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How can you help us do that?
Previously on Serial. There was a lot of talk that they would check in on him and hope that that means...
somehow protecting him? It's tomorrow. Tomorrow? Yeah. Why would you have any court dates? Why would you have a court date coming up? From This American Life and WBEZ Chicago, it's Serial. One courthouse told week by week. I'm Sarah Koenig.
Joshua was correct. The state was trying to invoke his SYO. They wanted to send him to adult prison. The morning after he'd called me, I'd inquired over at the Juvenile Justice Center to see what was what. So I'm actually at the courthouse right now. Are you? Yeah. So they're just going to set a date for, I guess, a hearing or the next, whatever's going to happen next. But, um...
But yeah, how are you doing? All I could muster was a solution that, when I was Joshua's age, I always found irritating. But, um, all right, try to get some sleep. Nothing's going to be better if you don't get sleep.
Do I sound like your mother? Sorry. I'm trying to get some sleep, though. I know you're worried. I know you're worried. I know. It's not my job to comfort Joshua. Certainly not my job to tell him when to go to bed. But I happen to be the one on the phone right now.
Out of all the cases we watched, Joshua's got to me most. I could not fathom that the state would give up on him, after all he'd risked for law enforcement, after all the beatdowns he'd absorbed. A 19-year-old kid. I did what I know how to do. I reported out every beat of this sucker. Every turn. Spoke to Joshua almost every day, sometimes twice a day, for a year and a half, so that the story of Joshua would exist. Not for posterity's sake, but for the sake of straight-up fairness."
First thing I wanted to know, why Joshua? What was ODYS saying he'd done that made them want to eject him from their facilities and put him into the adult system? I got a copy of the motion to invoke Joshua's SYO. It had been filed by the county prosecutor's office at the request of the juvenile prison, Indian River. The motion claimed that Joshua created a substantial risk to the safety or security of the institution. That despite all the therapeutic programming Joshua had completed, he consistently chooses to make criminal decisions.
Then there was a list of about a dozen specific incidents just from the past six months. Assaults, fights, disruptive behaviors. He'd thrown urine on a kid. He'd thrown a remote control at a female guard. He'd smashed a video game console. I'd later find out the incident that triggered the motion to invoke? Apparently Joshua had put out a hit on another kid, which usually means arranging for other kids to jump someone. The kid wasn't jumped, but still, the prosecutors considered it a serious threat.
I gotta say, I was taken aback by the list. I had that anxious jolt of, hold up, have I completely misunderstood who this person is? The list looked bad. The summary at the end, extensive.
16 fights, 6 menacing threats, 21 disruptive behaviors, etc. But I have another report, an internal ODYS report, that documents every incident involving Joshua, whether as victim or aggressor, for almost all his time in ODYS custody. And when I cross-referenced the request to invoke Joshua's SYO with that internal ODYS report, I realized, oh, these aren't isolated incidents.
Many of them are connected. In the request to invoke, there's an assault when Joshua hit a kid on February 3rd. What's missing is February 2nd, which you can see on that internal report. February 2nd, that same kid walked up to Joshua at the water fountain and punched him in the face. There were a few sequences like this, tit-for-tats, in which only the tat was included in the request to invoke his SYO. Yes, indeed, Joshua did throw pee at a kid on March 27th.
The day before, the same kid had assaulted Joshua and threw pee on him. A common weapon in juvenile? Pee. I ran the list of Joshua's offenses by people who've either worked in ODYS or worked on behalf of kids inside ODYS. And they said, it's not great, but yeah, for a kid who's been in there three years, it's not exceptional. An ODYS guard who'd known Joshua for a couple of years, she told me overall, not a troublemaker. Not even on the radar in terms of major threats inside the facility.
"'He gets mad sometimes,' she said, but usually for a legitimate reason. Joshua did throw a video game remote at a guard, for instance. Joshua told me that was because the guard discussed his case in front of other kids, saying snitches get stitches. He said she apologized later, and they were cool after that. But there it was, in the request to invoke. Another incident on the list sounded as if Joshua had caused a guard to get hurt during a fight. He said, not accurate. He was trying to defend the guard."
