Source: Los Angeles Times
Author: SHARON COHEN, Associated Press

Contact: letters@latimes.com
Fax: 2132374712

One Short Ride Turns Into a Lifetime for Woman in Michigan Prison

Drugs: Boyfriend's heroin in car meant maximum sentence. But
legislative mood may be turning toward less harsh penalty.

The Associated Press

By SHARON COHEN
PLYMOUTH, Mich. (AP) Nearly 20 years later, JeDonna Young
still remembers her stomach churning, queasy with fear, that night
the police stopped her and asked the question.
It was the first hint she was doomed.
She was just four blocks from home, on a crisp October night in
1978, driving her boyfriend in the bronze Cadillac he had given
her. Unbeknown to them, the Detroit police were following. The
officers stopped them, ordered them out and searched the car.
On the front seat was a brown paper bag secured with rubber
bands. It contained heroin. In the trunk was a plastic bag filled
with envelopes containing 33 cellophane packets of tan powder.
That, too, was heroin.
``Whose drugs are those?'' the police officer asked. He looked
toward her, then at her boyfriend, repeating the question.
Neither replied.
Then he turned to JeDonna Young, a 24yearold single mother of
a little boy, standing with her hands cuffed, her feet in the straw
house slippers she had hurriedly put on, expecting to be out just a
few moments.
``Did you know,'' the policeman asked, ``that last month they
passed a law that you could get life for this?''
In prison parlance, JeDonna Young is a lifer.
At 43, she has celebrated if that's the right word 18
birthdays, sharing a cell not much bigger than a walkin closet.
She has missed 18 summers in her son's life. And she knows she
could be locked up 18 more years and, if she remains healthy, 18
more after that.
Young is among more than 200 Michigan prisoners snared by one of
the nation's toughest drug laws. It imposes a life sentence without
parole on anyone convicted of intending to or delivering 650 grams
or more of cocaine or heroin. That amounts to about 1.4 pounds.
Nearly 3 pounds of heroin were stashed in her 1978 Fleetwood
Cadillac, a cache small enough for a shoebox but far more than
enough to confine her to a world of concrete and barbed wire until
her death.
Over the years, attorneys have filed piles of papers and pleaded
for her freedom, arguing mistakes were made in her case, protesting
it doesn't make sense, morally or moneywise, to lock her up and
throw away the key.
The law, they say, was aimed at nabbing drug kingpins, but look
at JeDonna Young: She had no record. She wasn't the target of the
police investigation. She was not involved in her boyfriend's
dealing; he said she didn't know what was in the bags.
An appeals court in 1989 seemed sympathetic, saying it was ``not
all convinced'' she was the kind of drug dealer the law was
designed for and suggesting ``the tiger trap may have sprung upon a
sick kitten.'' But it rejected her plea, noting hers wasn't a
singular crime. ``The ripple effect on society of such a large
quantity of heroin,'' the court said, ``is staggering to
contemplate.''
Now, nearly a generation after Michigan's 650 lifer law took
effect, state lawmakers are expected to consider soon whether to
amend the measure in a way that could narrowly open the door to
some of those inmates Young included.
Bills have been introduced before, but gone nowhere. But there
is a feeling among many, including one key legislator who will
introduce a proposal after the Legislature convenes Sept. 23, that
the mood is different this time.
``Three years ago, four years ago, all the years back to the
'70s, there was very little support for changing the law,'' says
State Sen. William Van Regenmorter. ``That has now changed
considerably.''
There's a growing recognition, he and others say, that the law
has ended up trapping many couriers, addicts and others on the
fringes, rather than drug lords.
``Is it the kind of crime that deserves the highest sentence
that Michigan gives? My answer to that is no if it isn't a
kingpin,'' says the conservative Republican, who once supported the
lifer law.
JeDonna Young would readily agree.
Over the years, her son has repeatedly asked why some murderers
have been freed and she hasn't; inmates have wondered, didn't she
do something more to warrant a life sentence?
She prefers not to mull it over herself.
``If I really think too hard why I'm here, what's here,'' she
says, ``it depresses me severely. ... It's not like I'm here and
I'll make the best of it. It's never going to be OK.''
Before there was a national drug czar, before ``Just Say No,''
Michigan legislators decided to send a gettough message with a law
aimed at cracking down on kingpins peddling cocaine and heroin.
Into that environment walked JeDonna Young, who, by her own
admission, was foolish and greedy, dating a man old enough to be
her father who dabbled in lots of moneymaking ventures, including
drugs.
She entered the criminal justice system with a case that, for
her, now reads like Murphy's law: Everything that could have gone
wrong did.
She was offered a plea bargain for a minimum five years, but her
lawyer who also represented her boyfriend in a clear conflict of
interest told her to forget it, that there was no way, no way at
all, a jury would find her guilty.
Her attorney then left for St. Croix, handing her over to a
green colleague trying her first case out of law school; that
lawyer didn't offer a single objection in four days of testimony.
Young was advised to opt for a bench trial, then got a judge known
in some circles as ``mean Geraldine.''
When convicted, she cried. Her young lawyer cried harder.
With a lifetime to ponder the missteps, Young seems stunned even
now just recalling the events. ``I could have been home four times
over, four times over,'' she repeats, as if it stings just to utter
the number aloud.
Then she sighs.
``I try not to dwell on it,'' she says. ``God has given me an
