Convicted

by Jameel Zookie McGee

  Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”* I did not realize how deeply the abyss had looked into me. I had become a monster, not out of greed or zeal or my questionable tactics or lack of integrity. No, I fell into the abyss because I was weighed down by pride. Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” I didn’t know it at the time, but these words were about to come true in my life in a very painful and public way.

  * * *

  * Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 97.

  Jameel

  As soon as I was processed at the federal detention center in Grand Rapids, I had to appear before a judge to enter a plea to the charges of possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute. Two minutes before I walked into the courtroom, I met my federal court–ordered attorney, John Karafa, for the first time.

  “How are you pleading?” John asked me.

  “Not guilty,” I said.

  “All right,” he said. We then walked into the courtroom to appear before the magistrate. The judge read the charges against me and asked how I was pleading.

  “Not guilty, your honor,” John said.

  The judge did not react one way or another. He simply stated, “In the matter of a bond, are you prepared, Mr. Karafa, to proceed with a bond hearing?”

  “We request the bond hearing be delayed two days until I have sufficient time to consult with my client,” John replied.

  The magistrate said, “Very well, then. Bond hearing is set for two days. Next case.”

  Two days later we appeared before the same magistrate. He set my bond and let me leave the federal detention center after posting bail. Even though I was officially out on bail, I could not return home. The court sent me to a facility in Benton Harbor called KPEP, which stands for Kalamazoo Probation Enhancement Program. The program started in Kalamazoo but now covers the entire state of Michigan. KPEP is basically a halfway house to help those leaving prison transition back into society. It does career training and helps you find a job. At the time, the Benton Harbor KPEP program was housed in the old Mercy Hospital, which was where I was born. The town has since torn the building down.

  I was not happy about being sent to KPEP. For one thing, it’s a halfway house for people getting out of prison. I was out on bail and facing serious jail time for something I didn’t do. Everyone in KPEP has already been convicted of their crimes, and that’s how they looked at me. I don’t mean they treated me badly. I mean no one there believed me when I said I was innocent.

  While at KPEP I was also supposed to find a job. I could leave during the day to go job hunting, but I had to be back at a certain time and spend my nights there. My counselors kept after me to find a job, but I didn’t see much point in it. I figured finding a job was a waste of time because if they found me guilty, I obviously wasn’t going to be coming back to that job anytime soon. And if they found me not guilty, I’d leave that job because I had a car wash to get off the ground. Even so, every day I was reminded that I needed to find a job. They also wanted me to cut my hair, which I wasn’t going to do either.

  The main reason I hated KPEP was the fact that the place reminded me of the BS charges against me and how I wasn’t even supposed to be there. I hated it. Every day my attitude got a little worse. I felt myself starting to become the person the cops and prosecutors said I was. Those close to me were starting to believe it too. When the federal indictment came down, even some of my own family believed I was guilty.

  My attorney came to see me once while I was at KPEP to go over my case. We talked about the charges, but we mainly talked about the tape from the store that could prove I was innocent. Collins said in the police report that he arrested me while I was sitting in Will’s Durango. That was a lie. I got out of the car and went right into the store. If we could just get ahold of that tape, we could prove the cops were lying. John also went over with me how little evidence the police actually had. Basically, their entire case was based on the ounce of crack they found in Will’s car and the cell phone I let Will use while I was in the store. The only call on my phone connecting me to the drugs was the one Will made while I was in the store.

  John Karafa and I had only one face-to-face meeting. Usually we communicated via mail and over the phone. He filed several motions asking that all charges against me be dropped for lack of evidence. The feds had charged me with possession with intent to distribute, but nothing in any of the police reports actually connected me to the dope in Will’s car. Well, except for Will’s statement that the dope was mine, not his. But that’s not really proof, since it is his word against mine, and he was already known to be a drug dealer. John thought we had a good chance of getting the charges dropped, but the court denied every motion he filed leading up to my trial. Still, that didn’t stop him from filing more.

  —

  A couple of days before my trial was scheduled to begin, I went to McDonald’s to get something to eat. The guy behind the counter was a friend of mine named Corey. When he saw me, he asked, “Hey, man, you need a job?”

  “No man,” I said. “I’m fixing to go to jail.”

  “Nah man,” Corey said as if he didn’t believe me. “Just apply for the job. They really need people.”

  I don’t know why but I said, “All right.” I filled out an application and was hired on the spot to work the night shift. The next night I went to work and worked all night. When I got back to KPEP, I slept for a very short time and then got up, got dressed, and got in a car with my aunt and her boyfriend, who drove me to Grand Rapids for the start of my trial. Yes, I got a job the day before my trial started. I guess that means I hoped the truth was finally going to win out and I was going to go home a free man. I hoped it, but I didn’t expect it.

