#331: Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done
NEW lead-in from Neeru Garg:
Brynne’s blog below made me aware of the humanity that exists within the confines of prison walls and took me back 27 years. While interviewing for a project in Tihar Jail, one of the largest prison complexes of India, I was quite fearful at first to interact with “hardened” criminals. After spending three weeks with the group, I ended up building relationships with many of the prisoners, and thanking many of them for their assistance in filming the story. Brynne’s letters reminded me how much growth can come from an open mind, and showed me another perspective to this world.
- Neeru
“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
-Bryan Stevenson, Founder of Equal Justice Initiative
Two years ago, after attending a talk by Bryan Stevenson, the Founder of Equal Justice Initiative, (EJI), I raised my hand to become a penpal to one of their clients, a prisoner who had been tried and incarcerated as a youth. Part of EJI’s mission is to defend clients they believe were punished too harshly when they were sentenced as children under laws designed for adults.
About three weeks later I received my assignment to write with someone I’ll refer to as DL. DL is living a life sentence in a prison in South Dakota. He’s been there for 18 years, more than half of his life.
With his full name, I did a strange but probably predictable thing: I searched online for his case and read the whole public file on what happened, what he did, who was involved, and what his sentence is.
We’re not allowed to correspond about the case, so all of this was purely for my information. I had a feeling of needing to know. Out of security. Out of making sure I wasn’t in over my head.
DL is creative, sad, spiritual and lots of other things that I’ll never know about. We write at the surface level most of the time. We share about our favorite music. He gives me tips on what might help my children in their piano studies. He sent me some of his artwork and was proud that Bryan Stevenson said they would hang his art in their offices in Alabama. He leads the tours for the public to the prison’s Braille workshop. He got a raise there to $0.40 an hour. He was promoted to a lower security prison due to good behavior. He went into solitary there and came back out with the old address. 8 or 10 weeks passed over this summer when it slipped my mind to write. Same for him in other stretches and seasons. More letters started back and forth every month or so - no harm, no foul.
Most recently, he responded to the news that the US Supreme Court refused to look at his case after 18 years of fighting it with “This is pretty much all I know...well, moving on to more pleasant things…”
I don’t know what having a penpal has meant to DL. Occasionally, he talks about the window in his cell. I wonder if having a penpal is like having another window into a broader world for him. I’m guessing, and maybe projecting, when I write that, but I hope it’s like that...a link to someone outside his family, outside his legal team, outside the prison, who lives somewhere he has never been and will never go.
I do know what it has meant to me. I started the process by examining public records. I did some necessary self-preservation calculations. I wondered about whether correspondence with a criminal in South Dakota might ever endanger my family somehow? In some ways this is an odd thought given he has a life sentence, but this was new territory to me.
But four or five letters in or so, I stopped adding in all those layers of “what if?”. In the first few letters, I signed off with “Sincerely, Brynne” or “Talk soon, Brynne”. Soon enough, I wrote, “Your friend, Brynne”.
The next letter ended with “Your friend, “DL”.
That’s how we’ve signed off ever since.
Happy Holidays..
A few post-scripts:
* Anyone who wants a copy of Bryan Stevenson’s book Just Mercy, please write me at brynne@respireenterprises.com. If you promise me you’ll read it and pass it on to one more person, I’m happy to send you the book.
** You can see Bryan Stevenson’s TED Talk here.
*** Anyone with a Community for Change notebook in your hands, flip it over and you’ll have the full quote from Bryan Stevenson with you always.