Guilty or Not

For more than ten years the idea of dying in prison for a crime I did not commit was not merely a random thought, it was a nightmare. I was serving two consecutive life sentences in the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation. There is no rehabilitation.

Like the 3,200-plus prisoners on death row and the thousands more serving life without the possibility of parole, my death by degrees in a California prison was almost guaranteed. I was a model prisoner, horrified when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger denied a stay of execution for Stanley “Tookie” Williams, one of the strongest cases of “redemption” the state of California has ever seen. Ironically, when Tookie died at the hands of the state on December 13, 2005, I was approaching the final months of my unlawful detention. I just didn’t know that.

All I knew was that on February 23, 1996, detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) stormed into my family’s home, drew their guns on my mother and brother, kicked me in the back of the head as I lay on the floor and arrested me for murder and attempted murder. It was 6 o’ clock in the morning. Normally, I would have gotten up one hour later and made my way to school, being that I was only 16-years-old. Instead, after several hours of intense interrogation, I was booked on the false charges and sent to Central Juvenile Hall in L.A. There, I would spend the following two years locked up while my case was pending in adult court.