Redeeming Justice Read online

  Copyright © 2021 by JMA Squared Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Convergent Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Convergent Books is a registered trademark and its C colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Adams, Jarrett, author.

  Title: Redeeming justice / Jarrett Adams.

  Description: New York: Convergent, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021004332 (print) | LCCN 2021004333 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593137819 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593137826 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Adams, Jarrett. | Lawyers—United States—Biography. | African American lawyers—United States—Biography. | False imprisonment—United States. | Discrimination in criminal justice administration—United States. | Race discrimination—Law and legislation—United States.

  Classification: LCC KF373.A29 A3 2021 (print) | LCC KF373.A29 (ebook) | DDC 340.092 [B]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2021004332

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2021004333

  Ebook ISBN 9780593137826

  crownpublishing.com

  Book design by Diane Hobbing, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Pete Garceau

  Cover images: courtesy of the author (mug shot), Mark Hoffman/USA Today Network © (courtroom)

  ep_prh_5.7.1_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part I: Fall

  Chapter 1: Life After Justice

  Chapter 2: The Neighborhood

  Chapter 3: The Party

  Chapter 4: Intake

  Chapter 5: The First Trial

  Chapter 6: Let Them Hang Themselves

  Chapter 7: Pawns

  Chapter 8: Pops

  Chapter 9: Li’l Johnnie Cochran with the Glasses

  Chapter 10: Segregation

  Chapter 11: Born at the Scene of the Crime

  Chapter 12: Competence

  Chapter 13: Innocence

  Part II: Rise

  Chapter 14: Home

  Chapter 15: The Door

  Chapter 16: Loose Ends

  Chapter 17: Safe

  Chapter 18: We Need to Talk

  Chapter 19: So, What Are You Going to Do?

  Chapter 20: The Return

  Chapter 21: Forward

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  I.

  Fall

  1.

  Life after Justice

  November 2018

  I walk through the woods with Kerri O’Brien, a local television news reporter who for the past three years has been covering the case involving my clients. I wear a dark suit and hold a leather binder. I squat and twigs snap under my dress shoes. I rub my palm on the ground and think about the men I’m representing.

  On April 25, 1998, Allen Gibson, a white police officer in a small Virginia town, entered these woods behind an apartment complex and surprised Terence Richardson, twenty-eight, and Ferrone Claiborne, twenty-three, in the middle of a drug deal. The officer drew his gun, the two young men wrestled with him, and the gun went off, shooting Gibson in the stomach. Terence and Ferrone fled the scene. Shortly after, a state trooper discovered Gibson on the ground, bleeding, severely wounded. In his weakened condition, the officer managed to describe the drug deal and his attackers: two Black men, one with a ponytail, the other with dreadlocks. Later that afternoon, Gibson died in the hospital. On a tip from a witness, police picked up Terence and Ferrone and charged them with the murder of Allen Gibson. Open and shut. End of story.

  Except not one word I just told you is true.

  Terence and Ferrone were nowhere near these woods at the time of Gibson’s shooting. Police picked them up in separate locations, on opposite sides of town. Neither had a criminal record; neither had ever sold drugs. Investigators found no trace of their fingerprints, hair, or DNA at the crime scene, and neither wore a ponytail or dreads. Which should have raised a question: In the course of approximately thirty minutes, how could they have murdered a police officer, removed all the evidence, fled the scene, gotten rid of the drugs, changed, disposed of their clothes, gone to separate locations, and cut their hair?

  Police rounded up and interrogated nearly every young Black male in Waverly, Virginia, determined to find two men to charge for the killing of the officer. They had a crime. They needed two criminals. It is still unclear how my clients’ names came up, but two days later police arrested them for the murder of the police officer. Fearing the death penalty and strongly encouraged by their lawyers, Terence and Ferrone pleaded guilty to lesser charges, Terence to involuntary manslaughter, Ferrone to accessory after the fact to involuntary manslaughter, a misdemeanor.

  Despite being innocent, Terence and Ferrone made this choice because it was the only one offered them. Across America, in cities and in small towns—and especially in this small town—they saw that the police didn’t dispense equal justice to Blacks and whites. They had seen Black people routinely railroaded, sent to prison, put to death for nothing. When the same system came for them, Terence and Ferrone pleaded guilty to lesser charges to save their lives.

  For members of the town’s white establishment, it wasn’t enough. They saw the punishment as a slap on the wrist. They wanted more. They wanted Terence and Ferrone’s heads.

  Because Gibson’s shooting was linked to a drug deal, the FBI came in. The feds interviewed a parade of informants, making deals with several people in exchange for their testimony. A false portrait emerged of Terence and Ferrone as drug kingpins, even though neither had any history of drug dealing and police never found drugs in their possession or records of any large transactions or cash deposits.

