I get murderers out of prison. Or, at least, that's what I tell people. In reality, I'm not that good.
I work at a legal clinic. Our clients are mostly battered women who have killed their abusers, or gotten involved in some crime where somebody got killed. When I tell people this, the first question I usually get is, "Are they guilty?" I used to say "yes," assuming that everyone would understand that the question is only the beginning of an incredibly complex and morally ambiguous inquiry.
Not so. Now I say, "Sort of."
It's hot in the small, wood-paneled room, despite the air conditioner perched high up in the window in front of us. My client, Ruby, is sitting in the chair to my left. She is reading, in a monotone, a statement to the effect that she has no disabilities.
A small microphone in front of her records this information and sends it to two cassette recorders on the other side of the table. As I heard it, the Board of Parole Hearings got sued a while back after they made a paraplegic crawl up some stairs to get to his parole hearing. Now the BPH is very uptight about this sort of thing. If you wear contacts, they'll ask you to note for the record that you have them on.
The Institution for Women looks strikingly like a junior high school. It was designed back in the 50s, when people had all kinds of romantic ideas about rehabilitation. Those ideas are mostly relics. The few rehabilitation programs available to the prisoners now are all run by volunteer and church groups, or by the prisoners themselves. The visiting room, where we go to talk with our murderous clients, looks just like a cafeteria, with orange plastic picnic tables and a colorful mural on the back wall.
Ruby painted the mural. She's very proud of her artwork. At her first parole hearing, three years ago, she brought a couple of drawings with her to show the hearing panel. The Commissioners were not interested. Now, as she sits in the stifling room answering the panel's questions, she mentions her artwork. The Commissioner across from her perks up slightly.
"So you're an artist, then?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you have any examples of your work to show us here today?"
Ruby looks confused and unhappy. She hadn't brought any drawings this time. "No," she says, looking down at her hands.
Before I went to the prison to meet Ruby for the first time, I read everything we had in her file. I knew that she had graduated from high school and gotten involved with a violent, psychotic gang member. I knew about the horrible murders her boyfriend had committed, for no apparent reason. I knew that he had beaten her, raped her, and threatened to kill her mother and sisters if she left him. Ruby knew nothing about me.
The victim's family members are at the hearing. They came last time, too. One of them has befriended Ruby, and speaks on her behalf. One has forgiven her, but doesn't know if she thinks Ruby should be paroled. Two think she should never be paroled. They all get to speak. Ruby is not supposed to look at them, so she stares straight ahead.
I have the flu. I barely got any sleep, and am constantly fighting the urge to cough or sniffle. My head feels like it's full of mud. I am sweating in my uncomfortable black pantsuit, but I can't take off my jacket because the Commissioners won't take me seriously if they see the tattoos on my left arm. It's bad enough I forgot to scrape off the chipped remnants of my black fingernail polish. Self-consciously, I curl my fingers into fists, and try to keep my head up so I won't have to blow my nose.
To my right, the victims' family members are talking about Ruby. I am thinking about how everyone seems to think they know things about other people that they couldn't possibly know. I am thinking that we are all a roomful of self-important monkeys, obsessed with our own feelings, dressed up in nice suits to impress each other while we really all probably have to go to the bathroom. I know I do.
Before I met Ruby, I could not believe that one of the victim's family members was supporting her. He writes her letters and goes to visit her at the prison. Getting to know her, he says, has helped him to heal. He believes that she is transformed.
The night after I first went to see Ruby, I had nightmares about murder, violence, and chaos. The next day, I thought of the man who forgave Ruby. I thought about redemption. I thought about the worst thing I ever did, and wondered if I would ever be forgiven.
The BPH did an investigation of Ruby's abuse claims, as the law requires, and found them to be substantiated. The Commissioners are supposed to read the report into the record at the parole hearing, but they don't. I am becoming anxious about this. When my turn comes to ask Ruby questions, I ask about the abuse. In a disembodied voice, she recounts the most terrifying things that have ever happened to her, what her boyfriend did to her, how she thought she was worthless and deserved it all. The roomful of acquaintances, enemies, and strangers listens. The Deputy District Attorney, in his closing remarks, implies that Ruby is lying.
Who will forgive us for this?
We sit in the office next to the hearing room, waiting for the Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner to reach a decision. I don't know what to do with myself. I get up and eat a piece of hard candy from the dish by the door, hoping it will soothe my throat.
"Can I have a piece of candy?" Ruby asks me hopefully. She remembers that I have no authority and asks the guard instead. "Miss Chalmers, could I have a piece of candy?" Ruby knows, much better than I do, what could happen to her if she takes a piece without permission. Disciplinary infraction, write-up, guaranteed to make parole impossible for years to come. How can you be trusted to live in decent society when you insist on taking candy from candy dishes?
"Did you bring your own candy?" the guard asks, looking Ruby up and down.
"No."
"Well, you can't have any of this candy."
We wait in the office. Ruby looks up and asks me, "How many lifer hearings have you done?" I'm not sure if she's making small talk or trying to find out if I can gauge how this hearing is going. I don't want to answer, but I have to.
"This is my first," I say, my face assuming its most sheepish expression. I don't know why I assumed she would know this. I am embarrassed that the best counsel she can get is a second-year law student who has never done a hearing before. I am ashamed that the system has failed her so badly, and is even now continuing to fail her in the room next door.
"You did great," she says, and smiles at me.
Ruby has been in prison for half her life now. She forgives everyone, even me and my poor counsel and my flu. She says it's in God's hands. Who is this God asshole, I think, and who's going to forgive him?
We get the decision – Ruby stays in prison, and gets another hearing in two years. I go home and sleep for days, and dream of people I used to know, holding my hand, touching me.
Brooke Glass O'Shea reports that when she's not busy drinking absinthe and patching her beret, she's usually passed out in the park. She lives in downtown Los Angeles on the second floor of a former bikini factory, on a block that has been referred to in the paper as "the Disneyland of crack." This is her first story for Lime Tea.