The one time I visited Indian River, I met this same guard in passing, and she confirmed it. He was trying to protect me, she said. She called Joshua, honey. Again, I couldn't interview anyone at ODYS on the record. They don't participate in stories about specific youth. But in a statement, they reiterated that they do investigate allegations of misconduct and take action when necessary. When I put the two reports side by side, what I saw was the raggedy, morally compromised chronicle of a kid at war —
Joshua wasn't only a victim, nor was he only a perpetrator. Like a lot of kids inside ODYS, he was both. The most powerful gang in juvenile prison was after him. He felt like guards couldn't be trusted. Every day, he felt unsafe. So he created alliances where he could, dominated where he could, took advantage where he could, sought protection where he could. That didn't make his behavior right. Then again, ODYS prisons don't really spin on an axis of right and wrong. See previous episode.
The prosecutors offered Joshua a deal. If he didn't fight the bindover and transferred to adult prison, he'd get nine years. If he went forward with the hearing, put up an argument, he could end up with more than that, as many as 18 years. Joshua's assigned attorney was a guy named Jim Hoflik. Jim Hoflik hadn't done one of these SYO invocations before. Not many people in the county had. Joshua didn't know whether to take the deal.
What's, what's Hoflik telling you? He really, he, he, he want me to fight it. Like, he really, like, for, for, like, he haven't made it, like, he's not clear on what he want to do either. But he's, he's inclined to fight it?
Joshua tried to marshal support.
He asked some ODYS staff members to write letters to the court on his behalf. He says a few told him they were willing. Joshua's father, who lives in Jamaica, pledged to hire Josh a private attorney. He just needed to arrange for payment. In the meantime, Indian River declared that it wanted Joshua out now, while they waited for the final hearing on his SYO. The superintendent claimed Joshua was causing an environment of constant response and panic.
A court magistrate okayed the transfer. Joshua was delivered to county jail. Adult county jail. A couple of weeks went by, and I could hear on the phone that Joshua was acclimating to the idea of an adult sentence in adult prison. He compressed the nine years in his head. It'd really be six years, since he'd already spent a few years in ODYS. Probably less than six if he was granted judicial release.
Being in county with all these guys who are getting walloped with big sentences, Joshua had a fresh perspective on the number six. So it's like...
Compared to double digits, he was saying, maybe six was a lucky break. When Joshua was brought to court the morning of his hearing, he still didn't know what he was going to do. He met with Jim Hoflik, who'd laid out the probable truth that today, nine years was the best-case scenario. Joshua took the deal.
The actual proceeding was hard to stomach. Joshua stood there, crying. A few of his umpteen yes-mams, barely audible. And that you have demonstrated by your conduct that rehabilitation during the remaining period of juvenile jurisdiction is unlikely. At one point, the judge asked someone to fetch Joshua some Kleenex. No one had come to his rescue.
His father hadn't hired the private lawyer he said he was going to hire. Joshua's civil attorneys never did file a lawsuit on Joshua's behalf. The Indian River staff who told Joshua they'd stick up for him, vouch for his progress, not here. I'd learned they'd been firmly reminded, you work for ODYS. While we're at it, where were the FBI agents who'd seemed to like Joshua back in 2014 when they told him they'd check on him? I get it. It was all too messy, too much.
All those incidents on the list, the context, the tit-for-tats, the who-started-whats, too messy. Jim Hoflik had told me, sure, we could have picked apart three or four of the incidents on that list. Explained, fights on paper are more intricate than they appear. But then what about the 40 other items teetering just behind? They were going to be crushed, Jim Hoflik said, by the sheer volume of incidents.
The one person who had shown up, Joshua's only witness, was Shayla Turner, Joshua's mentor from Freedom School. She said Jim Hoflich had contacted her yesterday. She thought she might be called upon to testify. Ms. Turner was upset. I thought it could be fought, she said. I really thought it could be fought. In its letter to invoke Joshua's SYO, ODYS had written that there was no more they could do to rehabilitate Joshua. No additional interventions and treatments that can be attempted.
It is unfortunate, they wrote, that he threw away the opportunity he was given. The idea that Joshua is unfixable, Ms. Turner said. That part of it is complete BS. Ms. Turner isn't some wide-eyed advocate. She's worked with lots of kids in juvenile facilities. Her master's is in public administration with a focus on youth policy. She's from East Cleveland. She has a deep and personal experience with the good and the bad of gangs.