  In 2001, a jury in federal court additionally found Terence Richardson and Ferrone Claiborne guilty of conspiracy to sell crack cocaine. In a rare legal action, the judge used their previous murder charge and guilty pleas as a cross-reference to enhance their drug sentence. The judge sentenced them to life in prison.

  Twenty years later, Terence and Ferrone sit in federal prison for a crime they didn’t commit.

  I know what my clients are going through. I know they sometimes scream at the top of their lungs until their voices give out and then they continue to scream silently. I know they feel as if the walls were closing in on them. I know how with each day that passes they become diminished, feeling another piece of their humanity peeling off, like dead skin. I know exactly how they feel.

  In 1998, I was falsely accused and ultimately wrongly convicted of rape. I was sentenced to prison for twenty-eight years. I, too, had done nothing. I, too, got terrible legal advice.

  Unlike my clients, I made a catastrophic mistake that set the whole thing in motion, putting me on the path I’m on today.

  I went to a party.

  Three of us—three Black kids from Chicago—drove to a college campus in Wisconsin. At the party, we each had a consensual sexual encounter with the same girl, a white girl. Her roommate walked in, called her a slut, and stormed out. These were the facts. But the girl later said we raped her.

  As a man raised by four strong, prideful women—my mom, grandmother, and aunts—I still have no idea or sense
of how difficult it is for any woman to come forward after she has been raped. I cannot imagine the humiliation, shame, anger, and fear a woman must feel having to relive the details of her attack as she files a police report and submits to a rape kit test. As a lawyer, I know the statistics for false rape accusations. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, only 2–10 percent of women falsely claim they have been raped.

  My accuser falls into that 2–10 percent.

  * * *

  —

  The police believed her. They charged us with rape, and we went to trial. I thought that if I told the truth, I would be safe. I trusted in the truth and in fairness. I believed in justice. After all, that’s what trials are about—justice, right?

  Not necessarily. Particularly if the accused is poor, uneducated, and a person of color. In too many cases, justice doesn’t prevail, even if the accused is innocent. Some days, justice doesn’t even make an appearance.

  At my trial, the prosecution’s insistence on getting a conviction at any cost and deep-rooted prejudice barred justice from the courtroom. Justice never had a chance. I never had a chance. The prosecutor looked at me and at Dimitri Henley and Rovaughn Hill—the friends on trial with me—and called us “three Black men from Chicago.” We had no names, but the all-white jury knew us. They’d seen “us” on the news. They’d read about “us” in the newspapers. We were criminals, drug dealers, gangbangers, rapists, killers. We were them. Three nameless Black men from Chicago. It didn’t matter that the prosecution presented no real evidence, that the so-called victim’s story made no sense. The truth didn’t matter. Like my clients Terence Richardson and Ferrone Claiborne and so many young Black men, I was convicted.

  After nearly ten years, with the help of the Wisconsin Innocence Project (WIP), I was exonerated and released from prison. The court dropped all charges against me, and my record was expunged. I was free. Well, not quite. Ten years behind bars took its toll. I needed to adjust to the world outside. I found that reentering society was almost as difficult as surviving prison. A mash-up of emotions assaulted me—anger, despair, frustration, confusion. Eventually, thanks to the kindness of my mother, my family, co-workers, teachers, the commitment and hard work I put into therapy, and my faith, I emerged from a place of darkness and came to a place of healing. I also confirmed my path in life. In prison, I became a jailhouse lawyer, helping inmates with their legal issues. I made a vow to myself that once I got out, I would go to college and law school and become an actual, card-carrying attorney.

  After my release, I began working on that promise. I felt as if I were on a mission and that God had answered my prayers. He gave me a second chance. Now I live to exceed His expectations. I work and live at warp speed.

  “What drives you?” people ask.

  Two emotions fuel me every day, motivating me to wake up at dawn and keep charging until I collapse from exhaustion late at night.

  First, fear. Fear drives me. I’m afraid of not doing the right thing, of wasting time, of disappointing others, and of disappointing myself.

  Second, commitment. I have made a commitment to serve those behind bars who have been locked up for minor crimes, serving unconscionably long sentences, and those who have been wrongly accused, people like Terence and Ferrone. I am fighting to set them free. The process takes perseverance, patience, and time—literally years, and sometimes even decades.

  One day, as I was explaining a legal procedure to Ferrone, he suddenly blurted, “Had I known that by pleading guilty to save my life, it would’ve cost me my life…”

  His voice, laced with pain, trailed off. But those three words seared into me.

  Had I known.

  I wish that I, too, had known.

  Had I known how badly the odds are stacked against us. Had I known that I needed a good lawyer to represent me. Had I known how long it would take to reverse an unjust conviction. I want my clients’ families and even their future generations to know—what our broken criminal justice system can do to them. I vow to litigate and to educate. This is my promise. This is my life after justice.

  In this country we have two criminal justice systems—the one you can afford and the one you can’t. If you are unfortunate enough to find yourself without the means to afford at minimum competent legal representation, you will discover, as I did, that justice will be banned from your courtroom.

