments, and other items. Plus, the prison allowed us to take any one piece of fruit (apples, oranges, bananas) with us to eat later in our cell. Some people managed to sneak other food out—potatoes, cheese, sugar, butter, you name it—but I had no idea where they hid it on their body. (I didn’t want to know!) With their smuggled ingredients, they were able to make dishes we couldn’t make with our commissary items.
I met a new friend named Chanel Jones, and she always enjoyed eating my concoctions. We got all our food the legal way, and I was able to make pretty good meals using what we had available. I could even make a decent birthday cake, if I could buy Hershey bars and cookies. Though we had a microwave for our unit, we sometimes had to wait hours for it. Alternatively, we filled thermoses full of hot water, put food in a baggie, and dropped it into the hot water to cook. Some people used the iron to melt their cheese, but that was a bit too far for me.
In the evening, some watched television in the atrium, which had a couple of screens in a special room. The first one to get the television would determine the programming, and I was never interested in their selections. Sometimes something racy would come on the screen in the evenings and people would yell out, “Don’t look, Miss Alice!” I guess I had the reputation of not being entertained by smutty things. “You don’t need to see this,” they’d say. Or they might clarify, “You don’t want to see this.”
I didn’t need the warnings, because the television never really held much allure. With a lifetime sentence, I found that it wasn’t terribly important to know what was going on in the outside world. If I really wanted to watch television, I’d get up early and tune the television to the inspirational shows on TBN or Daystar.
Instead of watching television in the evenings, I’d hang out with Chanel, keep a journal, or read novels in the evenings before lights-out. Also, I’d attend rehearsals—whether it was dance, drama, or a project I might be doing for one of the departments. At night, we had a ten o’clock count, so the lights went out around ten thirty.
* * *
Chanel and I used to walk around the exercise track every day. We counted our laps around the quarter-mile track to make sure we got enough exercise to stay in shape. As we walked, we chatted. What’s weird about prison is that eventually you learn just about everything about a person in there. In the outside world, people’s lives keep developing like a play unfolding with more news and drama. But inside the walls of a prison, life sort of stalls. Chanel told me her secrets and I told her mine. Then all we had left to chat about were the things happening in the prison: drama at work, which guards were crooked, and who was fighting with whom.
All the normal cliques existed at Carswell, except everyone was female.
The wealthier prisoners walked around flaunting their new belongings—food, contraband, tennis shoes—while poorer ones went through the trash to snag any discarded items. Drug users figured out a way to be high as a kite, while others avoided the temptation of drugs in prison. Pushers sold drugs somehow right under the guards’ noses. There were also skinheads, Black Panthers, white supremacists, witches, pagans, and rednecks. There were troublemakers who went in and out of the SHU as if it had a revolving door. Others were Christians, like me, whom people liked to tease over our perceived virtue. (Once, some people criticized the fact that Chanel and I didn’t allow sexy dancing on the praise team—it should go without saying that dancing unto the Lord should not look like you are dancing in a nightclub—and they told Chanel they were going to “baptize her in her own blood.” Without saying a word, I put on my boots, went down, and paid them a visit. I wanted them to know that I had Chanel’s back and that she was not alone. “Don’t play,” I told them. They immediately backpedaled.)
Some people wanted to talk endlessly about what their lives used to be like before prison, while others always talked about what they were going to do, eat, and buy once they got out. Some wanted to retry their case to you. Others never would tell what crime they’d committed. Just like on the outside of prison, people tended to hang with their own type of person.
In general, I tried to bring the same interest in helping people that I’d had at Dublin to my new life at Carswell. Since Carswell was a hospital prison, the wheelchair brigade formed a large portion of the population. Many had special needs, so I worked on creating Special Olympics–type events just for them. We were the only prison that ever did anything like that, and I received special recognition for my involvement and leadership.
Also, since so many people were sick, I trained to become certified as a hospice worker to help these women die with love. It was not an easy certification to get, because I had to learn how to do basic care for the infirm—like how to turn the sick over in bed, brush their teeth, change their linens, and help them go to the bathroom—as well as learn about the psychological and spiritual dynamics that help people die with dignity, how to treat them with proper bedside etiquette, and how to deal with grief. To die alone, in a lonely place, takes away the last bit of dignity a person has. Prisons are not meant to be nursing homes, so they can’t satisfy all the needs of a dying prisoner. And since many of such prisoners were abandoned by family members long ago, many die alone. I shuddered every time I thought about it.
After my training process, I graduated and began the hard work of helping people die well. Every day, I grappled with the cold reality that one day—since I had a life sentence—someone might eventually help me die in prison as well.