  During the ride to Grand Rapids, my aunt, her boyfriend, and I talked a lot, but the conversation was pretty depressing. My aunt cried through the entire drive. Over and over she and her boyfriend told me they could turn the car around and go back to Benton Harbor. Believe me, I wanted to say yes. I didn’t want to go back to Grand Rapids because I had a really bad feeling about what was going to happen once I got there. Deep down I knew that if I walked into that federal courtroom, I was not going to go home for a very long time.

  In America you are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but that’s not how the system really works. You’ve got to prove beyond a reasonable doubt you didn’t do something. If the court thinks you might have done something, you don’t have a chance.

  My lawyer met me in the lobby as soon as I walked into the courthouse. He started explaining what was supposed to happen. “This is the first day of the trial, and we’re going to present evidence and see if this is going to go forward,” I think he said. To be honest, my memory is a little clouded because I was in my own little world trying to figure everything out. I kept looking around wondering how I even ended up there. All I had done was ask a guy for a ride and let him use my cell phone while I went into a store to buy milk for my baby son. Why was I now in a federal courthouse? My lawyer explained a few more things, but nothing really registered. I felt as if I was in a nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from.

  When we first walked into the courtroom, the judge, the Honorable Robert Holmes Bell, looked at my lawyer and the prosecutor and said something like, “You don’t have this figured out yet? You need to get this figured out.”

  I leaned over to John and asked what the judge was talking about. “Plea deal,” he said. The next thing I knew, John and the prosecutor had left the courtroom. A few minutes later John returned and told me the prosecutor wanted to talk to me.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “They want to offer you a 5K1 agreement and give you downward departure in your time,” John said.

  This refers to section 5K1.1 of the Federal Sentencing G
uidelines, and downward departure means a shorter sentence. At the time, most drug charges carried mandatory minimum sentences. But section 5K1.1 allows the court to reduce the sentence if the defendant gives substantial assistance to prosecutors that helps them arrest and convict bigger fish. Basically, the law says you get your sentence reduced if you rat out your friends or family or both.

  “I don’t care about that. I don’t need no downward departure. I need to go home,” I said.

  “But this will let you go home sooner if you cooperate with them,” John said.

  “About what?” I said. “I ain’t got nothing to do with any of this.”

  My lawyer looked a little frustrated. “So what do you want to do?” he asked.

  I sat there for a minute, thinking. Finally I said, “If he’s talking about sending me home, I’ll talk to them.”

  “Good,” John said.

  John led me into an office and I sat across from the prosecutor. John took a seat next to me. The prosecutor just looked at me and said, “What do you have for me?”

  “I ain’t got nothing,” I said. I wasn’t being difficult. That was the truth.

  The prosecutor didn’t miss a beat. “Tell me about your cousins Ox and Wayne.” Wayne is Ox’s brother.

  “I don’t know anything about them,” I said.

  “They’re your cousins, aren’t they?” the prosecutor asked.

  “Yeah. That don’t mean nothing. I got a lot of cousins.”

  “I want them. Give me information about them and things will go easier for you today.”

  At this point I started to get really frustrated.

  “I’m telling you,” I said, “I don’t know nothing about these two dudes. They’re my cousins, which means I see them once in a while at my grandma’s house. That’s all I know, you know what I’m saying? When they leave my grandma’s house, I have no knowledge of where they go and what they do. Period.”

  “I already have everything I need to go out and pick them up,” the prosecutor shot back. He was starting to get hot.

  “Then why are you messing with me?” I snapped. “If they’re who you want, then go after them. You said you got all the information you need, so why are you asking me for more?”

  I sat back in my chair and shook my head. This was ridiculous. The fact that the prosecutor asked me to give him information about my cousins that he could use to convict them told me he already knew I didn’t have anything to do with any of this mess I was charged with. To me, it looked like the only reason they charged me with anything was to try to use me to get at my cousins.

  “I ain’t got nothing for you,” I said.

  The prosecutor turned red and started cussing at me. I stood up and said very loudly that I didn’t need this, but in a little more colorful way. That set the prosecutor off even more.

  John reached toward me and said, “Come on, Jameel, just chill. Just chill.”

  “No man,” I said, “let’s get out of this room. Let’s get up and pull out of this conversation because it ain’t going anywhere good.” I headed toward the door with my lawyer right behind me.

  Once we got out into the foyer, John pulled me over. “Jameel, what’s going on, man? Why didn’t you want to work with him?”

  I could barely speak. “Man, this whole thing, it’s garbage. He knows that ain’t my dope. If he thought I had really done this, the trial would have just went right on. This whole thing, man, it’s just BS. They want my cousin, so they’re going hard after me, thinking that’s the way to get to him.”

  The trial hadn’t even started, but I knew how it was going to end. I didn’t have a chance.

