Convicted

by Jameel Zookie McGee

  Because I wanted God to work through me in prison, I decided to be truthful and not hide from my past. I did not advertise that I was an ex-cop, but if someone asked, I admitted the truth. I also freely admitted I was guilty, which was pretty much a novelty in jail. When I was bouncing from jail to jail, surrounded by guys who were awaiting either their trials or their sentencing, I heard people talk about how innocent they were and how the cops had framed them. When they looked at me, I always said, “Not me, man. I did it. I’m guilty.” Sometimes guys came up to me when it was just the two of us and admitted they were guilty too. However, I also met guys on the inside who truly were innocent but had been convicted anyway. That really bothered me. I hoped I had never put an innocent man behind bars.

  From the start, my grandmother wrote me letters constantly. She reassured me she was praying for me and for the judge who was going to decide my final sentence. Her letters cheered me up. I noticed, however, that some of the guys I got to know never received any mail. I asked my grandmother to write to one of them and she did. He was so excited to get her letter. He wrote her back, thanking her for her letter. Then he asked if she would write to his wife, who was also behind bars. It’s funny. Before I was locked up, I looked at the people I arrested as bad people who deserved whatever they got. Now I saw that most were just like me: decent people who’d made some really bad decisions for which they were paying the consequences.

  My grandmother wrote to the man’s wife and kept writing to him. By the time I was finally released, she was writing to many inmates. She still has that letter-writing ministry today. More people should do the same. Reading a letter from outside the walls gives inmates a brief taste of freedom.

  I wanted to live a consistent life behind bars and be the man I was now striving to be. However, that wasn’t always easy. I lived in the general population in the Mecosta County Jail for a couple of months. There I met a young guy from Detroit who was maybe nineteen years old. He’d been caught with a bunch of drugs. All day every day he screamed out rap lyrics at the top of his lungs from a nearby cell. When he wasn’t rapping, he was being obnoxious in other ways. He rubbed me the wrong way until one day I just exploded. I was trying to get some sleep when he decided to scream some more rap lyrics. I got up, walked over to his cell, got in his face, and told him in no uncertain terms what I thought of him.

  When I got back to my cell, the Holy Spirit got up in my face. God opened my eyes to see that this nineteen-year-old kid put on his tough front because he was scared to death. The last thing he needed was someone like me making life even harder for him. The next day I went to him and apologized. After that we became friends until we were sent on to other jails.

  —

  In June 2009 I finally had my sentencing hearing. This time I came straight from a county lockup. Instead of a suit and tie, I wore an orange jumpsuit with shackles hanging from my belly and chains running to my hands and feet. My hair was long and shaggy because I hadn’t had a haircut since they locked me up five months earlier. My family was there as well as my pastor and some friends from church. I hated that they had to see me like this.

  The hearing began with a report from the pre-sentence investigation committee. A woman spoke for the committee. She recommended I be given a sentence of fifty-eight months—two months less than the mandatory minimum. I couldn’t help but think, Gee, thanks. All those proffer meetings with the FBI for a whole two months.

  But then the prosecutor walked over to my lawyer and whispered something in his ear. Frank smiled, then went up to the judge and informed him that a 5K1 agreement had been reached. That agreement freed the judge to give me a lesser sentence. Frank then took his place beside me and recounted to the court all the ways I had cooperated with the FBI and the prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor also made a statement agreeing with the 5K1.

  Then it was Judge Bell’s turn to make a statement.

  Judge Bell looked angry when he first began to talk. He refused to even look at me as he spoke. “What this man did tears at the very fabric of our society,” he said.

  My immediate reaction was, Oh, come on, man. That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?

  He continued, “One of the major differences between the United States and many other countries is the bond of trust between the citizens and those who enforce our laws. Here people are supposed to be able to trust the police, and this man has violated that trust.”

  Wow, I thought, he is absolutely right. I did far more damage than I ever imagined. I did tear at the fabric that holds our society together.