She agrees that some of the kids at Indian River aren't ready to come out yet, that they are still works in not quite enough progress. Joshua, though? She said he is not one of the ones she most worries about, and he's not one of the ones ODYS should be most worried about. She does not accept that he hasn't progressed. Because to her, Joshua at 19, such a far cry from Joshua at 16. When he was the hothead, arrogant asshole that Judge Sweeney met at first, that I met at first,
There's no doubt in my mind that that's when the conversation should have been had. The conversation of, should we bind him over? Absolutely, because he's becoming a threat to the facility. And he was a child that I thought, could he be rehabilitated? Oh, so you even had a question at the beginning? I had a complete question and didn't think that he could. Ms. Turner said the only fight they had in Freedom School, inside the facility, only won Joshua. His first week in the program, he stood up on a chair and spit on somebody. Yeah.
Like, I mean, just outrageous. Even in conversations with him after that, it was this arrogance to him. It was this haughtiness. And that literally doesn't exist in him anymore. So to now hear his conversation completely changed to, I want to get out of here. I want to be a better person. I'm asking to not be put into these situations. I'm asking to be put on a different unit.
So you have a child that has been crying out, saying, this is what I need. I want to get out of this. And you ignored that. What most disturbed Ms. Turner, that it was Joshua whose ethics and behavior were being scrutinized and punished. And now no one would look at what the state had done to him. I think Joshua is the best case example of why it's so bogus when we have these expectations for kids to speak up about what's happening in their community and to testify and things like that.
And we see the ramifications and how we don't wrap around to protect them. I think the biggest issue isn't that Joshua hasn't held up his end of the bargain. It's that the state hasn't held up theirs. They haven't protected him. Haven't protected him from the gang he inflamed by testifying for the state. More in a minute.
Hey, serial listeners, go deeper into one detainee's story in Letters from Guantanamo on Audible. Mansour Addaifi was 18 when he was kidnapped by Afghan militia and sold to the CIA. As one of the first prisoners at Guantanamo, he endured unbearable
unimaginable torture. Starting as an act of rebellion, he wrote to the Pope, President Bush, MLK, and others. For the first time, hear these letters that celebrate the strength of human spirit and that ultimately bring catharsis to Mansoor. Letters from Guantanamo is free with membership at audible.com slash Guantanamo.
I'm Julian Barnes. I'm an intelligence reporter at The New York Times. I try to find out what the U.S. government is keeping secret. It takes a lot of time to find people willing to talk about those secrets. It requires talking to a lot of people to make sure that we're not misled and that we give a complete story to our readers. If The New York Times was not reporting these stories, some of them might never come to light.
If you want to support this kind of work, you can do that by subscribing to The New York Times. After the hearing, Joshua was taken back to the county lockup. He figured he'd be shipped out to prison within a few days. That's supposed to happen once you're sentenced. Joshua's understanding was that early on a Tuesday or Thursday morning, they were going to drive him from county jail to an intake prison about 40 minutes from Cleveland. And from there, they figure out where to put you, what's going to be your home institution.
But a couple of Tuesdays and Thursdays came and went, and Joshua sat in limbo. He wasn't getting either of the two medications he said he'd been prescribed for his brain injury. None of his personal stuff had followed him from Indian River, his papers and photographs and notebooks. And also, I need to emphasize, county jail sucks. Go Google it. Cuyahoga County Jail. See the headline? Cleveland judge. I will not send people to jail after sixth inmate dies in four months.
Granted, that was a post-Joshua headline. But it was true then as well. County is not a place you want to spend even one extra day. Insult to injury, Joshua had no money on his books. He couldn't buy any edible food or an extra t-shirt or a normal toothbrush or minutes on a phone account. Why were they keeping him in county? What did they want with him? Like, I'm just sitting here for nothing. Like, I didn't... Yeah, I think that's pretty much what's happening. Yeah.
After he'd sat in jail for a month of Tuesdays and Thursdays, I emailed Jim Hoflik to ask, and to nudge, um, can you explain why Joshua's still in county? His response, Joshua's still in county? Jim Hoflik wasn't Joshua's lawyer anymore, but he said he'd look into it. Jim discovered a communication breakdown between the juvenile court and the county sheriff's office, which runs the jail. Administratively, no one knew or seemed to notice or care that they didn't know who had jurisdiction over Joshua.