  —

  When we got back to the courtroom, Judge Bell pretty much laid into my attorney over two motions for dismissal John had filed on my behalf. He scolded John for filing the motions later than he should have, talking to him like an annoyed teacher would to a little kid who was in trouble. The judge’s tone and the way he spoke to my attorney told me right off that I was in trouble. When he finally let John present the motions, I knew Judge Bell was going to deny them. And he did. After that a jury was selected. Everyone on it was white and older than me.

  My trial began a little before eleven in the morning. The whole thing started with Judge Bell making a speech to the jury about what to expect in the trial and how to make up their minds about the evidence in the case and whether or not they should believe a witness’s testimony.

  The prosecutor then got up and made his opening statement. I sat there trying to listen, but the whole time I kept asking myself how I got here. The prosecutor basically laid out his case and told the jury everything his witnesses were going to say.

  When my lawyer got up to make his opening statement, the judge cut him off in the middle and told him not to make any arguments about my innocence. John apologized and then got back to his opening statement. Even before he finished the judge stopped him again and told John and the prosecutor to come up to the bench. I’m pretty sure I heard the judge tell my lawyer to shut up and not say anything else. I could be wrong, but when John was allowed to continue his opening statement, he cut it off with a short “I expect that by the close of the evidence in this case, the jury will find there is not sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant Jameel McGee possessed with intent to distribute cocaine base.” Then he sat down. To me, the trial was already over. I knew I wasn’t going home.

  After the opening statements, the prosecution called its star witness, Officer Andrew Collins. I knew what he was going to say because of the police report, but I still couldn’t believe how he lied so easily and how the jury ate it all up. The lies started with him talking about the phone call when his informant set up the drug buy. He said he recognized my voice and name from “contact prior to February 8, 2006.”

  I was like, How? Man, you know you never laid eyes on me before that day. You didn’t even know who I was. You thought I was Ox! I didn’t dare say any of this out loud, though.

  My lawyer objected several times during Collins’s testimony, but the judge overruled every one.

  When Collins got to the story of the arrest, nothing he said matched what actually happened. He said he saw me in the car, which was a lie because I was in the store when he got there. Then he said he drew his gun, which I never saw. He also said he told me and Williams to put our hands up. I couldn’t put my hands up since I wasn’t even in the car, but that wasn’t the way Collins told it. He said he saw me “lean over, make a furtive gesture toward the center console of the vehicle, kind of turn with his shoulders into the center console, and then turn back and put his hands up and look at the other officer.” He repeated that line a short time later and said he was positive I went toward the console, which is where they found the rock of crack. Collins admitted they didn’t find any fingerprints on the bag of crack, but that didn’t seem to bother anyone.

  When my lawyer finally cross-examined Collins, John made a big deal out of the fact that this was not my car and that there were no witnesses to what had gone down at the arrest. Then he pressed Collins about my cell phone. I thought this was going to help me. According to Collins’s testimony, his informant allegedly called me several times to set up the buy, and he said that I had called him. However, according to the original police report, the informant was talking to Ox, not me. Collins danced around that one. He said he got the names confused and stuck with that no matter how much John pressed him.

  Then John went to the calls Collins said he overheard. As everyone with a cell phone knows, all recent calls show up on a list on the phone. They looked at the list of recent calls on my phone. There was only one call to the informant, and that came at 2:31 when I was in the store and Williams used my phone. If I had set up the buy, there would have been several calls in my call history starting around 11:00 in the morning. Collins explained that away by saying Nextel phones show only the last call made, not all of them. I couldn’t believe anyone bought that load of cra
p, but apparently they did.

  After John finished with Collins, the prosecutor got back up to ask more questions to make sure he didn’t lose the case due to the fact that Collins originally thought he was talking to and looking for Ox, not me. Collins said he talked to so many potential drug dealers that day that he got confused over all the street names. He went on to say that he clarified it the next day by calling his confidential informant and confirming I was the guy with whom he had set up the buy.

  My lawyer objected, saying there was a complete lack of foundation to his explanation and that the answer was hearsay since the informant wasn’t there to answer that question himself. The judge overruled him.

  After Collins, the prosecutor called Officer Lange to the stand, one of the two cops who had transported me to Grand Rapids. His testimony was as full of problems. He said that on the car ride from Benton Harbor to Grand Rapids I admitted to being in a house with Williams and my cousin Ox while they planned a drug deal with the informant. I don’t know how Ox was supposed to be at my grandma’s house and in Atlanta at the same time, but that wasn’t a problem for Lange. According to him, I said I went to the store to buy groceries for my baby boy but then saw the bag of dope in the console when Will gave me a ride to the store. He said I admitted to picking it up and looking at it. I don’t know how he came up with that, because I didn’t even talk to those guys during the car ride, and I sure didn’t pick up Will’s bag of dope. I didn’t even know he had it with him. Because Lange said all this, I now know, it was kind of a backup plan that could nail me as an accomplice to the dope deal, just in case the jury decided the crack in the car belonged to Will.