  Judge Bell went on to speak of how I had broken the trust citizens have with police departments and judges and prosecutors and everyone else entrusted with upholding the law. I braced myself for what was going to come next.

  Even though Judge Bell seemed angry, a couple of things he said made me think that he in some way understood why I did what I did. When he spoke of the people against whom I had committed my crimes, he referred to them as “nefarious people” and “not upstanding citizens.” He also affirmed the fact that even though I attained my search warrants illegally, when I carried them out, these same nefarious people were caught with drugs. He chided me for “cutting a very, very critical corner in the criminal justice process,” and I agreed. But in my mind I still wanted to believe that my real crime was being overzealous and lazy, which led to the corner cutting. I came away from Judge Bell’s courtroom believing he felt the same way, even though that was me reading too much into his words.

  After chiding me for my crimes, Judge Bell’s tone softened. Before pronouncing my sentence, he commended me for the actions I’d taken since I’d been caught. He said, “This Court is reasonably satisfied that not only have we gotten your attention, but that you have made some choices mentally and spiritually and otherwise which, if followed, will probably keep you miles from doing this again.” Even so, he sentenced me to thirty-seven months in prison with a fine of ten thousand dollars, which I was to pay to the city of Benton Harbor.

  I was not thrilled that I was going to prison, and I had no idea where the ten grand was going to come from, but given all that had happened, thirty-seven months—including the five months I had already served—along with a fine was far better than what I had expected. My grandmother and my family and everyone else I knew had prayed the judge would show me mercy, and I believed he had. Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.”

  Immediately after my sentencing, my first stop was the processing center in Milan, Michigan, not far from Ann Arbor. They put me in with the general population, which made me more than a little nervous. I’d been there maybe a week when a new group came in. Two guys in the group looked familiar to me, and I to them. We sort of looked at one another from across the room, and then they began to whisper to each other. That’s when it hit me. I knew these guys because I had investigated them in Benton Harbor for heroin sales. Right then I knew I was going to have a conversation I really did not want to have with someone in this place.

  The whispering continued around me for the next couple of days. Guys all over the room looked at me in a different way. Finally, someone pulled me aside and asked, “Did you used to be a cop?”

  I cringed but told the truth. “Yep. I was.”

  Other guys overheard the conversation, which brought them over to me. None of these guys were from Michigan. I didn’t know how they were going to react to what I had just admitted.

  To my surprise, one of them said, “Wow! Well, spill it. What’d you do that put you here?” Apparently crooked cops fascinated them. We talked for a long time. By the time I left Milan, these guys were my new best friends. They wished me luck on my way out the door. The two Benton Harbor guys did not have such a cheery disposition toward me. We never spoke, but looks were exchanged. I was glad I was leaving them behind.

  My next stop after Milan was supposed to be a federal holding facility i
n Oklahoma City. However, when I stepped off the plane, an officer put a black X on my arm. They then placed me on a bus with a bunch of other guys with X’s on their arms. The bus headed southwest out of Oklahoma City.

  We ended up in Chickasha, Oklahoma, at the Grady County Jail. I heard someone mumble something about “Shady Grady.” It didn’t take long to figure out what they were talking about. Walking into the Grady County Jail felt like stepping back in time to the Old West. They herded us into the facility like cattle and then had us sit in a gym while each of us went through the booking process. The temperature outside hovered around one hundred degrees, and the gym air-conditioning could hardly keep up. For a guy who grew up in northern Michigan, I was pretty miserable.

  When it came my time to be booked, the guard processing me looked at his computer screen, then back up at me and said, “Oh.” He looked down again, then back up and said, “Looks like we’re gonna need to put you in a special housing unit.”

