Women commit far fewer murders than men, but receive far longer sentences. A woman who kills a male partner receives, on average, a fifteen-year sentence, while a man who kills a female partner typically receives two to six years.
Flozelle Woodmore and I met when we were doing time. She was much younger than me, but we’d grown up in the same neighborhood. She was always smiley, talkative, and insightful, and she was a lifer. She had, however, been sentenced with the possibility of parole, so after I started A New Way of Life, I optimistically wrote to her. “When you get out, Flozelle, I’ll have a bed waiting for you.” Little did anyone know that her bid for freedom would cause a statewide uproar.
What led Flozelle to prison at eighteen years old was an all-too-familiar story. At thirteen, she’d become involved with a man five years her senior, Clifton Morrow. At fifteen, she showed up to a domestic violence shelter in Los Angeles, but was turned away because she was underage. At eighteen, fearing for the safety of her two-year-old son, she told Morrow the relationship was over. He struck her numerous times, shoved their son against the wall, and threatened to kill them both.
Flozelle fled the house. Morrow followed, wielding what witnesses would describe as an icepick and shouting, “If I can’t have you, no one can!” Flozelle ran across the street to her sister’s home, where there was a gun. She delivered a single, fatal shot to Morrow’s chest.
This was in 1986. Flozelle had no prior criminal history, and friends and family lined up to attest to the years of physical and emotional abuse she’d endured. But the jury was not allowed to hear evidence of “battered women’s syndrome” because the law in California, and most states, did not recognize this as a medical condition and a form of self-defense. Flozelle pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to fifteen years to life. Wracked with guilt, shame, and fear, she shut down, unable to speak.
Her mindset changed when she learned that her thirty-three-yearold brother, a manager at Sears, had been mistaken for someone else and fatally shot. Heartbroken, and unable to console her mother, Flozelle vowed to become a model prisoner so she could get released, reunite with her family, and devote herself to working with victims of domestic abuse. Out of her newfound determination, she organized a battered women’s support group in prison. She earned her GED, and then successfully petitioned a transfer to the women’s state prison in Chowchilla so she could study in the computer technology program there—only to see the program discontinued shortly after her arrival.
In 2002, after serving a decade, Flozelle went before the state parole board. By this time, California law had changed, allowing battered women’s syndrome to be presented as evidence during a trial. Also, in an unusual twist, the mother and sister of Morrow, the murder victim, advocated to the Board of Prison Terms for Flozelle’s release. Less than 5 percent of lifers are recommended for parole, but, impressed with Flozelle’s rehabilitation, future goals, and the depth of her remorse, the Board of Prison Terms found her suitable.
Enter Governor Gray Davis, who’d taken office ranting that never would he allow a convicted murderer out of prison regardless of the circumstances—and, because of an abused 1988 proposition, California governors were granted this power. Davis overturned the parole board’s recommendation to release Flozelle.
The following year, Flozelle again went before the Board of Prison Terms and was found suitable for release. Yet, again, Governor Davis shot down the board, even though it was comprised of twelve commissioners he himself had appointed. And it wasn’t just in Flozelle’s case that the governor brazenly exercised his veto power—of the board’s 285 recommendations for release, Davis overturned all but six. Protestors descended upon the governor’s office, calling for an end to Davis’s no-parole stance. Painted in bruises and blood, they stood in a silent vigil, handcuffed together, duct tape covering their mouths.
The next year, Flozelle was again found suitable for parole, and this time the board’s recommendation went before Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Tania Morrow, the victim’s sister, wrote in a letter delivered to the governor, “I realize it must seem strange for the relative of a victim to ask that the person who committed the crime be set free. She has taken something very dear and irreplaceable away from me and my family. Yet I have completely forgiven Flozelle. I know because of her letters that she deeply regrets what happened.”
I was shocked when I heard that Schwarzenegger, too, went against the board, deeming Flozelle an unreasonable safety risk. For three consecutive years, Schwarzenegger continued to overturn his board’s decision. By this point, the judge who had originally sentenced Flozelle was advocating for her release. Newspaper op-eds had been published about the unbelievable circumstances. Trying to do what I could, I submitted petitions and hundreds of letters on Flozelle’s behalf.
