“Jeffrey” Today
Since 1998, many readers have asked what has happened to “Jeffrey”—the boy who was sentenced to death at age sixteen whose story we told at the beginning of each chapter of Ghosts. We decided the best resource to answer this question was “Jeffrey” himself. Following an appeal, Jeffrey’s sentence was reduced from death to life without parole, and he is currently an inmate in a medium-security prison in the Midwest. Jeffrey is a bright, introspective, and poetic writer. Here is his current reality, in his own words:
This place is stagnation personified. It’s a spirit breaker. You just try to fill your days. By May 2013 I’ll have twenty full calendar years served and an unknown number of years still left to be served. Looking back now, it’s easy to see how this was accomplished, though accomplishing it was anything but easy!
In 1996 I was completely prepared to die strapped to a table in a clinically sterile room with a lethal dose of chemicals being pumped into my arm. If not for the tireless and valiant effort [of] attorneys who never gave up or for one second wavered in their belief that I did not deserve the death penalty, I have no doubt that’s exactly how I would have perished. They worked countless late hours, weekends and holidays not-withstanding, to meet numerous deadlines and I owe them my life now and until my last breath.
I was both relieved and horrified at what the court’s ruling meant! One minute I was entirely convinced my death was imminent and that the pain, which had accompanied my every breath since birth, would soon be over as well. The next minute I was fiercely struggling to wrap my mind around the concept of having to somehow serve out the remainder of my still very young life in prison without ever having the possibility of earning parole! In many ways my commutation to “life without parole” served to break my soul in a way facing execution never did.
Being sentenced to death had only served to confirm what I’d already been conditioned to believe, so while I was fighting for my life, I was also feeling a certain sense of comfort and peace in the idea of my impending execution. My life, or rather, the pain I’d come to associate with my life, would soon come to a merciful end. Whenever I stopped living, I would also stop hurting. My only regret was that all of it, my whole chaotic life, carried the stench of futility—it was all for nothing!
Upon meeting the authors of this book, when suddenly I was told that there was value in the recounting of my life . . . that the cruelness and pain I’d endured and because it had been so carefully documented in my child welfare case record . . . could be used as a tool for good—I jumped on it! “Ghosts from the Nursery” gave what was left of my life meaning and tagged my past with a purpose never before offered.
From the time of my arrest at age 16 until our first introduction and interview (by Robin in 1996, when I was 20), I was locked in a concrete and steel cage 23 hours per day. These are formative years for a young person—a time of personal growth and self- discovery while we are figuring out who we are, what society expects from us, even learning what we should expect from society. But I was profoundly isolated during this crucial time and left to my own limited devices to figure out the world (which I was no longer permitted to be a part of) and to figure out myself as well. . . . Who had I been? Who do I want to be?
Around this time I also began to make a distinction between who I was and who I wanted to be and who I had to be to survive in prison. I had to learn how to live according to the “values and acceptable norms” of two distinct and separate cultures . . . failure to discern the differences would result in either my eventual death in prison or a total loss of any sense of free world values and acceptable norms. In prison I am expected to know, live by, and uphold a certain code of conduct. Anybody who has watched a prison movie is familiar with “the convict code.” I’m here to tell you it’s very real and expected to be strictly adhered to. Those who don’t . . . well their lives suddenly become plagued with difficulties and personal drama and yes, often times, the result is a brutally violent outcome or even death itself.
How does one maintain a sense of moral righteousness when they are expected to adopt a set of morals, beliefs, ideas and code of conduct not shared by mainstream society or even your own self! Ask yourself this: what would you do if while you were grocery shopping someone standing in front of you in the checkout line was suddenly accosted by three men with knives. You watch while this person is stabbed nine times before the assailants flee and disappear into the crowd. The victim lays before you in desperate need of help, pleading as they choke on their own blood. You know that if you have the courage to act quickly you can save them and they will live, but without any help at all death is certain. What do you do? Of course for 99 percent of humanity the answer is immediate aid and not in question at all. You freaking help! Now . . . what if you knew that to do so would cost you your life and you knew that it wouldn’t change the fate of the initial victim because even if you could save them it would only mean a secondary attack would be perpetrated against them to insure the job was completed. Would you still help? Or would you skirt the growing puddle of blood, ignore the agonizing cries for help and sidestep that poor dying person while reaching for your wallet so you could pay the clerk for your groceries? And if the culture you live in expects exactly that response from you—do you adopt their values and moral beliefs? These are the demands of the convict code!
