A chilled wind blew blustery on the campus of my university on a Thursday night almost ten years ago. It was November, and I'd just left the weekly meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, an event I'd thought might save my soul, which was certainly in need of saving. Shortly after the music ended, a friend approached.
"What's been going on, man? You need to pick up the phone."
"I've just been off the radar. Sorry."
"No, it's more serious than that. They have a warrant out on you."
"Shit."
I sought the counsel of another friend, who called his lawyer brother. "What should he do," my friend asked. "Turn himself in, immediately," the voice on the other end replied.
I raced the more than three hours home a few minutes later. I drove through the night, arriving at my parents' house for a kitchen table sit-down that still haunts me after all these years. "What were you thinking?," my parents asked, in a tone that communicated the seriousness of what I'd found myself in.
I had been a straight-laced kid for most of my life. My mom used to tell stories about the notoriousness of my rule-following as a very young man. No criminal record, of course, but that didn't mean much. In the part of the world where I grew up, and with the kind of family I had, it would have been very difficult to casually collect a criminal record. Boys will be boys, and all, and when those boys are white, South Carolina cops tend to let parents handle most things.
But this time was different. I'd stolen, and from a close friend. The challenges of college, the lack of maturity, and my parents' quickly deteriorating financial state explained, but certainly did not excuse my taking of what was not mine. The amount was large - just over $1,000, which I intended to pay back, just like most people who covertly steal.
The conversation with my parents meandered between a problem-solving session and a very private form of shaming. On one hand, they were interested in helping me out of trouble. Another part of them wanted me to face down what I'd done. My dad, always strong in a crisis, worked his back channels like a seasoned pro.
We weren't rich. Not even close, really, but my dad had enough money to pay back the victim. He also had the sort of social capital - the right appearance, the right dress, and a clean record of his own - required to hold a reasonable conversation with police and other personnel about how this might be handled.
We decided I would turn myself in to police the following Monday. In the meantime, I returned to my university Friday night, just in time to take in our game against Duke the following Saturday. Then came the longest 24 hours of my life.
My parents made the drive up, and we went to the police station together. I was booked, fingerprinted, and processed. I sat in a cell at the city jail. There, a detective allowed me to keep my cell phone while I was in the holding cell awaiting an arraignment. I shared my space with no one, but a few men occupied the cells beside me. In the toilet, fresh urine from the night before festered. I made the mistake of using the bathroom myself, stirring up an unspeakable smell that I can still recall with enough effort.
There were bars and a small, cloudy window. It was a type of dungeon, and I spent what seemed like 12 hours staring at the door, hoping someone would enter to take me out. I cried. It was fear and little else. That short time spent in jail, not knowing exactly what my fate might be, produced a sort of anxiety that's still not been matched in any other of my life's experiences.
The detective finally came in to retrieve me after two hours. He laughed as he said, "I'm glad you didn't hang yourself with your tie." At some point, he said, "Why'd you do this?" I answered honestly that I didn't know.
At my arraignment, the judge discussed the seriousness of the charges. I got to sit in a small room occupied by only the judge, me, and my father. I was released on a PR bond, saving my parents the money they might have spent hiring a bail bondsman.
That set into motion a few critical steps. We discussed the many options. Maybe I would do pre-trial intervention, a program designed specifically for non-violent first-time offenders. It never came to that, though. I never saw the inside of a courtroom again. In fact, I never even had to hire a lawyer. My dad consulted with a few lawyers he knew, asking for advice on how to handle the situation, but I was only represented by my father and my white privilege.
We approached the victim, a high-school teammate-turned college buddy, who was hurt, but accepted my apology. It took many years to re-build that relationship, but at the time, he was willing to cooperate with anything I needed. I met with his mother, explaining to her the circumstances that led to my action and taking responsibility for my mistake. She eventually wrote a letter to the solicitor asking that the charges be dropped.
There's just not much political gain in going after a nice looking white kid, especially when the victims aren't pushing for it. At the preliminary hearing - the portion of the case when the state makes the case that it has a case - prosecuting attorneys announced that all charges had been dropped. I didn't even have to go. The backchannels had been successfully worked, and I'd had a felony dismissed without so much as a community service requirement.
This week, noted anti-racist author Tim Wise asked his followers on Facebook to face their privilege, writing and talking about their experiences with law enforcement that have ended very differently than they might have if those people had looked like Michael Brown. For a long time, I've had to face that. What I've learned is that my experience has both shown me some of the things faced by mostly poor black kids and many things that they don't face.
Young black kids face the fear - the terrifying, paralyzing fear - of jail cells. The bars are real, and they say something to a young person about his identity. You're a criminal. An animal. Not fit for public consumption. In many parts of this country, young people are housed in prisons with adult offenders. The state of Florida, for instance, holds more than 350 young people in adult prisons, including kids as young as 13. These kids are significantly more likely to be sexually assaulted, as they're seen as easy prey in a system that treats them like adults in the face of extraordinary evidence that they are still vulnerable children.
I experienced the reality that circumstances influence behavior. Given my past, my behavior as a 19-year old flew in the face of what almost anyone would have expected of me. I made a terrible decision, but it did not arise from thin air. Rather, it was the result of my own stupidity combined with pressure-inducing circumstances. I used poor rationalizations to justify an easy way out of a difficult financial situation.