But, Jim said, they'd clear it up. Josh and I developed a new routine. He'd call me and ask, any word from Mr. Hoflig? And I'd say something like, Nope. That was early November. Late November, two months after he'd been sentenced, Joshua was still lousy in county.
I'd run out of encouraging reports from the outside. The metaphor could not have been clumsier. The government had forgotten about Joshua.
In county jail, Joshua was bored. Sometimes he'd be cooped in his cell, they all would be, for nearly 24 hours straight.
But what I noticed was that Joshua, he wasn't raging. He wasn't getting in fights. You know, you sound like, you sound pretty good. Better than Indian River, it's a stress reliever. Like, for real, for this, this is the best situation up here, but it feels better than Indian River to me. Like, it's a stress reliever. Is it? Like, because there's too much drama down there, too much. Like, it's stressful down there.
And so it's less stressful there. Yeah, that's bad. Being in county jail was a stress reliever. The COs just did their jobs. As far as he could tell, people were nicer to one another, more relaxed with one another, more supportive, he said. He was noticing what I'd noticed in the shift from middle school to high school. Just because one person didn't like you, that didn't mean the whole pod was against you.
It was something of a revelation to him. Even white people do okay in here, he said. The other young men I'd spoken to, Leo, Malik, Davon, a white kid named Wave, who'd been in both ODYS and then in adult jail, they'd all agreed —
Bad as it was, dangerous as it was, it was still better than juvenile. Less stress. That same feeling, less stress, more relaxed, would stretch out and hold true when Joshua arrived at adult prison. He finally shipped 11.5 weeks after he'd been sentenced to a place called Allen Oakwood Correctional in Lima, Ohio, about a three-hour drive from Cleveland. So his family couldn't visit. But Joshua was just happy to be sprung from his cell.
Because he'd cooperated and adult enemies lurked in adult prison, Joshua was put in protective custody. No heartless felons on his unit. He wasn't feuding with other inmates or getting into it with COs. Joshua marveled. There were fewer guards, yet the inmates had more freedom. Part of it was maturity, he said. People trying to get home, see their kids.
But the main reason the adult system was better, he said, was because it was harsher, a tighter, less forgiving ship all around. If you fight or act out, throw urine on a CO, say, severe consequences rain down. Yeah, see, in Juneau, ain't none of that. People going wild, you feel me? And ain't nothing happening. Like, ain't no piss on the CO down there, you feel me? Ain't nothing really going to happen. I mean, probably staying at home for your own self for the rest of that day.
He was saying, in juvenile, the worst that had happened, you'd be shut up in your room for the day. Try throwing piss in adult prison. Guards here will put their hands on you, he said. They do not play. You could lose your phone calls or your visitation, and you could fester in the hole for months. The hole, especially, major deterrent, he said.
In ODYS, the longest you're held in seclusion is four hours. Joshua said juveniles take advantage of that shit to the max. So if you were to propose juvenile justice reforms, it would be that they should be stricter. Right. And not just on the youth, on the staff too, you feel me?
County jail was better than juvenile. Adult prison was better than county jail. Harsher punishment was better than lenity. Joshua's world had rotated a full 180. If he'd known what adult prison was going to be like, he said, he would have skipped juvenile. He would have said to those cops and prosecutors back in 2014, "Just bind me over. I'll take my chances." Cooperation had gotten him nothing, he said. No real benefit. I said, "What about a shorter sentence, though? Three armed robberies? An adult court?
They'd warned of time in the teens or 20s even. Eh, he said, look at my co-defendants. Half of them are already out. Yeah, you run your finger down the list of the 13 people named in the cutthroat indictment, a bunch of them got two or three years. Only a few are serving more significant sentences. 11 years. 13 years. Joshua got nine. Should have just come straight here, he said, instead of having my ass beaten at ODYS for three years. Now Joshua was in prison, his six years ticking.
For my purposes, in terms of plot, his story had ended. But he kept calling, kept calling, and I kept answering. I just took a 10-minute break, in fact, because he called me while I was writing these sentences. I learned day by day what Joshua's life was turning into on the cusp of 20 years old in protective custody.