For me, I realized that though I am expected to abide by the convict code, I can choose not to adopt or embrace the ideals and morals which are embodied by it . . . I can choose to separate myself (at least on an internal level) from that “cultural” mindset and in so doing enable myself to maintain a higher degree of morality, decency, integrity and sense of honor and level of civilized humanity! It’s self-preservation at a soul deep level!
Even with the dramatically shortened life expectancy of a man on death row there existed within me the fundamental need to maintain my own cherished sense of true humanity and not allow myself (ever) to become a person (ever again) who acted or lived by a standard of decency that is in any form less than what is in my heart. I never want to lose sight of my own humanity in this place whether I die alone in prison having never tasted freedom again, or somehow, I miraculously find myself again outside of this place where I am no longer expected to live by a code that is not my own. I may be forced to live my remaining life in prison as a convicted felon within the parameters of the convict code, but I actively choose not to lose all sight of myself, who I am, or who I want to be. By forsaking my morals, beliefs, ideals and becoming a full-fledged “convict.”
I reflexively cling to the notion that who I am and will become are choices I make on a daily basis and not the end product of my immediate circumstances or environment. Can time chip away at my resolve? Yes! If I choose to allow it to! And many men in my shoes do choose to adopt and embrace the alternative mindset because quite frankly it is much easier to just “go with the flow” and follow the herd. Personally I’d prefer to die . . . and having faced my own mortality already, I’m here to tell you I fear death much less than I fear becoming someone and something I despise. I don’t know if many people can relate to that fear. . . . Fear of losing ones humanity as a result of ones actions and environment . . . maybe soldiers can . . . I don’t know . . . but it has become [one] of my greatest fears.
Instinctively (as soon as my sentence was commuted) I began to reach outside my prison walls . . . striving to build a bridge of hope. Within each human spirit exists the desire to reach out to the rest of humankind; our most heartfelt wish is to form a bridge of hope that will link us all in our search for peace, love and harmony. As children the connection is usually a gentler, more innocent journey, but as we grow older the act of reaching out may be a more conscious effort. Still, becoming closer to our fellow humans is as rewarding as ever, filling our lives with beauty, light and meaning. So I did all I could to reach out . . . outside the soul sucking darkness that permeates these prison walls . . . outside the confines of my limited pool of potential friends.
It was a time when the relative newness of the Internet made it possible to join “Prison Pen Pal” websites free of charge. I corresponded with anybody who took the time to write to me. And, at first, many did. Some I am still in touch with today, though many . . . most, in fact, simply weren’t prepared or equipped to “ride out” life without parole with me. These people, though, who dared to open their hearts and their minds and their lives to me . . . they became guides of a sort for me as my journey of growth and self discovery unfolded.
I was both shocked and initially distressed to discover . . . Love!
Yes Love! I have no explanation for why love developed between myself and a pen-pal who I met in 1999—almost a month to the day after my sentence was modified from death to life without parole. But, as with several other pen-pals, the connection was instant and we considered each other “friends” after a few short months. We wrote long letters to each other three or four times a week, talking about everything under the sun. Within six months we were visiting in the prison visiting room on a regular basis. By February 2003, for a host of reasons understandable only to the two of us, we were married in a medium security prison in Northeastern Oklahoma. My wife had two small children when I met her and it was amazing to me how I began to think of them as my babies. Of course we both decided immediately that we would not expose them to the prison visiting room, choosing instead to encourage every other means of engaging in communication. Phone calls, letters, drawings . . . they became fuel for my soul! We did finally have visitation in prison but not until my daughter was 8 and my son was 12. Even then we hesitated and thought long and hard about it.
The kids are 16 and 20 now and I have been deeply blessed to have known and loved and been greatly loved by all three of them, including my wife, though my marriage is now over. My wife and I sadly decided to get a divorce as the best course of action for all parties who are affected. I am still deeply bound by my grief and in a form of mourning over the dissolution of our matrimonial bonds but am learning every day how to cope with things as they are now. We still correspond as friends and I value that.
