I am a person who possesses a bevy of guilty pleasures, if they can be considered as such; they are more like nerd pleasures. Chief among these pastimes are news, information, and election analytics. The latter, election analytics, is part of my rationale for becoming a statistician. Regarding information, I have actually missed showers and meals from having been so absorbed in a sociology journal or the latest edition of The American Statistician that I did not realize that the evening had come, gone, and declined into night. However, the first among the listed interests, news, is what led me to the present discourse.
There have been innumerable occasions where I have found myself watching the world or local news and have heard the following words spoken regarding someone, “…further incarceration serves no rehabilitative purpose, nor does it advance the interest of justice.” These words always preceded someone returning to society and their pursuit of the American Dream. Then I happened upon some of these same words in writing, “…the State’s Attorney of a county in which a defendant was sentenced to petition for resentencing of the offender if the original sentence no longer advances the interests of justice.” This proclamation was in a Bill that was signed into law by Governor Pritzker of Illinois in July of 2021. I was rather excited about these printed words, but I will return to that in a moment. First I would like to talk some more about “…further incarceration serves no rehabilitative purpose, nor does it advance the interest of justice.”
My thought after some reflection was: how could I get some advocate, who was not my attorney, to make this declaration on my behalf, “…further incarceration serves no rehabilitative purpose, nor does it advance the interest of justice.” Well it seemed to me that the first and most obvious step was to make sure that the testimonial could be stated truthfully.
Any advice that I have ever heard about the American Dream involved the Protestant Work Ethic: work hard. I never encountered any asterisk, fine print, or qualification stating that the hard work had to be performed in any particular geographical location. Thus, I got after it, even though I was in prison. I began by rectifying my spiritual affairs, becoming an exemplary prisoner, as well as volunteering in the prison school teaching math to students that other teachers had given up on. This resulted in a multitude of “thank yous” and certificates, however I did not think that this would be enough for someone of power and authority to declare “…further incarceration serves no rehabilitative purpose, nor does it advance the interest of justice.” I had to do more.
The means for the ‘more’ that I needed to do arose out of a personal tragedy in 2010 when my mother lost her 20-year battle with the auto-immune disease Lupus at age 59.
The inheritance that she left me served two means, the financial means for the ‘more’ and as a means to pay tribute to her life. I earned a BA in Sociology from Adams State University graduating Cum Laude. The discipline of Sociology changed me irrevocably. I was always different from my peers, even as a child when my prized possession was my library card, most of the kids in my neighborhood couldn’t care less about a library card. I did not cry a tear about being on punishment, nor having my sports equipment taken, but if my mother took that library card, it was almost insufferable. Books could take my mind everywhere. For me, Sociology took me everywhere within the plight of humanity, it was yet another library card.
My final undergraduate course was on the same topic as my first, Statistics, and I had two separate aha moments in these courses. The first was the answer to something that I had seen in my social studies book as a child. It was a picture of someone holding up a newspaper that read, “Dewy Beats Truman.” I knew that Dewy had never been president, so how had the newspaper messed that up so badly? The discipline of statistics and its concept of randomness taught me how that had happened. The second aha moment, and the one most important to me personally, was learning that every medical research team—including those studying Lupus—had a statistician on the team. My felony convictions precluded me from ever becoming a rheumatologist, or any other kind of medical doctor, but I could become a statistician.
After some years of battle—hard work—with both prison and school officials, I was accepted into a distance studies master’s program in Statistics. I had to find a way to do a distance internship though, because distance students in the University of Idaho’s Statistics program do not write theses. This arduous task, finding an internship that I could do while in prison, resulted in one of the most important data points on my resume: I interned for the Baker Center for Bioinformatics and Biological Statistics. It is not only the prestige that is attached to the center that makes it important. Nor is it solely because I was under the direct tutelage of one of the country’s best contemporary biological statisticians in Dr. Dan Nettleton. Rather, it is because it was my first full-on exposure to studying Lupus, the disease that had killed my mother.
I finished my internship on RNA-sequencing, and my certification with the National Institute of Health to do research on human subjects. Then after recovering from a horrid case of COVID-19, I graduated with a master’s of science degree in Statistical Science. I am in fact a statistician, yet I did not want to totally leave behind my new library card, Sociology.
A PhD in Sociology would allow me to become an expert in Medical Sociology and Computational Sociology. I applied to several programs, and not only was I accepted to my number one choice but I was accepted with full funding and a stipend. The program gave me a one-year deferral last year, but they fully expect me to be in Iowa City with my butt in a seat August 15th 2022.
This opportunity has arrived as the result of years of ‘hard work.’ I am certain that any objective finder of fact can say with confidence that “…further incarceration serves no rehabilitative purpose, nor does it advance the interest of justice.” The facts that I have rehearsed to you are not facts that I believe that the Governor is aware of, as piloting the state through a pandemic and economic downturn during an election year have taken precedence over him reading my clemency application. However, my hope is that someone reading this has the wherewithal, individually or collectively, to tell him that in my case “…further incarceration serves no rehabilitative purpose, nor does it advance the interest of justice.” Perhaps he will be inclined to take the short time necessary to peruse my petition and pardon my remaining 3 years and 9 months concluding that the 26 years served suffices. This would allow me to get to work on my PhD, a key component to my American Dream.
Earlier I mentioned a bill that was signed into law in 2021. This law allows the State’s Attorney from the county of conviction (in my case Rock Island County, Illinois) to ask the court to resentence an individual if “the original sentence no longer advances the interest of justice.” Just as the case is with the governor, I am in no position to reach out to the State’s Attorney, but I make my plea to anyone who can do so, to do so, and please go read the case of the man who was given a 28 year blessing using this law. I also encourage you to bear in mind not only my academic resume, but also how differently I was treated as opposed to my codefendants. The other four persons charged with this crime—the attempted robbery of a drug dealer which resulted in his accidental shooting death—have all been out of prison for between 18 to 20 years. In addition, they were all released after only having served between 5 to 7.5 years. I am in my 26th year of consecutive incarceration with 3.75 years remaining because, unlike my codefendants, my sentences for our crime spree of robbing drug dealers were run consecutive rather than concurrently. I would not be asking the State’s Attorney to request a reduction of my sentence, but rather a restructure of my sentence.
Is there fine print that goes along with the mantra that we are a country of second chances? Is the American Dream open to all? Is the Protestant Work Ethic actually the key? If the answer to the latter two of these three queries is yes, then I sincerely and humbly ask for your help as my August 10, 2022 deadline rapidly approaches. I implore you to convey to all of those concerned that “…further incarceration serves no rehabilitative purpose, nor does it advance the interest of justice.” I thank you with every fiber of my being, and most of all, God bless you.