by Lee Barnett
Russell walked back to his desk then whispered something to Nathan Williams who nodded.
‘Your Honour,’ said Nathan Williams, standing, ‘we have no objections to the sentencing guidelines for this defendant and will not ask for an increase.’
As soon as those words had left his mouth, Graham Sturgis rushed out of the courtroom. I would bet my last penny he did so to call Harris.
I was taken to a holding cell and waited an hour before Russell appeared. He smiled broadly at me. ‘We had a conference before the hearing and all agreed to time served, which means that next week you will walk out a free woman, except for a probationary period. Now, there is one other big thing we need to discuss. During your plea hearing there will be a time when the judge will ask you if you have something to say.’ I nodded for him to go on. ‘At that time I want you to turn to Harris and apologise for what you put him through.’
I barked out a laugh but then realised he wasn’t joking.
‘Not a snowball’s chance in hell!’
‘Lee, you have to show remorse to fall within the sentencing guidelines, otherwise you might be stuck in prison for the next ten years.’
‘So be it,’ I answered coldly.
After a long silence Russell said that Cliff had agreed with him on this.
I didn’t believe him.
I sat there and took some time to gather my thoughts because I liked and trusted Russell.
I told him that I had never lied about what had happened to us and wasn’t about to start now. ‘I owe it to my children to do the right thing,’ I continued, ‘and apologising to that monster will show that I didn’t do what I did to protect my baby but to be vindictive. One thing I’m not is vindictive. Furthermore, when I’m free I want to create public awareness of the Family Court system, and with all the evidence and how well my children turned out I will have a platform to do that. If I were to apologise, then everything I had done and said would be seen to be a lie.’
Russell persisted but I was immovable on this matter.
We parted ways quietly, our initial high tempered by our first disagreement.
Samantha returned to Charleston from Australia the following week. Interestingly, the prosecution paid for her flight so she could come and testify for me. Cliff came up as well, and the two of them met with Russell a couple of times. I tried to make it clear to my friends that I might still be facing a ten-year sentence but no one would have a bar of it.
The plea hearing was set for 10 February 2015. On the day before, Russell came to see me.
‘Take that smile off your face,’ he said sternly, ‘we’ve got a big problem.’ Apparently someone had upset the judge because he had heard that it was ‘common knowledge’ that I was to be set free. Because of this Russell couldn’t predict the outcome in court and warned me that I had to follow his instructions to the letter.
‘Perhaps the judge thinks that you were disruptive in court like Graham and Harris said you were,’ he ruminated.
‘But I have all the court transcripts showing I wasn’t.’
‘That doesn’t matter. You will say nothing, and I mean nothing tomorrow except “Yes, Your Honour, no, Your Honour”. Do you understand?’
I nodded.
‘And you need to show emotion. You need to cry.’
What?
‘But I can’t cry,’ I said. ‘If I do I’ll never stop.’ He glared at me. ‘Okay, I’ll try.’
How was I going to do that? I’d worked so hard, over such a very long time, not to cry, not to let the kids worry more than they already had. How was I going to make myself cry on cue? Back in my cell I looked in my drawer and next to my red M&M’s were two packets of salt. Aha! I would stick salt into my eyes before I walked into the courtroom. (Word of advice: don’t let anyone tell you that salt will make you cry, it doesn’t. It only hurts like hell.)
The next day, 10 February 2015, after a couple of deep breaths I stepped into the courtroom. And as if a magnet had pulled my eyes across the packed room, I was drawn straight to Samantha’s smiling face. She signalled to me. What was she trying to say? Then to my left only a foot away I saw Harris. He was standing with one arm draped over a woman, his eldest niece, Cassie. Next to Sammy was Cliff, and on her other side Patty and Lorraine. I looked back at Samantha and began my shackled shuffle towards Russell.
Judge Richard Gergel entered the room and it was clear to all that he was not pleased.
First he asked me if it was correct that I wished to change my plea from not guilty to guilty.
