MB

Fighting a case behind bars is very, very difficult to do, and it functions as a type of leverage against the poor. Being behind bars on Rikers Island serves as a massive arm twist to get people to accept the plea bargain. They would agree to anything to get the hell out of there. In the beginning, I would work with people who would say, “I didn’t do anything and I’m going to have my day in court.”

I was like the average American, I believed in the ideals of the system. I would respond, “That’s right, if you didn’t do it, you’ll never say you did something that you did not do.” Then I began to see what they were up against and that’s what the public does not realize.

On the outside, we have this notion that everyone’s guaranteed their day in court. If you really want that, you can sit there for years on end waiting for that day in court. The prime example, of course, is Kalief Browder, who refused the plea bargain. He was so badly traumatized, physically and emotionally on Rikers Island — after his release, he was never able to recover and he committed suicide.

There are many Kalief Browders in the same predicament who say, “I didn’t do anything.” Now, most people don’t realize that the Sixth Amendment guarantee of a speedy trial is a false guarantee. It’s nothing; it’s a piece of paper. I started to learn the reasons since I would sit there and tell people, “No, hold on. I’ll meet with you several times a week. I’m going to provide the moral support for you to see your day in court.”

I started reading to understand what was happening. In the nineties and the mid-nineties, I don’t know the exact numbers, but I can get pretty close. You have around 125,000 felony charges and the courts, let’s say in the borough of Manhattan, had the capacity to try 1,300 year. You have 123,700 cases that in that year cannot be tried. So of necessity, they must be plea bargained. It’s a matter of logistics; it has nothing to do with justice or ideals, it has to do with practicalities.

If we go back to the moment that you’re charged and bail is set, if you can afford to pay it and go home, you can wait it out for years. Which is not ideal, it would hard for anyone to wait that long. If you can’t make that bail, you are going to sit behind bars for that length of time, for years. On top of fighting your case, you got to survive jail. You’re going to be cut off from your family, you lose your freedom, you have to endure not only the indignities of jail but the violence and the fear.

At one point I remember saying to one guy, I was trying so hard to get him to hold on because he just said, “I didn’t do anything, I was just plucked off the streets.” Everything about his behavior validated that to me. I just kept saying, “Hold on, hold on.” And when he started to waver, I said, “No, this will all be over.” He just looked at me and said, “You go home at night, I don’t.”

I had to back off because it was the truth, and terrible things happen at night.

All of a sudden waiting for trial becomes secondary to survival. If you have been marked by other inmates, you don’t have a lot of choices. You can’t go to corrections and say, “I’m scared in this house, could you move me?” They’ll laugh at you. If you have somehow gotten a beef with an officer and you’re in danger of being beaten, well, what does your out become? I’ll take that plea bargain.

And that’s what would happen. I came to understand that people had to forgo their futures and forgo the truth for the sake of surviving the moment.

Kalief Browder was such a courageous young man because what he endured — he was beaten and you can see the film footage of it. He was thrown into solitary confinement and he was told in court, “If you just agree that you did it, we will release you on time served. We’ll say you served your punishment for swiping the backpack. Just say you did it and you can go home.” That kid stood there and said, “I will not say that.” Knowing that he would now be put on a bus and put right back into this hellhole.

Three years later, they finally just dismissed the charges. There’s never been a case against him.

Most people succumb. If you watch interviews with Kalief Browder, he would say, “Not everyone is as strong as I was but so many people are in the same position I am.” The plea bargain is expedient. Trial is years away and you live in this limbo-like existence. People start asking themselves, “I have to be crazy not to take the plea.” Even if they’re innocent.

If you’re poor and you have to factor Rikers Island into your wait for trial, you almost have to be superhuman to pull it off. That’s what I witnessed, one by one [my patients] would be sheepish, “Miss B, I know but I have to get out of here. I have to get on with my life. I have an ailing mother or someone at home. I have to get out. I have a family that needs me to make some money. I can’t sit here for years on end. I have to do what makes sense.”

They have to stand there and say they did it. Everyone knows they don’t feel they did it, but they have to say it. Typically they get slapped with a felony. What that means now is a lifelong stain and the person will be relegated to a fringe-type existence: always scrambling for a job, always having to explain away the felony.