inner strength to move on and the wisdom to try to focus on things
that will lead to the way out of here and if I dwell on things like
that, well your mind, you never know.''
Today, with gold earrings framing her chocolate skin dotted with
freckles, with her loosefitting sweat shirt dress, white bobby
socks and sneakers, JeDonna Young looks like a woman taking a break
from work.
In a way, she is. She is a certified paralegal for prison legal
services, earning less than $3 a day. She is polished, even
professional, and a college graduate, having earned her degree
while behind bars.
She's a far cry from the flashy, selfabsorbed woman whose head
was turned by James Gulley.
Young claims she wasn't aware of Gulley's drugdealing they
had dated just three months though her mother says she had warned
her about rumors to that effect. She admits to having used
marijuana and tried cocaine but never, she insists, never heroin.
For years after her arrest, Young despised Gulley, despised her
predicament. Then she mellowed. ``It tears you down the hate,''
she says. ``It's a luxury I can't afford.''
And for years, Gulley wrote Young missives of apology and
regret. She never replied. His last letter came this summer, weeks
before he died of a heart attack.
``I felt bad he had to die in prison,'' she says. ``I just don't
want to either.''
Young has her own survival strategy at Scott Correctional
Facility: She keeps no snapshots on her walls, no friendly faces to
warm up her cell. This is not home, and never will be. When family
members send pictures, she looks at them, stores them temporarily
in a footlocker, then sends them home.
She prefers solitude on holidays. Family visits just tear her
up.
``Waking up here every day doesn't get any easier,'' she says.
``You're more conscious of where you are. ... The older I get, the
more I see that this is not a life.''
She doesn't like to ponder the past, seeing it as a Pandora's
box of pain all the days she wasn't home for her son after
school, the nights she couldn't cook his favorite lasagna.
``I have missed so very much,'' she says simply.
Still, Young takes comfort in knowing her son, Deloneo, was
raised by her mother, who took over when he was just 7, too young
to understand a life sentence, but not too young to realize
something was terribly wrong.
While Young had lost her son, Irene Hardy had lost her daughter.
But Mrs. Hardy steeled herself, hiring a string of attorneys to
try to free her daughter, saving her most painful news for phone
calls rather than visits, consoling a tearful JeDonna every time
there was a legal setback, urging her to pray, be positive,
encouraging Deloneo that, someday, they would be reunited.
``He often asked me, `Will my mother ever come home again
says Mrs. Hardy. ``I would always say, `Yes. I don't know when.'
... He asks that question even now.''
``There were times he was very bitter,'' adds the 69yearold
widow. ``He'd think for years that nobody was his friend, not even
the family. He just had this feeling `Nobody loves me.
Once Deloneo or Del, as he's known visited the Detroit
courtroom of the judge who had sentenced his mother, just to see
her face.
``It's like you're sentenced to death, but you're going to live
through it,'' he says of his mother's life term. ``Someone tells
you, `Go there and you suffer until you die.
Even though he is angry about how unfairly he thinks the system
has treated his mother, Deloneo, who attends Western Michigan
University, wants to become a lawyer so he can represent her. The
two talk often, and he always tries to sign off on a happy note.
But, sometimes, his mother is the one doing the consoling.
``When it seems the world is over with me, she just says the
right things to help me understand what I'm going through,'' he
says.
He visits prison less often, but not because it's hard to see
her there.
``It's just hard leaving her,'' he explains. ``She's there all
alone. How can I get used to that?''
But last year, Deloneo brought a new visitor to his mother his
daughter.
Arreall is just 6, almost the same age Deloneo was when he began
visiting. Young reads to her granddaughter and they practice the
alphabet. But Arreall doesn't know the truth.
``She told me she's tired of visiting me at work,'' Young says.
``She always tells me I need to come home.''
JeDonna Young has a resume.
Maybe it's an act of supreme confidence. More likely, it's a
symbol of a woman who doesn't want to die as No. 159104.
The resume lists her skills, education, experience and goals.
WordPerfect and Windows? Yes, she knows both. College? Yes, a
bachelor's degree. Experience? Yes, as a certified paralegal who
screens clients for Prison Legal Services of Michigan.
Residence? She lists her mother's home address in Detroit.
Some who have fought for Young over the years believe her
sentence far outweighs her crime and her freedom is long overdue.
``To the extent she should have been punished for bad judgment
or whatever she did, she has paid for that many times over,'' says
Martin Geer, an attorney who represented Young on appeal and now
teaches at the University of Baltimore School of Law. ``Even if you
don't care about the human life, the economic impact has cost the
taxpayer to have her in there. She's someone who could be a real
asset to the community.''
Young thinks constantly of life outside, of how she will return
to school, get a master's degree, become a social worker, splurge
on fresh vegetables, stop in a Baskin Robbins and sample every
single flavor.
She says she is more patient, less angry about the one night
that derailed her life, and forever hopeful she'll get a second
chance.
``What's important now is going home,'' she says. ``That is in
front of anything and everything that I do.''
Will she make it?
``I think I will,'' she says. ``I hope I will. I'll put it like
this: I'll never give up.''
EDITOR'S NOTE Sharon Cohen is the AP's Midwest regional
reporter, based in Chicago.