‘Yes, Sir,’ I answered.
After a couple more points of clarification, he asked me questions about my age and education, and whether I had any mental illness or treatment for mental illness, or dependency on drugs or alcohol. As we got through these I noticed his severe face soften and hoped that he knew that whatever had happened in the past week was not of my doing.
At last he cited the three counts and asked if I understood them. ‘Yes, Your Honour.’ He asked me if I understood the sentencing guidelines. ‘Yes, Your Honour.’ He then checked that I understood that under some circumstances the government or I may have a right to appeal a sentence. ‘Yes, Your Honour.’ And finally he asked whether I understood the requirements for supervised released or probation. ‘Yes, Your Honour.’
Judge Gergel turned to the assistant US attorney for him to summarise their evidence, advising me to listen very carefully in case I disputed any facts.
Nathan Williams began and I listened very closely. But by the second paragraph I was hit with a gross inaccuracy: ‘After Samantha’s birth, the two separated and obtained a divorce.’ I had promised Russell I wouldn’t say anything but how could I keep silent about that?
I do, however, remember being grateful that there was no longer any attempt to implicate Susan or to insinuate that I had obtained my LA birth certificates three days after the verbal order. It seemed my work on the phone had gotten through to Nathan.
And then the judge asked me if there were any particular facts I disputed.
Sorry, Russell.
‘Yes, Your Honour,’ I said.
Russell stood next to me and stepped on my foot to shut me up. I ignored him.
‘I – my – Mr Todd didn’t leave me after my daughter was born. He left me when I was two and a half months pregnant.’
Then I signed my guilty plea.
Russell called Samantha next. She walked to the witness box, beautiful and dignified. The tears I was unable to make from the salt now flowed freely.
Sammy began by saying how much she appreciated being allowed to speak. She acknowledged that I had broken the law but that she was proof of the very fortunate life she had enjoyed so far. ‘I had every opportunity given to me. I was loved beyond belief. I was given a stepfather that, bless his soul, isn’t able to be here today.’ I flinched when I thought how hard it must have been for her to use the word stepfather instead of father.
She spoke about how she had the opportunity to live in a variety of countries and had grown up learning many things. ‘My dad, Juan Geldenhuys, had an affair in 2008 and moved out and my mother became a single mother. And she continued to raise me and my brother. She worked every single day. She did everything to give us everything possible. She’s the most selfless and wonderful woman. I’m very lucky.’ By now I was at the ugly crying stage, as were most people in the courtroom.
Sammy said she had met with her biological father for a few hours, and ‘it was an experience that I cannot describe in one word’. What a diplomat! I thought admiringly. She spoke of the toll the situation had taken on her and Reece. She appreciated the efforts everyone had made around her but said she wanted me in her life. Then she then thanked the court for listening.
Russell spoke about how problematic the Family Court could be especially when custody was involved, and that he was sure the court would agree, ‘Miss Barnett was not a threat to anyone.’ He asked that the judge give me the lesser sentence from the guidelin
es. And if not, perhaps I could be placed under house arrest so I could see my daughter while she was in the country.
Judge Gergel asked if I would like to speak.
‘I can’t say anything better than what my daughter has already,’ I began. ‘When I was arrested, my son was seventeen. And I know it’s all because of what I’ve done so I’m not making excuses, but my children lost their father a week before I was arrested. Then they lost their mother, and they lost their home.’
Nathan William said that Mr Harris Todd, although present, would prefer that Mr Graham Sturgis spoke on his behalf.
Graham Sturgis, the equine lawyer, carried a fat lever arch file to the witness box and began. ‘Your Honour, I represented Mr Todd twenty-three years ago in the custody case. And I’ve been there with him over the last twenty years, trying to find his daughter.’ Sturgis then started to recap on the Family Court case before the judge stopped him saying that was irrelevant. Russell nudged my knee at this admonishment.