“Here’s your next assignment,” the prison nurse said, handing me a clipboard. “She’s comatose, she’s dying, she’s deaf, and we need everyone to take a shift.”
I went to her room to sit with her and saw the woman in bed. Her mouth was open, her eyes were open. That stare of hers unnerved me, but I didn’t look away from her. Whenever I sat with a hospice patient, I first liked to find out from her friends what her religion was or some things that she liked.
When I asked around about my people, I made sure I didn’t let curiosity get the better of me and ask why they ended up in prison. This was especially true in my hospice care, because I didn’t want to feel different about anyone. The sad fact was that some of my patients were probably child molesters. In prison, they called these sex abusers “chomos,” a derogatory nickname that derived from the term “child molester.” These women were treated so badly, because their crimes were some of the most horrific crimes imaginable.
I tried not to go there. Who knew the circumstances that led people to a life of crime? Maybe they were on drugs. Maybe they had been abandoned. I didn’t know. But I did know that if people were locked up, they were paying for whatever they did. God can handle administering justice better than the women at Carswell could. I let Him handle it, but I wanted to treat everyone with respect.
As I asked around about this new patient, I discovered she was Catholic. Since I had worked in the chapel as a clerk, I set up for every Catholic service for the chaplain, Father Vincent Inametti. That meant I was pretty familiar with some of the songs they sang. For my patient, I read to her from a Catholic book as well as the Bible. I flipped through the pages and landed on Psalms, since I didn’t know what her favorite scripture was. Perhaps it didn’t matter, since she couldn’t hear the words. But as I was reading, I remembered a Spanish song I used to hear the Catholic prisoners singing called “Ten Piedad.” This translates to “Have mercy.”
I closed the Bible and started singing, “Oh-oh Lord, have mercy, oh Lord, have mercy, oh-oh Lord, have mercy, have mercy on me.”
By the time I got to the end, I noticed a single tear had rolled from her eyes. Amazed, I stopped for just a second. Were my eyes deceiving me? Could she hear me? Did she actually understand what was going on? I opened my mouth and started singing the song more.
“Oh-oh Lord, have mercy, oh Lord, have mercy, oh-oh Lord, have mercy, have mercy on me.”
Tears by this point began running from her eyes. I got up and went to her bed. Her face was exactly the same—the same vacant stare and her mouth gaping open. But now her face was wet.
I was almost afraid to speak. Had this woman been trapped inside her body in a prison as she died and had no way to communicate?
“If you understand me,” I said hesitantly, “can you blink your eyes one time?”
I stepped back, my heart pounding in my chest.
She blinked.
“Would you like to see your family?” I asked. “If so, blink twice.”
Now, I don’t know why I asked that lady if she wanted to see her family. We were in prison, after all. Her family had stopped coming long ago because they couldn’t bear to come all that way to see her and then not be recognized. However, I knew that when a person got to a certain stage of near death, the warden would allow family members to visit even in the prisoner’s room.
She blinked twice and my heart felt like it stopped. Once I collected myself, I ran out and found the nurse. “She can hear.”
“No she can’t, Miss Johnson.”
“I asked her a question and told her to blink. She was able to do it,” I hurriedly explained. “Please come and look.”
The nurse ran and got the doctor to test my theory. Sure enough, this woman had been mentally present the entire time. The prison contacted the family, who came up immediately to spend time with her and communicate using the blinking method. It wasn’t much, but it was so much more than she’d had. She was no longer alone.
After her family left, she died within the week.
* * *
As I did in Dublin, I threw myself into the work of the church. While I was in Texas, I was introduced to a prison ministry called the Potter’s House. I started going to their Bible studies and working for the chapel. I was selected as the person who did the welcome and announcements (much like my mother always did). Also, I started working with the dance ministry there. I became the lead choreographer and dance team leader. I acted as a mentor to the other prisoners, teaching them how to serve in the various roles. When we would go into the chapel to rehearse or perform various tasks, I’d take a group of ladies with me to show them the ropes.
During the time I was at Carswell, we had a succession of three head chaplains: Bill Berry was first, followed by Joseph Pryor, and then Robert Danage. Each had more than his share of work to do in prison. Sometimes prisoners would line up outside their offices, waiting to speak to them about their problems or prayer requests. Sometimes I’d go out to the people in line to offer a listening ear. “Is there anything I can do to help?” I’d ask. Many times, people would tell me what was going on in their lives, and I would pray for them right then and there. Then they’d get out of the line and go on with their lives. This became so common that the chaplains would frequently tell people to “go see Miss Johnson” when they were busy with other duties.