  I didn’t ask what he saw. Inmates don’t ask a lot of questions, especially in a place like Shady Grady. An officer then escorted me to a nurse’s station. A large steel door behind the station opened, and I went into an eight-by-eight cell with a barred window that faced what looked like someone’s yard. A raised concrete slab was apparently my bed even though it didn’t have any kind of mattress or bedding or pillow. A toilet sat in the corner. The room didn’t have a clock or books or anything except the barred window, concrete slab, and toilet. Clearly this was a punishment cell, but for me it was my special housing, where I had been placed for my own protection. They didn’t even let me out for my meals. I spent all day, every day in that eight-by-eight box.

  That first night I managed to fall asleep on the concrete slab. If you’re tired enough, you can sleep on anything. When I awoke, everything looked exactly like it did when I fell asleep. I had no idea whether I’d been asleep eight minutes or eight hours.

  When my meals came, I asked if I could call my wife. She had no idea where I now was. “Yeah, we’ll get around to it,” the officer said. I also asked for a Bible and anything else they might give me to read. All I had to do all day was stare at the concrete wall with no concept of the passing of time. Is this how I’m going to spend the next three years? I wondered. I shuddered at the thought.

  On the third day in my eight-by-eight box, I went on a hunger strike. I decided I’d rather take my chances with the general population than lose my mind in this isolation cell where I was being punished for my own protection. The jail gave in and moved me to the medical ward. It was still isolation, but at least I had a shower and access to a pay phone. There was also a television that helped pass the time.

  —

  I ended up in a Level I prison in Miami, Florida, where I was to serve out my time. I had just gotten settled in when I was told I had to go back to Michigan to testify against my old partner, B. They took me by bus from Miami to Atlanta. Before I got on the plane in Atlanta, they put an X on my arm. I knew what it meant: my return trip to Michigan to testify against B would include a stopover at the Grady County Jail in Chickasha, Oklahoma.

  After my two-week stay, when they put me on the bus to go to the Oklahoma City airport, I told one of the officers that I was never coming back to Chickasha. God, it seems, has quite the sense of humor. When we got to the airport, we learned that a snowstorm had hit Michigan and we were not able to fly. They loaded me back onto a bus, and back I went to Shady Grady.

  Somehow, after testifying, I avoided a stopover at Grady County jail when they sent me back to Miami. I’d like to say I will never go back to Chickasha again, but at this point I’ve learned to never say never. I’m just thankful it was not my final destination.

  Jameel

  I was pretty much in shock throughout the ride from Indianapolis to Benton Harbor. As I watched the road go by outside the bus window, my mind had trouble processing that I was really free. I wasn’t on probation. I wasn’t on parole. I was free with no charges against me. My family back home in Michigan was not as surprised as me because they had followed the Andrew Collins case in the news. By the time I walked out of the Terre Haute prison, the cases of a lot of people he’d arrested had already been dismissed. But I had no idea any of that was going on.

  After reuniting with my family at my grandma’s house, my twin brother, Jamal, told me, “That cop who arrested you, you know he’s in prison now.”

  I nearly fell over when I heard those words. “What?” I said.

  “Oh, yeah, he’s in prison. They caught him with some dope and stuff in his locker. He pleaded guilty to everything.”

  “For real?” I said. This was the craziest thing I’d ever heard.

  Jamal nodded his head. “Yeah, bro, for real. That’s why they let you out. They’ve been dropping charges and letting a lot of people out that he arrested.”

  Now the letter from Judge Bell made sense. No one, not the warden or Judge Bell in his letter, had explained why my charges had been dismissed. As far as I knew, the store security tape had finally shown up. This was even better. The court had to throw out Collins’s testimony against me, and since they didn’t have any other evidence, my conviction was overturned. In my mind that proved what I had been saying all along. I was innocent. I later learned that not everybody believed me, even after I was released. Some members of my own family thought I’d been let out on a technicality.