About 60 people who couldn't mix with the general prison population in a different building across the street. Cops, COs, and for reasons I never fully understood, a lot of white supremacists, Aryan Brotherhood.
Josh said everyone seemed to get along okay. He was like, "Yeah, A-B, they're cool. I got no problem with them." Anyway, he said you kind of had to get along. The unit was too small for anything else. During our phone calls from Indian River, I'd often hear hollering in the background. Now, from Allen Correctional, I could hear the soft click of billiard balls. They had a pool table and a day room. "Joshua was the youngest on the pod," he said, "but he didn't feel like the adults around him were dangerous." And the adults in charge of the prison didn't feel like Joshua was dangerous.
ODYS had tagged Joshua as a gang member, but he said the gang coordinator for the adult prison system had a chat with him, checked out his history, his tattoos, did not tag him as gang-affiliated. On a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being supermax material, Joshua was designated a level 2 prisoner. The sacrifice of being a prisoner in protective custody was the closeness of the unit and the tedium. Joshua says he couldn't take advantage of some of the programs and apprenticeships across the street where Gen Pop was housed.
He was feeling the time, filling the time with people. Joshua's intensely social. He has a talent for gathering people, pulling people towards him, including people who can help him out, like me. I'd do him small favors, favors that a reporter shouldn't really do, connecting him to the outside world, mostly via three-way phone calls. My most immediate benefit to Joshua was that, unlike most of the people in his life, I could afford an endless supply of global tel-link minutes.
All right, what's the number? Uh, 216. Uh-huh. Joshua wanted contact, continual contact, usually with family. I became the operator. Hey, Joshua? Yeah, hello? Your granddad's on the phone. Hello? Hey, grandson. Joshua's troubles aren't news to his family, obviously. Incarceration isn't news to them either. Even so, it's heavy information when it comes.
Joshua lived with his grandfather for a year, when he was about 12. Yeah, I'm good right now.
Joshua's relatives said it was okay to use these recordings. His family is huge. They live all over. In Cleveland, of course, but also in Florida, California, Jamaica. His little niece, his great-grandmother, his aunts and cousins, his parents, his sisters, his daughter. In every call, he tells them he loves them. And they say it back.
She's going to sleep. I love you. I love you. I love you too, baby. Put Mommy on the phone. When Josh was four, his father was arrested by the DEA for conspiracy to distribute more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana in the United States. He got a long sentence in federal prison. His mother went to prison a couple years later. Once they were both locked up, what happened was what you might imagine would happen to a kid longing for his absent parents. He floated from house to house, miserable.
Probably the most stable person in his life is his grandmother. She was his legal guardian, and he lived with her for long stretches growing up. By the time he was 13, Joshua began to ping at the juvenile court, initially for petty stuff — being unruly, fighting at school —
Then it got more serious. At 14, he was caught for strong-arm robbery. He and some friends mugged a guy they knew. Joshua was sent to an ODYS residential facility. He escaped, climbed over a wall with a friend, and called his sister from a gas station payphone. She drove out to collect him. Once he was home, heartless felons, drug dealing, guns, some robberies.
When he held up the two BPs and the Popeyes, he was 15. Just after he turned 16, his baby daughter was born. And two months later, the FBI came to get him. Hello? Hello. Hey, son. Hey, Mommy.
Sometimes in the calls, it feels like the master clock of Joshua's immediate family is the criminal justice system itself. A continual pulse of court dates and visitation forms and commissary money. Hey, we come down there to drop the money off, and they say, I didn't have no idea, and they wouldn't let your mother leave the money, so I gotta get some idea and bring it back. She gonna have to bring it back to you.
Joshua knew I was recording these calls. Occasionally, we'd discuss the content afterwards, debrief about his relationships. He's open like that, strikingly so. And he knew I was rooting for him. And so sometimes he'd call me just to call me. What's up? Too much. I'm recording. I don't know why. In case you have something fascinating to tell me. I do got something fascinating to tell you. What? I got my TV. What? What?
Yeah. No way! Really? Yeah, I got it, I think, on Friday. He was relieved. Joshua had wrestled with the language arts portion of his GED twice before. A former ODYS guard who knew Joshua as a younger teenager had described him as impressionable. The kind of person who'll do good if he's around good, do bad if he's around bad. Adult prison is filled by and large with adult criminals. I kept an antenna up for signs that Joshua might be listing toward darkness.