I loved listening to and empowering women. I didn’t desire to have any official title in the church, a preposterous idea anyway. People in prison could not become ordained as official ministers. The only “title” I needed was one of servant. I wanted to serve the women in a way that could help them see goodness, even in prison.
Some days, this was harder than others. Especially on holidays. Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and Christmas caused the women to reflect on how they’d celebrated those days when they were free, the unbidden memories causing pangs of regret. But I didn’t want that sort of sorrow to take hold of these women. I began a “holiday ministry” of sorts. I would put on uplifting holiday-related programs and decorate the chapel to make them feel like they weren’t in prison at all. It was just one of the things I did to keep people’s spirits up.
One evening, I had a dream. In it, I saw a pulpit that was empty.
“Why don’t you go get behind it?” my friend in my dream asked.
I didn’t go, so she urged me again. Reluctantly, I walked to the pulpit and stood behind it. The next instant, I saw people flocking to it, as if they were there to hear what I had to say.
Then the scene changed. I was with a seven-foot-tall man wearing a white robe. In my dream, I believed him to be an angel.
“Do not be afraid,” he said as he touched me on the shoulder. “Everything you have ever done in life has prepared you for this.”
* * *
Powerful as it was, that dream felt like just that: a dream—that is, until I was visited by another messenger, this one in person. Outside ministers would come in frequently to evangelize in the prison, and the women were always excited about one in particular: Dr. Linda Holliday. Not only was she a powerful woman of God who sometimes had prophetic words, her husband, Kene, was an actor who starred as Detective Tyler on Matlock. That celebrity piqued the interest of the prisoners, and her chapel services were full.
In September 1999, I was a part of the choir as she delivered a sermon. She described herself as a prophetess, so I slunk down in my seat trying not to draw attention to myself. There’s no telling what might come out of her mouth. I imagined if she stopped to give me a message from God, she would reveal some of my past sins. I didn’t necessarily want everyone to hear about all that right there in the chapel.
When she wrapped up her sermon and was about to leave, she closed her eyes. It was almost as if she were meditating. Then she began walking down the aisle. As she got closer to me, I thought, Don’t let her stop.
She didn’t know me from a cat, and I was pleased when she passed me. But just as relief came over me, she jerked. It was almost as if a puppet master had pulled her backward. She took a few steps back and stopped beside me.
“You!” she said.
I looked up at her.
“Have you ever been in ministry on the outside?”
“No,” I said, sheepishly.
“The Lord is calling you into the ministry, not by the will of man but the will of God.”
The whole chapel was quiet, watching this unfold. Prisoners do not become ordained in federal prison. It’s just not done. Ordination requires having witnesses to your spiritual walk, which are hard to come by when you are behind bars. Plus, prisons are not eager to have imprisoned women take roles of responsibility and leadership. Prisoners are supposed to be prisoners, and that’s that.
In normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have believed this woman, but images of the pulpit dream I’d had the week before rushed through my mind. I began to stand up, because it felt like the right thing to do in the moment.
“No,” she said, stopping me. “Let me bow before you.” Then she got down on her knees and prayed that I would be a woman of faith who would walk out my vocation. It was a moment I’ll never forget, the moment I received my calling from God. It happened to be on September 5, the day I got married to Charles so long ago. In my life, no one had ever asked me to spend my life with them—Charles never proposed, since our marriage was arranged by our parents. However, on this day, I was invited to take a journey with God. And I answered “Yes” with my whole heart.
My relationship with Linda did not end there. I began writing letters to her and writing essays for her ministry’s publications.
For the next few years, I continued to do the work of the Lord, fight for my freedom and the freedom of others, and mentor and counsel women. Since Carswell was a medical facility, I saw a lot of physically infirm women, but perhaps even more commonly, I saw broken women who were in need of spiritual healing. When many of them confided in me and shared their pain, I noticed it often included a burden of unforgiveness.
With sudden clarity, I realized I had not fully moved on myself. I had to go through my mind and list the people who had hurt me. I had to release myself from the bitterness. I had wrongly believed I had the right to be angry and unforgiving toward the people who had caused me so much pain. Bitterness was causing my soul to rot. Through unforgiveness, I was giving my past and others power over me. I could no longer live with the stench of my own anger and had to do what seemed impossible: forgive them.
By making the choice to forgive, I took away the power of unforgiveness and took back my life. What freedom I experienced when I did! People have asked over the years how I was able to stay so positive about life in prison, and forgiveness is a big part of my answer. Being able to forgive gave me back my life.