My relationship with this woman and my kids deeply colored who I have become in the 14 years since they entered my life. Their daily presence in my life and my heart fundamentally altered my own self-perception and created hugely positive ripples in how I ultimately decided to do my time in prison. Without them to anchor me daily to reality and the responsibilities that come with being a husband and father, there is no way to determine what the quality of my day to day choices would have been. Suddenly I found myself basing decisions on the fact that I wasn’t just making choices for me alone—every choice whether large or small had the power to impact their lives too, further reinforcing in my mind and heart the lessons of accountability to others outside of myself.
As I recount the years that passed since my time on death row it’s of fundamental importance to recognize that whatever I did or did not achieve personally in my day-to-day incarcerated life—I felt like I had a real family! I was a husband, a father, and one quarter of the most divinely blessed family unit I could have ever dreamed of much less dared to hope for myself. Together they not only made me feel cherished, respected and deeply loved . . . they made me feel (perhaps for the first time in my life) truly worth loving. I wasn’t worthless to them! I wasn’t hopelessly unsalvageable to them! I wasn’t some dangerous character to be feared. To them, I was not defined by the single worst horrific act I ever committed. The entire foundation of our relationship was built squarely on communication via letters and telephone calls. Communication gave vitality and strength to us in ways so many other couples and family dynamics are lacking. They made me believe in myself, in family power and in love.
When I left death row in January 2000, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever find a purpose to my life or any really meaningful reason to attempt serving out such an impossible sentence . . . maybe If I exhausted all my appeals I could still earn a new trial. Otherwise, things were bleak according to anyone’s perspective, but especially my own. I was given a job as a law clerk in the state Penitentiary’s prison law-library which allowed me the time and necessary access to legal books in order to work on my final post-conviction appeal without the benefit of having appellate attorneys to work my case any longer. I had very little chance of succeeding but I had to try. In August 2001 I was finally, for the first time, permitted to leave the confines of the state’s only maximum security prison. I was transferred to a correctional center in another part of the state (where 18 months later my wife and I were married in the prisoners visiting room).
Transition from maximum security to medium security was a huge culture shock for me. I went from 23 hour lockdown to an “open yard” with controlled movements, greater freedoms and a host of other earned privileges I hadn’t enjoyed since May 11, 1993. I could go outside, eat in a dining hall, have a real job, enjoy the use of a gym, attend AA/NA meetings, participate in programs. . . . It wasn’t free world living but coming from confinement on death row and maximum security, I felt like I’d earned parole. And from my very first day three opportunities unfolded before me that allowed me to make choices for myself and the kind of life I wanted to live in prison.
First, I got a job with the state’s Correctional Industries working in the metal fabrication shop where I learned to weld and later how to set up and operate huge brake and punch press machines. The work was steady and hard and challenging. I absorbed every aspect of it that I could and felt satisfied each day as I dragged myself back to my cell—dirty, and soul-rewarding tired.
Second, I was asked to do “speak-outs,” talking to elementary, middle school, high school and college students. I gave presentations before state or local law enforcement, the prison advisory board and various D.O.C. officials and prison staff. My photo was taken beside state senators and even posted in the newspapers.
Eventually I left DCCC and transferred to other medium security prisons. I moved to yet another regional prison where I worked in a wood furniture shop and again participated in the “speak out” program. Some years later I transferred to a Correctional Center where I once again served time under their new warden (and my old warden) who immediately recruited me again for speak outs at that facility—in fact, Mr. Workman requested my transfer just so I could do “speak-outs” there.
Third, I took a job with OCI working construction for the outside Housing Project building handicap accessible houses for various organizations. On the side I enjoyed helping to train dogs with the prison’s “Friends For Folks” program which is a second chance program for dogs who are trained to be therapeutic companions and helper dogs for handicapped and physically challenged people.
It was my sad misfortune to be transferred to a private prison in 2006 and where I’m even sadder to say I still reside today.
You will never hear me say my life is the result of one abhorrent injustice after another—or that it’s not fair that I should have spent the past 20 years in prison when I only got to live in the free-world for 16 years. I don’t feel like any true injustice has befallen me. Yes I’ve been here over half my life. Nope, I’ve never experienced anything outside of these prison walls and concrete cages during this life. But no “injustice” has occurred here. Not yet!