Sometimes I'd hear a hard blade of anger in his voice. He started swearing more on the phone. But I couldn't really tell what that meant. Maybe he was just more comfortable with me. Maybe he was just in a bad mood. On the positive side, Joshua had become friends with an ex-cop on the Protective Custody Unit, a big guy who Joshua laughingly told me was making his huge muscles even huger, working out all the time.
This ex-cop, Denaen Dixon, from East Cleveland, from Jesse Nickerson's case. The officer who'd taken Jesse to the park and pleaded guilty to a couple felonies as a result. Joshua really liked Denaen. They knew people in common. And Denaen liked Joshua. He's funny and charismatic, Denaen told me. Feels like having a little brother around. I was interested in Denaen's assessment. Once Joshua got out, did he think Joshua could have an okay future? One that didn't include perpetual incarceration.
I hated this answer. Because Joshua was bound over, he would now have an adult felony record. Joshua knew that would wreak the most long-term damage to his prospects once he got out.
Tattoos began creeping back onto his hands and neck and face, all the places he'd had them removed before. I spent many phone calls looking up people on the internet for Joshua. People he knew from Cleveland, who were in county jail. What were their charges, he was asking. Are they going to trial? Or else he'd ask about people who'd already been sentenced. How long did they get? Which institution? Can you give me the inmate number? Tell me the zip code again? He was writing to them, making contact.
But some of the people he was having me look up, their cases sounded terrible. A premeditated murder. Somebody shot and then burned in a car. I asked him, what are you doing? Look, like, to me, no matter what the situation is, what you did, what your past is, that I'm not here to judge nobody. Like, nobody is perfect. Everybody in this world made bad choices before. It's whether they got caught for them or not.
And then again, you gotta think about it, people like that might not ever get out of prison, you feel me? So, or might be there for a long time. So, you feel me? Some people need good friends, or you feel me? Or somebody just to tell them, just to tell them, like, ain't nobody forgetting about them or something, you feel me? Somebody, sometimes somebody needs a good friend to keep their hopes up. Right. Everybody don't have to feel like shit, so...
He was being kind. And I understood he was trying to give other people what he himself needed, a reminder that he wasn't a piece of shit, that he was forgivable, redeemable. He was taking a position far more humane than the one the criminal justice system had taken with him. So I had to think for a minute about why I was getting angry. I realized this community of inmates he was stitching together was worrying me for when he got out. So I think the reaction I'm having is like,
Could you just please stay the fuck away from some criminals for a while so that, like, you have a chance of not falling back into that world? And I think that's why I'm having this reaction, which isn't fair to you. It seems like they're the people that understand me the most sometimes, you feel me? So that's why, and it's like, it's not that, like, these are the only types of people that have been around, like, my whole life, you feel me? So...
It's tempting to think that all of this — prison and punishment — leads somewhere. That there's a goal we can point to. People who commit crimes, maybe if they turn their lives around, a civic reward awaits them back home. But for someone like Joshua, it's hard to imagine what that reward would be. Ms. Turner had told me the young men she's worked with inside the prisons — kids who've been able to crack open their feelings, make themselves vulnerable —
She's watched many of them come home and then crumble because they're back in violent neighborhoods where they need armor to survive. She told me, Joshua knew. He'd said it to me many times. His only chance of survival was to never go back to Cleveland. If he returned home, he was going to end up hurting someone or getting hurt.
He'd end up right back at the Justice Center. The year we were in Cleveland, 2017, more than 13,000 felony cases moved through the Justice Center. Brutalist Tower, downtown, 26 stories high. Hundreds of people coming in every day. Wound up, emotional. This is the famous Gigi juice. Well, this is the famous growler made by Rick that contains the Gigi juice.
Maybe watching a little TV will help them relax. That was the idea when the court had TVs installed in the waiting areas near the courtrooms. On the 15th floor, an older woman's weeping. She retreats into the ladies' room. I can hear her howling in there. She comes back out, still crying. A young man, maybe it's her son, is folded over, head in his hands. Right above them... Just top it off with a touch of vodka. Cheers, kiddo. The Food Network.