I recognize that young black men growing up in poor neighborhoods may see no legitimate way out of their financial plight. There's certainly nothing that excuses crime, but there are many things that can explain why a person breaks from the straight and narrow. Living in poverty can be one of those things.
These experiences have brought me closer to the communities I will soon represent as a public defender. I have a very real way to connect with the fear I see in a young client's eyes when he realizes that the jail cell is real. I can understand the frustration of knowing that you don't have enough. I can also identify with the guilt and self-loathing that follows when you make a terrible decision and experience the public shame that accompanies an arrest.
As I've gotten more involved in the criminal justice system - this time on the right side of the aisle - I've seen that my situation is better used as a teacher if I think about what I did not experience.
Young black men who steal things do not get the opportunity to surrender peacefully, in a starched shirt and tie, five days after their crime is discovered. If they tried to flee town - as I did - they'd be marked as fugitives, and their crime might turn into a capital one. When I face my privilege, I see that a young black man in my situation would never get to enjoy one last college football Saturday in the very town where a warrant was out for his arrest. More likely, he'd have his door knocked down by a fleet of Marine-like SWAT members.
Young black men who steal things don't always get the benefit of a PR bond, especially when they're facing felonies. More often, they have bond set in the five figures. For many kids, whose families don't have the money to pay or the collateral to satisfy a bail bondsman, this means sitting in prison for weeks or even months. It means missing out on classes - high school or college - if they happen to be in them. It means losing jobs and apartments all because the judge in their case established a financial litmus test that determined whether or not they could walk free for a non-violent charge.
Many of the things that allowed me to wiggle off the hook with no official consequences would scarcely apply for a young black man who stole something. He wouldn't be granted the presumption of innate goodness that I was granted. Throughout the proceeding, there was a very real sense among everyone involved that I was a good kid who had done a bad thing. Operating within that framework, it made sense that all parties would seek a resolution that would allow a good kid to go back to doing good things. Did I deserve this presumption? Maybe. I tend to think - and must hope - that the presumption was true. And maybe it worked. I haven't accrued a criminal record since, I graduated college, got into and finished from a good law school, and have set out toward a career in public service. I wrestle with the question of the best means of achieving equality. Ultimately, I've found we might be asking the wrong question.
Sports talking heads often talk about how they want "consistency" in their quarterbacks and their shortstops. But they're wrong. A QB who throws the ball to the other team every time he drops back is perfectly consistent. A shortstop who strikes out every time up is consistent. What these people want is someone who is consistently good. When we say that we want "equality," we're using the wrong term. A criminal justice system that treated every young first-time offender like dirt - black or white - would be equal. But it might not be effective. I was granted the benefit of the doubt and the ability to outlive my mistake. While I could never argue with a straight face that I deserved the kind of leniency I received, the system would benefit from a face lift in which black kids were given the presumption of goodness rather than the assumption of criminality. It'd be a paradigm shift that might provide those young black offenders with a chance.
I know that few black kids would have had the opportunity to work the back channels like I did. In places like South Carolina, judges, prosecutors, and most upper-level detectives are white. As a white business person, my dad had the sorts of connections that were able to work the system in my favor. The assistant police chief in my town is my parents' neighbor, and he advocated the idea that I was a pretty good guy. These things don't happen by accident, and they're the sorts of connections not available to most of the kids picked up out of poor, urban neighborhoods.
It should be clear to most that the final outcome of my case - walking with only stories to tell about a few days spent in the system - would have looked very different for the average black kid. This is not to say that all municipalities throw away the key when young people commit their first non-violent offense. Houston, for instance, is notorious for handing out two-year deferred adjudication offers to a certain class of non-violent offender. While this is a deal that might let that kid walk, it looks very different from the one I got. Deferred adjudications come with a long list of requirements, and they force the defendant to stipulate his guilt. If he fails to adhere to any of the conditions, or if he's picked up on any charge in the subsequent period, his admission of guilt for the original charge will be entered, and he'll be subject to whatever sentence accompanied that first crime.
While you can argue the merits of this system - some argue it's a good way to cut first-time offenders a break, while others argue that the high fees and cumbersome requirements are designed so that poor offenders must fail - you can't argue that it's an arrangement that looks very different from the justice system I saw. And that's a real shame.
Nearly ten years later, I've dealt with my guilt. I've taken the steps necessary to ensure that I don't make the same mistake again, and I've made right with the parties I hurt, including my parents. It's taken a long time, but I've found the meaning in that particular struggle, not allowing a moment of weakness to define me, but rather, allowing it to power my own desire to do right by young, poor offenders who won't be given treatment commensurate with mine. I benefit from the very real truth that when nice, middle class white kids like me commit crimes, those crimes are seen as an aberration in an otherwise valuable trek through life. They're painted as the time a person of good character broke bad. They're bewildering, and even if they're looked on with regret, those events don't define who I am or who I can become.
Young black kids don't get to shake their criminality, and often, they wear the scarlet "C" even when they've done nothing wrong. It's why one study done recently suggested that white people with a criminal record are still more likely to get hired than black people without one. The very fact that I can tell this story is a testament to my white privilege. That I can use my story as a way of shining light on inequality sets me apart from the young black kid whose criminal conviction will forever keep him from a job, career, bank account, or even an apartment.
There are two Americas. And certainly two criminal justice systems. And when I think back to what I've done, and what I've been able to accomplish since, I'm saddened by the number of potentially valuable black lives our system throws away.