Quite bizarrely, Graham then began reading one of Harris’s poems. I glanced over at Sammy who had the good grace to pretend she was crying, but Cliff’s and Patty’s shoulders began jiggling up and down as they failed to stifle their giggles. Meanwhile, Russell and I kept kicking each other under the table until a second poem was finished. Sturgis then asked the court ‘to recognise the seriousness not just of the passport fraud, but what a terrible impact this has had in terms of the kidnapping that occurred’, entreating the judge to be ‘sure that the punishment does fit the crime’. Most of what Graham said after the poetry reading went in one ear and out the other as I was gobsmacked that someone would read poetry in a federal courtroom to a United States federal judge.
On being asked if the government had a recommendation regarding sentencing, Nathan Williams said they did not. Nathan said they supported what Samantha had said. ‘I’ll certainly leave it to Your Honour’s discretion. It’s been a very emotional and complicated case. I do know, Your Honour, that there’s a guideline range and we don’t normally object to guideline ranges.’
At last, Judge Gergel pronounced my sentence.
‘Dorothy Lee Barnett is hereby committed to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons to be imprisoned for twenty-one months. Upon release from imprisonment, the defendant shall be placed on supervised release for a term of two years.’ He explained his decision by saying that he had carefully considered the nature and circumstances of the offence. ‘This was a calculated methodical crime, carried out in a very deliberate way and it was perpetuated over two decades.’ That point, which was pretty bad, still had my little heart thumping with joy – no one had ever called me calculated and methodical before. Indeed, I’m the most disorganised person on the face of the earth, but I knew I had done something right.
Judge Gergel went on to say that I had been a productive citizen, a fine mother, and that this appeared to be an unusual episode. It was, however, still a very serious offence, and for that reason he felt he had to give me the full sentence under the guidelines.
He asked Russell if he had a request for a specific facility for me. Russell said somewhere in South Carolina so I could see family and friends, and that he wanted me to go to a camp (a low-security federal prison) for the full duration.
Judge Gergel replied that it was a relatively short stay, given my time served, and that I might just stay where I was, but he agreed to put in a request for me. He thanked me and wished me luck.
I didn’t get to leave jail that day and I didn’t get to hug my daughter, but I knew that I had had a fair hearing with a fair judge and I felt blessed.
It took Russell about an hour before he made it down to see me in the holding cells and when he did he was red-faced and furious – not with me, thankfully, but with Harris. ‘How dare he didn’t hug Samantha on the way out! He didn’t even look at that beautiful girl who had spilled her guts in a courtroom and actually pushed past her like she wasn’t even there! What kind of father, what kind of man would do something like that?’
I shook my head. ‘He’s neither a father nor a man, Russell. Why do you think I’m in jail?’
27
THE MORNING AFTER THE PLEA HEARING, MY DEAR FRIEND MYRON visited. He was grinning from ear to ear. ‘You’ve gotten down to the short rows,’ he said. I asked him what he meant. ‘Didn’t I ever tell you about picking tobacco as a young’ un? Well, when we were cropping tobacco, we always liked it when we got to the short rows ’cos we were a lot closer to finishing. Yep, you’ve done the hard work, and before you know it you’ll be living with Gail and me.’
A couple of hours after that, Russell visited. He looked a little more relaxed than usual. He made a point of mentioning that the day before I didn’t say sorry to anyone, least of all Harris. I smiled back at him and said that I had no intention of lying in a federal court and that when I was free and interviewed by the press, ‘I’ll tell the world that I have no regrets for doing the right thing by my daughter, and that prison didn’t change my mind on that.’
Russell countered that by saying I should say I had only one regret. I looked at him with raised eyebrows. ‘I have only one regret and that is that I was forced to break the law in order to keep my daughter safe.’ I liked the sound of that and told him so.
He said he thought I was going to be moved to federal prison fairly soon and I replied I’d heard the food was much better there. We chatted a little more and he readied to go. ‘Well, when you do get out you’ll probably meet a nice guy and get on with your life.’
‘I’m not looking to meet a guy,’ I assured him. ‘I’m over that.’