That's the courthouse soundtrack. Clean kitchens, cupboards well stocked. The administrative judge auditioned other options. The news, too upsetting. History Channel. And boom, there was something about the Nazis and the concentration camps. He thought of Animal Planet, Cartoon Network. In the end, the most reliably soothing, Food Network.
It does lull you. You forget for a moment how much is happening all over this building. "Sir, do you have an attorney or the meeting's a higher attorney?" "No, I don't." In the space of a year, all those thousands of cases begin here in the arraignment room. Crucial decisions are made in the arraignment room. The judge chooses your lawyer if you can't afford one — you can't, usually — assigns your case to a courtroom, reviews your bond. "Your bond is set at $10,000 cash, surety, and property."
adjusts it up or down if he wants, keeps you in jail or lets you out. Didn't really quite understand it.
Dozens of people are waiting their turn with this judge. The bailiff is at the ready, big pile of case folders. Well, I'm just asking if you understand what the charge means, not the facts. Asking questions slows the rhythm. So you understand what the charge is? Yes.
Arraignment is the Justice Center's intake valve. The rush of cases, now processed, they all whoosh upstairs into courtrooms. Has anyone made any promises or threats in order to induce you to change your plea?
Up on 21, they're teeing up the three words that will button closed many thousands of plea bargains this year. Annoyingly. Voluntarily. Intelligently. In a knowing, voluntary, and intelligent fashion. And I want to assure you you're doing this voluntarily. And voluntarily. Annoyingly, intelligently, and voluntarily made. A few floors down, Judge Daniel Gall, just re-elected by the way, tells a defendant to pull up his pants.
The guy's been in jail, doesn't have a belt. — Pull them up. — This is big. — Pull them up. Pull your trousers up. — Nineteenth floor, a trial's just beginning. Jury selection. The jury pool: all white, save for one woman, who's Black. She works in IT at a law firm.
The defense attorney starts asking her questions. She stops him. I think I have to go full disclosure here. I am not emotionally ready to participate in our legal system. I have so much personal disappointment in the inequities in our systems. Ground floor, in the hallway outside the doors to the county jail. A crowd is waiting for a man named Evan King to walk out.
He spent 22 years in prison for a murder he didn't do. People are singing, crying. Then they see him, exonerated. Outside, on the street, police officers from all over the county and the state march in the annual memorial parade. Okay.
Honoring two local police officers who died during the past year in the line of duty. Separate incidents, but both hit by cars while working on the highway. Back up on 18 in Judge O'Donnell's courtroom, a sentencing. The brother of a murdered woman gives a statement. He talks quietly, angrily, for a few minutes. Says he's glad the defendant is going to suffer every day in prison. I'm just thankful to God I made a way out of this. I know who you are.
Seems like maybe he's winding down, and then he launches himself like a missile at the defendant. Another sentencing for a triple murder in a barbershop. It's a capital case. The courtroom's crammed. Relatives of the victims and of the defendant fill the gallery. The media is set up in the jury box, their cameras and microphones. A man named Alvin Wright comes forward. He was a victim in the case. He'd been cutting someone's hair when shooting exploded the shop.
He saw people he knew get killed. Alvin Wright had testified for the prosecution at trial. And now, just before the judge issues her final decision, whether she's going to sentence the defendant, who's 21, to death, Alvin Wright addresses the court. The whole situation is fucked up. It's a court of law. I mean, this is what I'm dealing with, though. The judge tells him, it's a court of law. There's different words. Go ahead. I mean, the situation is messed up.
It's a messed up situation, man. Do I agree with putting them down like a dog? No. That's just me. Ain't nobody win. You put them down, we don't get nobody back. Nothing. It's just like we just keep losing. Just black people, period. We just keep losing. You got all these white people right here. They looking at us like we in a zoo. This real shit. Like we in a zoo.
— Mr. Wright, I don't think you like that. — No, no, I'm just saying, I'm just looking at the big picture of, like, look at this. Look at this. That's life. We gotta do better than that. — Mr. Wright, thank you. — The best-kept secret in the Justice Center is in the lobby. It's tucked between two pillars near the elevators. Looks like a wheel you might see at a raffle or a bingo game.