  At best, achieving justice becomes a chess match, a game of strategy. You looking ahead several moves, positioning your pieces, sometimes lulling your opponent to a false sense of security before you attack, before you win.

  As a lawyer, you play a high-stakes game.

  You play, literally, for people’s lives.

  Who wins?

  In prison I learned it’s not the lawyer who has amassed the most or “best” evidence. Sometimes it isn’t even the one who’s right.

  The one who wins, I learned, is the one who tells the best story.

  2.

  The Neighborhood

  November 1985

  I am five years old.

  My parents have split up. Years from now, I won’t remember the divorce. I’ll only remember shapes, shadows moving rapidly past me, flickering on walls, voices raised, doors slamming, crying. And I’ll remember silence. Not quiet, but silence. There is a difference. Quiet calms you; quiet comforts you. Silence is stark and cold and terrifying. Silence rips into you. After my father leaves, that’s what I remember most—the silence. My brother, five years older, remembers him, feels hurt, feels loss. I don’t remember my father at all.

  My mother works for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, down by O’Hare Airport, an hour-and-a-half drive from where we live, the South Side of Chicago. After the divorce, my mother rises at four thirty, gets ready for work, wakes me up, drops me off at my grandparents’ house around five thirty, and drives to her job. She picks me up after work, around seven thirty at night, and we go back to our house. I get ready for bed while my mother takes a bath. One night, I hear a shriek coming from the bathroom. I bounce out of bed and nervously open the door. I see my mother in the bathtub, her head bent over, her shoulders shaking. I see that she is sobbing.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask her.

  “Nothing,” she says, turning away quickly. “Nothing.”

  I know she can’t tell me, but I can guess—the divorce, the drive, money being tight, and maybe at night the silence.

  Not nothing.

  I close the door, go back to my room, slide into bed, and stare at the ceiling.

  Many nights, I lie awake like that, listening to the sounds of the house, the squeaks, creaks, settling noises, squirrels scurrying on the roof, people out on the street, a laugh, a holler, a bottle shattering, and sometimes, the worst sound of all, my mother crying behind the bathroom door. On those nights, I whisper a prayer: “Please God, I promise I’ll be good, if you just stop my mom from crying.”

  * * *

  —

  My grandmother Lane and my grandfather Buddy live in what our family calls the Big House, a rambling, two-story fortress spread over a corner lot backed up to Chicago State University and tucked in tight to the DMV. When I’m outside, my grandmother always warns me to watch out for crazy drivers who take the corner too fast or nervous teenagers taking their driving tests.

  Lane and Buddy call me their miracle grandchild. I want to know why. I’m five, but I’m intensely curious about everything. I reject those adult clichés—“Don’t ask so many questions,” “Do it because I said so,” and “I’ll explain when you’re older.” I’m old enough now. I want answers.

  Buddy sighs and sets me on his lap. He has a favorite chair, a well-worn La-Z-Boy recliner, set up in front of the TV so he can watch his beloved Chicago Cubs. He speaks directly to the Cub players as if he were in the dugout and they can hear him. He cheers loudest fo
r the Black players—Shawon Dunston, Leon Durham, and especially Big Lee Smith, the most intimidating relief pitcher in the game.

  “He lives right near us,” Buddy says. “South Side. I’ve seen him.”

  My grandfather grins with a familiarity suggesting that “I’ve seen him” means he and Big Lee are practically best friends, possibly drinking buddies. At five, I believe it. I believe everything Buddy says. My grandfather has stepped into my father’s absent shoes and become my father figure, the major male presence in my life, an actual World War II hero, and my hero. Sometimes while watching the Cubs, I ask if I can hold the medal he received in the war, and Buddy will allow me to play with his Purple Heart.

  My family comes from the Deep South, our legacy birthed and bred in the cotton fields of Mississippi. History records that our country officially abolished slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, but I know for a fact that many Black people—including my family—continued to live a life of de facto slavery, picking cotton under the oppressive rule of racist cotton farmers for seventy-five years afterward, until the early 1940s. Protected by the local police and a legal system that wasn’t enforced equally for Blacks and whites, the cotton farmers brutalized their workers by day and preyed on young Black women at night. Buddy and Lane did that work for years. By the time their daughters were teenagers, they reached their breaking point and declared they’d had enough of the backbreaking, demeaning, low-paying, and dangerous life in Mississippi.

  In 1943, Buddy went north to join his brother in Chicago. Shortly after, my grandmother made the same journey with their seven children. Almost as soon as my grandfather settled at his new address on the South Side, he received a letter embossed with a government seal: his draft notice. The army didn’t care that he was in his early thirties, the father of seven, and his family’s primary breadwinner. Buddy soon found himself in uniform, a private in the U.S. Army, crammed into the cargo hold of a transport plane with a platoon of Black soldiers, all flying overseas to fight in World War II.