  Still, I didn’t spend much time thinking about what people thought about me. I didn’t have time for that. Now that I was out of prison, I had to figure out what I was going to do with my life. A couple of days earlier my plans for the next six-plus years of my life revolved around mowing the grass around the prison housing units. Thinking about my long-term future didn’t do me any good in prison because it was too far away to worry about. The only real long-term plan I’d ever made was to hunt down and kill the cop who had put me away. Thanks be to God, I didn’t want to do that anymore, but I also didn’t know what I wanted to do. Music had always been my passion, and I got to do a lot with it both in Milan and Terre Haute. I’d learned to play several instruments and to operate equipment in a recording studio. I’d planned to do more with music in Terre Haute. But now, all of a sudden, I was out.

  Jamal told me I could stay with him for as long as I needed while I figured things out. And I had a lot to figure out. For the first couple of months I didn’t do much other than hang out with my family. I think I was in shock.

  About two weeks after my release, a lawyer contacted me about a federal lawsuit he planned to file against the city of Benton Harbor and Andrew Collins. He invited me to meet with him, which I was glad to do. The meeting didn’t last long, maybe half an hour. The attorney explained the reasoning behind the suit. The way he told it, the chief of police and others in authority either knew or should have known what was going on with Collins. Because they didn’t control one of their officers, my civil rights had been violated, which was the basis of the suit.

  I was on board right from the start. Three years of my life had been taken without so much as an apology. But it wasn’t just the time they’d taken. Before my arrest I was a month or two away from opening my own car wash in nearby Michigan City, Indiana. My test run of the location in the fall of 2005 had been a big success, and I had a partner who was going to help me get the car wash off the ground. Three years later, he’d moved on without me.

  I could handle losing the business. What I could not get back was the time I’d lost with my son. I was supposed to meet him for the first time when Collins arrested me. The moment my ex heard I’d been arrested, she took off and took my son with her. I hadn’t heard from her since.

  Someone told me she’d moved to Alabama. Then I heard she was in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Wherever she was, I still hadn’t seen my son, and I had no idea when I ever would. I tried really hard not to be bitter and angry over it all. That stuff had nearly killed me in prison. I didn’t need to go back down that road now. But, you know, right is right, and
someone needed to make this right.

  In my first meeting with the lawyer, he handed me a file with all the information about Collins. Reading it was like watching the movie Training Day. I had been suspicious of police my whole life. There’s not a lot of trust between the police and the community in towns like Benton Harbor. What little trust I’d had disappeared when I was arrested for carjacking at the age of fifteen. The cop who took me in was actually dating one of my aunts at the time. Or had dated her. I think they’d had problems, which made me think he was getting back at her through me. I thought that was pretty messed up, but then I started reading the Collins file. Wow! That dude took things to a whole new level. I couldn’t believe the stuff he’d done and how long he did it without getting caught.

  When I finished reading about Collins, I figured the lawsuit was a slam dunk. So did the lawyer. That’s part of the reason I didn’t do a lot for the first couple of months after I got out. The attorney didn’t tell me when he thought the lawsuit might be settled, but from the way he talked, it sounded like it could happen quickly. I figured before I jumped into any kind of job, I should wait to see what happened with the lawsuit. Who knows? Even after the lawyer took out his 30 percent, I might have enough to do something like the car wash. What I really wanted to do was build my own recording studio. If the lawsuit gave me enough money, I might actually get to do that.

  —

  The biggest question I faced right after I got back to Benton Harbor was how I was going to get around. I knew for sure I was never going to get into a car with anyone except maybe my grandma and my brothers. Other than that, no way. To this day I still won’t get into a car with anyone I’m not absolutely positive is completely clean. Before I’d get into a car with someone I don’t know, I’d need a drug-sniffing dog to go through it and make sure the whole thing is clean. Then I’d have to pat the person down and do a thorough search to make sure they weren’t up to anything illegal. The same is true of the houses I go into. Call me paranoid, but I’ve been burned twice and robbed of years of my life that I can never get back. I’m not going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time ever again. No way!