But it functions as a suggestion box. You can send kites to the staff. The administrative judge will get them. He's got the key. After hanging around this building for a year, I have many suggestions, just off the top of my head. I'd say, go minimalist. Don't pile six charges onto a single crime, when one charge will do. Don't overcharge to force a guilty plea. Don't lock anyone up unless they're demonstrably violent. Admit that police officers lie under oath.
Get out of the punishment business and turn toward the urgent problem of fairness. Keep obsessive track of who exactly is being charged with what crime, how their sentence shakes out, and what their life looks like in three years or five years. Take note of the color of their skin and how much money they have. Don't shove what you learn in a drawer and forget about it. Don't be insensibly tempted, as Charles Dickens wrote, into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own bad course.
Cops, prosecutors, judges, lawyers, call out the colleagues who degrade your profession.
Pay assigned attorneys and public defenders at least twice as much as you're paying them now. Judges, stop choosing those assigned attorneys. Citizens, mix up the bench. Stop electing judges countywide. And overall, slow down. Doubt yourselves. And I know how corny this sounds, but imagine that every person in the elevator car is part of your own family and reflect on the far-reaching pain of prosecution.
Also, don't tape anyone's mouth shut in court. That happened. And consider getting rid of the grand jury. I could cram that wheel to bursting. But if I'm only allowed one suggestion, I'd say, let's all accept that something's gone wrong. Let's make that our premise. Many times during our reporting in Cleveland, when I'd ask about problems or reforms, someone would throw out, well, let's remember, we have the best system in the world.
County Prosecutor Michael O'Malley said it to me. I just think people need to realize we have the best criminal justice system in the world. The people who operate that system know about the wards, and they concede we can always improve. But generally, they're not chomping for an overhaul, the kind of extreme makeover that the data is screaming at us to undertake. We've all heard the stats that we here in the United States imprison a vastly higher percentage of our population than any other country in the world. We are number one.
The numbers are well-documented, wildly out of whack, and unprecedented in our history. Also well-documented, inequity. Every joint in the skeleton of our criminal justice system is greased by racial discrimination. Compared to white people who've committed the same crime and who have similar criminal histories, Black people and other people of color are arrested more often, they're charged more harshly, given higher bails, offered worse plea deals, they're handed longer prison sentences, and their probation is more often revoked.
These numbers aren't floating above us in the sky. They're alive all over the country. We looked at studies from New York City and Alabama and Wisconsin and Iowa's 6th District and Hampton Roads, Virginia and Harris County, Texas. It's everywhere, in all our courthouses. Reporters often hear that we only report the bad stories. We exaggerate and sensationalize, especially when it comes to law enforcement or wonky prosecutions.
But we didn't go to Cleveland and sift through hundreds of cases looking for the most egregious injustices we could find. We didn't have to. The Ordinary Ones told us everything we needed to know. ♪
Serials produced by Julie Snyder, Emanuel Jochi, Ben Calhoun, and me, with additional reporting by Ida Lioskowski. Editing on this episode from Ira Glass and Nancy Updike. Tape transcription by Robin Smith. Whitney Dangerfield is our digital editor. Research and fact-checking by Ben Phelan. Sound design and mix by Stowe Nelson. Music clearance by Anthony Roman. Seth Lind is our director of operations. The series is produced by Ben Calhoun and me.
The serial staff includes Emily Condon, Julie Whitaker, Cassie Howley, Frances Swanson, and Matt Tierney. Our music is by Adam Dorn and Hal Wilner, with additional music from Matt McGinley. Our theme song is by Nick Thorburn and remixed by Adam Dorn.
This is our final episode this season, so we have some special thank yous. Our tape bloggers, Valerie Caesar, Beth Card, Nicole Richter, Sarah Stoddard, and Meredith Francis. Thanks to the entire staff at the Cuyahoga County Criminal Justice Center. Thanks to Ed Ferentz, Kevin Brinkman, Jillian Eckert, Joe Buckley, Ryan Madej, and Kathleen Caffrey.
Thanks to Mary Davidson and Gregory Moore. Thanks also to...
Thank you.
Also, a personal thanks to Jeff Melman, Ben Schreier, and Arlene Richman. And a huge thanks to Rich Orris, who builds and manages our fantastic website. The talented team at Moth Studio did the animation and illustration for this episode, and it is great. You can check it out on our website at SerialPodcast.org. That is SerialPodcast.org, where you can also sign up for our email newsletter.
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