Russell looked at me. ‘No, Lee, you don’t want to go into your sixties and seventies alone. Remember that, will you?’
I laughed. ‘If you say so.’
Russell turned at the door, told me to take care of myself, and blew me a kiss.
The next morning, I was loaded into a rickety van. Despite not knowing where I was going, I couldn’t wait to get there and settle in for the next three or so months. When we jumped on Highway 95 and started going south I suspected we were off to Savannah, Georgia – that would be poignant, I thought. But we kept driving, leaving the coastal areas and entering inland farming areas, passing vast cotton fields. Finally, after nearly six hours of driving, we stopped again. It was dark. I asked if this was the federal prison and the officer replied cryptically, ‘No, not quite.’
At reception the processing began. During the strip search I asked the officer if it was a federal prison and she explained that while all the prisoners were federal, it was a stopping-off place. Perhaps then I was only staying for a night. After getting my clothes I was taken to a unit very similar to Georgetown, about five cells on the bottom and five on top with an open eating area. My cellmate was Sally, who had an oxygen tank to help her breathe. She turned her back to me when I entered. ‘No one stays in here because my machine makes too much noise and it makes things hot in here.’
I told her I thought she was stuck with me, and that night I slept like a baby.
The next morning I began with the questions and learned I was in Ocilla, Georgia, and that this was a federal holding prison, for girls awaiting trial or, more likely, plea hearings. The unit I was in was ruled by two queen pins and their minions, all from the same methamphetamine-afflicted area of the Tennessee mountains.
Over the next few days, Sally and I became friends, as strange as that was. Even though we didn’t have to spend a whole lot of our time in our cells we chose to, largely because having a cell with four bunks and only two people in it was a luxury. She was especially fascinated that I had made it to the age of fifty with all of my teeth, because nearly everyone from her area – both meth users and non-meth users – had lost theirs. It was so sad for me to learn about this other America, a region that resembled a third-world country rather than one of the richest nations in the world.
In the drug world Sally was known as a smurf – someone who bought common cold medicine contain
ing pseudoephedrine from a pharmacy and on-sold it to the people who made the meth. She had a group of prostitutes and homeless people working for her, and for every box they supplied her from the pharmacy she would pay them $50, which she in turn would sell for $200 to $300. Modern-day capitalism, I thought. ‘It’s a win win situation,’ she said. ‘I never ripped off the prostitutes or the homeless and I made money.’ I asked her why she was on oxygen, thinking it was from drugs or smoking, but she said the emphysema was caused by black mould from the shack she grew up in located high up in the mountains, and that she probably only had a few years left. As we got to know each other a little better, I offered to look over her statement for her plea hearing, which was perhaps a week away. She had thought she was going to get twenty-five years whereas I was hopeful her sentence wouldn’t be that long and that her health problems might help her get out sooner.
The days passed slowly before I was able to call Cliff, who told me that Russell was livid. Apparently I was ‘lost in the system’, though I was wondering if it was deliberate and I was being made to pay for my sins because the Bureau of Prisons was managed by the Department of Justice. I spoke to my friends as often as I was allowed, and told Patty that there would be a posting on the Department of Justice’s website stating the date of my release. She began checking it daily for me, sometimes twice a day.
The girls had clued me up that a major sign a prisoner was about to be transported was when the nightly medicine was individually wrapped instead of being administered from a bottle. One night when I was queuing for my blood pressure medicine, the nurse said she didn’t have it. I asked if she had lost it but she was adamant she hadn’t and that she would come back to me once she had found it.
I left the line feeling sure that this was the sign I was about to leave, but then a girl told me that the nurse had given my medicine to another prisoner by mistake. At first I wondered why, but then I started laughing. ‘Leave it to the prisoners to know where things are instead of the people who are supposed to be running this place.’ I thought little more of it and went back to my cell to read my book. Then I heard my name being called. I got up and went out to see the two queen pins surrounded by around twenty girls. I smiled at them.