Is 20 years enough for the life of a human being? An innocent man died who didn’t deserve the injustice that eventually ended his life forever. I didn’t intend to kill anybody. But regardless of any of that I deserved to come to prison for my despicable actions. I deserved every bit of the agony, pain and deprivation that prison incarceration has inflicted on me! I’m not innocent. I committed a horrific crime I’ll never feel absolved of. I own that. It’s mine forever. But no “injustice” has happened . . . not to me . . . not yet! Injustice is still possible though . . . I’m still here with no light or freedom within sight and every possibility exists that I’ll die in prison having never been allowed to return to society and contribute to it more than I ever meant to take from it.
I’m not sure I have a right to say words like “I deserve to be set free” because I’m not certain if I deserve any such mercy . . . but . . . I am comfortable saying “I do deserve an opportunity to earn parole some day.” Perhaps I never will “earn” parole. But I think I deserve a chance to try to earn it.
Jeffrey is currently in a privately run prison, which is, by all accounts from professionals, a substandard facility, where chronic, out-of-control gang activity culminates in periodic stabbings and long periods of “shutdown,” during which all prisoners—not just those involved in the gangs—are confined to their cells without cafeteria meals, showers, phone calls, or exercise. Lack of contact with the outside world is particularly painful for Jeffrey. Phone calls—paid for at outrageous rates by the recipients of the call (due to a prison contract with a monopoly phone company)—are his lifeline, along with letters. Jeffrey has earned the highest level of prisoner status and has maintained that for years, indicating his ability to abide by the rules.
A man of slight build to begin with, Jeffrey has lost weight and is often hungry. He spends his days cleaning showers in five pods (for which he is paid 11 cents an hour) and then he is left to his own devices, without a sustaining focus, often spending time in his cell or with a small group of inmates who gather frequently in a self-generated study group. He has also taken the initiative to reach out to young men who enter the prison for the first time, coaching them on how to survive within the prison culture.
Most difficult for Jeffrey is his longing for the chance to make his life meaningful and to make amends in some way. He thinks of his crime on a daily basis and has read and reread the victims’ statements from the trial, which he takes to heart, saying: “I took a lot of good from the world that I can’t put back. I don’t blame them for throwing me away.”
Unfortunately, like many privately run prison facilities, no educational or constructive skill-building classes are available to Jeffrey to enable him to give back to society—such as the “speak out” program he excelled at under Randy Workman, his former (and very supportive) warden. Warden Workman is a bright light in a dark place, an exceptional thinker who understands that trauma lies at the root of the problems he witnesses and who maintains hope that some of his charges can heal and return to society.
A reminder: Jeffrey’s crime was committed at age sixteen. He was high on various drugs, and—along with a younger girl and an older boy—he was partially responsible for the murder of a ninety-three-year-old man. Jeffrey was sentenced for hitting the man over the head with a frying pan—an injury that, after several months, resulted in the man’s death. His defense attorney speculated at the time that the younger girl may have actually wielded the frying pan that killed the victim and that Jeffrey may have taken the blame to protect her. Jeffrey’s sister currently writes and talks of her great guilt for this still excruciating memory from her past.
In spite of a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that the death sentence and life without parole cannot be given to a juvenile, great variation remains in the interpretation of that ruling, which is being debated state by state. A very capable attorney in the state has agreed to review Jeffrey’s case but has not agreed to take it on. Jeffrey’s family is unable to fund this opportunity. The privatization of prisons has resulted in keeping vast numbers of prisoners from receiving commutations and releases or even lateral transfers to other more constructive prison environments with rehabilitative and educational opportunities. It is the opinion of the defense attorney who has consulted with us in Jeffrey’s case that the state has chosen to warehouse far too many and has abandoned the responsibility for rehabilitation, greatly limiting opportunities for even nonviolent prisoners to return successfully to society. Our hope is that, at the very least, Jeffrey can eventually be moved to a prison where opportunities are available for him to continue to grow and constructively share his experience and insights with other youth who enter the system—a mission that he finds life sustaining.