I’ve never been perfect; not even close. Always a work in progress, that’s for sure. But I was finally getting ahead, success built on my sweat and tears after being out on my own in the world since I was old enough to get a job after being kicked out. Now, they stuck this label on me, “armed robbery,” and it limits my future, constrains my present, and completely misrepresents my past.
I was certainly not perfect, but I did not rob anyone that night. I did not harm or threaten anyone. I did not even know a robbery was occurring until after the fact, but here I am with thirteen years on my first conviction that also excludes me from pretty much every opportunity around, from early release to future jobs. I’m not a “violent felon” for simply unknowingly driving the wrong car.
Since turning 16, I had busted my tail to pay the bills even legally, working fast food, food service, manual labor, anything I could find. Along the way I’d managed to finish my degree, go to Avery University online, getting a 3.8 grade point average in criminal law, and a post as an HR specialist in the army. All that was great, but I had just started really making progress on my dream. I had managed to hustle and network my way into the live music industry, my dream job. Security, gopher, fixer, I did whatever I could to be part of this industry where I worshipped the sounds and the artists alike. I was finally getting to the good stuff, running some promotions and angling for that and management. I was working as much as possible and spending all the extra time with my kids. Not perfect, but doing my damnedest to be a stand up guy after all I’d fought through.
Then that night happened. I got a call from my brother, saying he needed a ride. When I got there, he and some friends of his asked me to run them by a hotel to see some people they knew. I didn’t know these folks, so I chose to sit and chill in the ride while they hung out. They came back out pretty quickly and got in without incident. About five minutes later, I realized everyone was acting funny. Asked them why. Finally got it out of them that they had taken loot from some people partying at the hotel.
This is where it gets so complicated. This is where I made it worse. This is where I felt like I had no choice.
Everyone in the car explained to me that I couldn’t say anything for multiple reasons. First and foremost, this was my brother, they reminded me. I didn’t like it, but when you’re from where I’m from and look like me, you simply don’t ever sacrifice your family to the system that may never let them go. They also explained that I couldn’t say anything because I was already a part of the situation, a participant on some level. I didn’t know how that would play out for sure, but it made sense to my experience. Then they added the peer pressure, and I was weak. Feeling already trapped, I agreed to keep driving while they did it again.
I am not proud of it. Quite the opposite, it feels like the worst decision of my life, and now my kids are suffering and I am buried beneath these years and walls, all my hard work undone so quickly in my weakness. But I also was not a mastermind, nor ever violent. I was not even in the room for the robberies, nor even aware of the plan beforehand.
And here we are now.
In the end, they used every dishonest tactic to convict me as if I was an unrepentant villain. Claimed a video that didn’t exist to get a warrant. Lied about my military service. Bribed someone more centrally involved with a sentence of only two years, on video, to get them to tell on me. So much for the value of maintaining my principles. And then they convicted me multiple times as a robbery participant, with all its accompanying stigma and limitations.
I know I screwed up, and I own that. But I can’t accept the way that conviction labels me so viciously and permanently to be this predator I was not. All I did was drive, stupidly but unknowingly, and now I am excluded from earning the time off my sentence permitted by the new law passed last year because of how they labeled me. And my kids miss that much fatherhood time, too. I was so much more than my conviction, and I am now. I will be in the future, too, as I have recently finished a paralegal certification course from Adams State University. I just want the world to know it.