On the other side, the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, David Dahle, cited that Flozelle’s son—an impressionable toddler when she’d been convicted—was now himself incarcerated for murder. What should be held against Flozelle was the family’s “dynamics of violence,” Dahle insisted. “This is a pattern of behavior imprinted, I believe, from generation to generation.”
In 2007, Flozelle’s sixth recommendation for parole went before the governor. It was the fourth time Schwarzenegger had presided over her case. He waited right up until the deadline, then, for reasons that were never explained, he at last upheld the board’s decision.
Flozelle had served twenty-one years. Convicted as a teenager, she came out a grandmother.
At the time, most women paroled from a life sentence were released to Crossroads, a transitional facility in Claremont, about thirty-five miles from Los Angeles. Though Flozelle couldn’t live at A New Way of Life, I proudly offered her a job doing administrative work. But, logistically, it was difficult: Flozelle’s commute, requiring a train and a bus, took over two hours. And the rules of Crossroads were unyielding, requiring her to return by 6 p.m. for dinner, even though she wanted to work an eight-hour day. Instead, she had to pack up around 3:30 p.m. to make it back to the dinner table.
Still, Flozelle went well beyond her duties at A New Way of Life. She spoke with me about an idea: she wanted to bring the families and friends of people serving life sentences before the Board of Prison Terms in Sacramento to say they understood the extreme loss suffered at the hands of their loved one, but that it was possible for people to be rehabilitated. This was unheard of—no one from the outside went before the board except for D.A.s and victims. But I supported Flozelle’s idea, and so did the Open Society Foundation, which granted her a Soros Justice Fellowship to see it through.
Flozelle filled a van with the loved ones of women serving life sentences and they drove four hundred miles to stand together before the Board of Prison Terms—an indelible image of how incarceration didn’t just affect the individual behind bars, it affected families, it affected generations, it affected communities. The trip was powerful, for both sides. From that moment on, the Board of Prison Terms welcomed Flozelle and the families every quarter.
Flozelle made such an impression on me. Bursting with passion, she had the ability to organize people and advocate for change. It was important to me that a formerly incarcerated person always lead A New Way of Life to keep it true to its mission, and I took solace knowing that when the day came that I was ready to retire, I could pass the baton to Flozelle.
Flozelle’s parole was scheduled to end in August 2012, five years after her release. It was a presidential election year, and Flozelle, who’d never been allowed to vote, couldn’t wait to cast her first ever vote for Barack Obama. Inexplicably, her paperwork didn’t come through and, when November rolled around, Flozelle was still on parole. The election came and went, her right to vote denied.
In February 2013, I received a call from Flozelle’s sister. My knees went weak. The unthinkable. Flozelle had suffered an aneurysm. At forty-five years old, she was gone. She had lived five and a half years of adult life in the free world. She died while still on parole.
I had planned to support Flozelle as she transitioned into what I had started; instead, it was I who acted upon what Flozelle had started. I got in a van with twelve former prisoners, all of whom had received written permission from their parole officers to travel outside of L.A. County. We drove six hours to Sacramento and stood before the Board of Prison Terms pinned with ribbons in memory of Flozelle. Some of the commissioners stepped from the dais, eyes red, to grieve with us over Flozelle’s passing.
“She was so grateful to get to know her family again,” I told them. “Thank you for releasing her.” But the board knew this wholeheartedly; Flozelle had told them herself in her visits to plead for others to know the same freedom. Then, another unthinkable happened: the Board of Prison Terms thanked me.
From then on, I raised money to bring former lifers to Sacramento to thank the Board of Prison Terms for their release. Four times a year, twelve of us piled in a van. Along the way, we stopped at the beach and had lunch at a restaurant—some folks had never been to a nice restaurant. We played oldies but goodies on the radio the whole way there. Every time I planned one of these trips, we had more people who wanted to go than could fit in the van. You’d think folks might never want to set foot back in that place, but instead they were eager to go before the board as free people, to stand there and shine, to take pride in their accomplishments, maybe even brag a little. By going back, they paved the way for others who were still incarcerated. The thousands upon thousands of others who, just like Flozelle, had hopes and dreams and so much they were capable of achieving.