Previously: One evening I had a lawyer visit. You don’t come in contact with nobody, so I sit behind a glass and he on the other side and we talk to each other on the phone. He say, “Sometime this week, we should be back in court. They might offer you a deal, a rehab program or something like that. Just stay out of trouble here and I’ll see you in court.” A few days later, at 3:30 in the morning, a guard came to my cell. He say, “You have court in the morning.” So I got up, say my little morning prayer, brush my teeth, and wash my face. I think, Damn I wish I could go home today. You know it not gonna happen, but you still have that feelin’. My co-defendants were in the group with me that goin’ to court. I was askin’, “What you think gonna happen?” They say, “We know one thing, we ain’t goin’ home.”
So we piled into the van and got to the fed court and into the holding tank where we sit till around 9:30. Court was gonna begin at 10.
They came to get us, calling each of our names. When we go into the courtroom, we sit in a jury box, since there was no jury. One by one, our lawyers come up and separate us to talk privately.
My lawyer told me, “Man I think I got it goin’ on good for you this morning. I just came back from talking to the prosecutor and the DA back there. I think they gonna offer you 60 months.”
In the federal system, they don’t say five years, they say in terms of months. He say, “You get a year off if you do a nine-month rehab program.” In the fed system you got the program inside the prison and you go to meetings a lot.
I told him, “What about my codees?”
He say, “Let me tell you something. I understand you wanna stay strong with your co-defendants, but sometime you gotta know when to roll them, know when to fold ‘em. If you wait around and play around, the fed don’t
play with you. They dress you up and tell you let’s go—let’s go to trial. Ain’t no way you gonna win. If you win, you the luckiest cat in the world.
“They got solid proof of you and you ain’t gonna win. That’s why they watch people so long before they crack something, so when they go to bust someone they make sure they got you right. If you wanna take it you got a minute to think about it and talk to your crew because the judge ain’t ready for you right now.”
One of my codees say they offer him 17 years. Another—who just come home on life parole—they offer him 30 years. He like, “Man, I just rather go to trial.”
The head man in command say, “I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna take the 17. Y’all better run with the 60 months you about to get.”
To be continued . . .