This newfound freedom gave me an opportunity to share my testimony with others.
“Let it go, Stacey,” I told one young woman. “It has nothing to do with them, but everything to do with you.”
Stacey snapped her fingers. “Just like that! I’m supposed to act like it never happened? That they never gave me up and lied on me to save their own skins? My own sister—my blood—my friend, and her sorry, no-count husband? I can’t! I hope they both burn! I ain’t no saint, Miss Alice. This is real talk.”
I encountered many other Staceys over the years, and I felt like I could speak into their hearts. At one time in my life I was a Stacey, but I had chosen to forgive everyone in my trial, including myself. My pain was not wasted, because it birthed a message of life-changing forgiveness I delivered repeatedly to other women over the years.
Though I loved ministering, there were no real routes available for prisoners to become ordained. Plus, I wasn’t seeking to become a minister of the gospel. We’re all called to minister the gospel; I didn’t need official papers to designate me as such. And so, I was just doing what I do—helping others and attempting to serve the best way I knew.
Four years later, on October 23, 2003, a group of Christians gathered in Panama City Beach, Florida, at a conference called “God’s Millennium Women: A Time of Refreshing.” For years, I contributed to the materials that Linda used for these outside women’s conferences that included sermons, poetry, and prayers. The pastors related to this ministry—Apostle Prezell Lane, Apostle Dr. Linda Holliday, Evangelist Kene Holliday, Minister Vicki Jackson, Minister Vickie Webb, and others—became familiar with my work and compared me to what the Apostle Paul did: proclaiming the gospel from behind prison bars.
I could accept this comparison only because, like him, I too was a chief among sinners. I was in prison proclaiming the gospel to people in the outside world, but the Word of God knows no bounds or restraint.
I wrote a sermon called “Master, Can You Still Use Me?” about the biblical account of Jesus making a special trip to reach out to the woman at the well, a person whom society had shunned because of her lifestyle. I saw myself in that woman. The message came to me when I was on my knees in prayer. I remained on my knees as I wrote the sermon.
When Linda’s husband read it, he decided to minister it to the women himself. A newspaper article reported that these women were so emotionally moved by this message that they called out in repentance, “Master, can you still use me?” It became almost a mantra. These women were physically free, but they felt the need to be spiritually free.
The people who regularly attended these conferences were very familiar with the woman who wrote from behind prison bars. They bore witness to the effect of my ministry to the outside public. Chaplain Pryor provided witness to my ministry on the inside of prison.
Pastor Lane and Dr. Holliday and Evangelist Holliday performed an ordination service for me by proxy. Though I had not sought this title, I became an ordained minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is one of the greatest honors of my life.
On November 6, I went to the chapel. Linda was coming back to speak and had requested that I do a worship dance prior to her talk. I created a dance to the song “Alabaster Box,” a song inspired by the woman described as a “sinner” and someone who “had been forgiven much” in the gospel of Luke. In all likelihood, she was a prostitute who came to Jesus and treasured the ointment in her alabaster box, a symbol of her great devotion to Jesus and her great need of him. If I was honest, I could admit that I had more in common with the prostitute than the Savior. Of course, this is true of everyone, but it’s easier to see the reality of your sin when it’s landed you in prison.
I danced to that song and then sat down, settling in for what I assumed would be another normal service. But then Linda came forward with a packet of papers in her hand, and her whole ministry team came and stood behind her. She took out a bottle of oil and called me up. Unbeknownst to me, Chaplain Pryor had allowed them to come in and have an actual ordination ceremony for me. I was shocked. This was not allowed under the rules, since prisoners were not allowed to be perceived as emerging leaders.
But that was exactly what happened. Chaplain Pryor later told me that he recognized the call of God on my life, and that he had to obey God, not some arbitrary prison regulations.
* * *
Despite all the work I was doing within the walls of Carswell, I was still trying hard to achieve my freedom. The appeal process was a great deal of work, but it afforded me the opportunity to have another set of eyes look at my case. I received my first denial of appeal on October 4, 1999, and many more would come. I filed appeals and motions as much as possible, because I wouldn’t even be a candidate for clemency until I had exhausted all my appeals. Once, when I got an email notifying me of the status of my appeal, I noticed that the appellate judge had been copied on the denial. Judge Gibbons, the same judge who presided over my original trial, had now been appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. I worried about whether this would make the process more difficult for me, and I hoped the judge would recuse herself from any decisions on my appeals.
In 2004, I was working to file a motion pro se, because my attorney Wayne Emmons had long ago abandoned me—and he’d done it in person. Five years prior, I was shocked at the news Wayne delivered to me in prison during what I thought was a routine attorney’s visit. My direct appeal had been recently denied, and I assumed he was visiting so we could talk about the next step. Instead, he started with an apology.
“I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry how things worked out,” he said. “But I have grandchildren that I want to see grow up. I need to think about them.”
I didn’t understand what he was getting at. It felt like he was sort of apologizing to me for having to take care of himself and his family instead of me and mine. That should not have been a conflict, since my family had paid him over $50,000.
“Whatever you have to say about me, just say it,” he said. “Whatever you have to do, just do it.” He paused, then looked me straight in the eye. “But I cannot and will not help you anymore.”
I stood up, looked at him, and said, “You’re pitiful.” Then I walked to the officer guarding the visitation room and said, “I’m ready to go.”
I never looked back. I would have to fight for myself.
The next year, the Supreme Court made a landmark decision in United States v. Booker, which eased some of the harsh consequences of drug-related offenses. It made the sentencing guidelines advisory rather than mandatory, giving judges much-needed leeway. Also, it disallowed estimated drug quantities, so a prosecution had to present the actual weight of drugs seized instead of the “ghost dope” that had been offered up as “evidence” in my case. Regrettably, none of this ruling was retroactive. If my sentencing would’ve occurred after this ruling, I wouldn’t have been sentenced to a life in prison.
* * *
I put my hand on my mouth.
“You’ve been doing that all week,” my cellmate Kenya said. “What’s wrong?” I’d started having pain near a couple of my bottom teeth. With all I had been through dentalwise, tooth pain was something I took seriously.
“You need to go get that checked out,” Kenya urged. Since Carswell was a medical facility, I figured I’d go to the prison dentist and everything would be okay. I walked into the dental facility and described the accident that had caused me to have to get dental implants. Then I showed them the teeth that were giving me trouble.
The dentist took an X-ray and looked in my mouth. “Your implants need to be scaled.” Implants sometimes need scaling, which means they have deposits on them that need to be scraped off with certain instruments. “We don’t do that here,” he said. “How long are you going to be in prison?”
“I have a life sentence,” I said. “But I don’t believe I’ll do all of my sentence.”
A wave of disbelief washed over his face, and then he continued. “You’re going to have bone loss, because you’ll get food trapped around the implants. And we don’t have the proper instruments for the maintenance of implants.”
And that was that. In prison, you can’t get a second opinion; you can’t look online for alternatives. Since my prison didn’t have the tools to take care of dental implants, they couldn’t take care of them. Or wouldn’t.
“We’re going to have to take them out,” he said.
Take them out.
I’d had my teeth taken out before, when I had that wreck and they were jolted out of place by the impact of the accident. After years of work, effort, and saving, I had been able to get these teeth replaced. And now they were telling me they were going to take them back out of my head, for the lack of a relatively inexpensive tool.
But I was in pain. I was a prisoner.
Absent any other options, I agreed to what seemed like a barbaric solution. This was no simple procedure. They shut down the dental department and brought in dental students to watch what they might never see under normal circumstances. They gave me anesthesia through an IV, and I slipped out of consciousness. When I awakened, my mouth was numb and I felt out of it. They put me in a wheelchair, and one of the dental assistants pressed a prescription into my hand.
“Go to the pill line to be administered Percocet,” she said. “Three times a day.”
When the anesthesia wore completely off, I got a mirror out and opened my mouth. My teeth were gone, and I stifled a sob. Then, when I looked more closely, I noticed that my gold tooth—the little secret thing I loved about myself—was also gone.
The next day, I went back for a checkup, and I demanded, “Where’s my gold tooth? That was not an implant, that was a crown.”
They looked at each other, then said, flatly, “We must’ve pulled it out on accident.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “Where’s the gold?” I asked. Something about the injustice of it all struck me so hard. These people had taken a part of my body out accidentally and somehow misplaced the metal. It reminded me of articles I’d read about how Nazi soldiers were instructed to sort through the corpses of Jews they’d killed in the gas chambers. Using dental pliers, they’d first have to pry open the mouths of the victims, sometimes frozen shut because of rigor mortis. Then they’d look through their mouths and pry out the teeth that had gold in them.
I don’t want to be melodramatic. I was not murdered by Nazis, I was not the victim of a genocide; I had pain medicine and was in a sterile environment. But these are the thoughts that went through my mind when my tongue felt the hole where my secret gold tooth had been . . . and I slowly realized they’d yanked out something that I loved about myself.