I put him in jail for 20 years. Now we’re good friends

Across from me at lunch sat the man I convicted of attempted murder 20 years ago, after he stabbed another man repeatedly. I noticed a mother from my son’s soccer team walk into the café, staring at us.

Her look said it all: She wondered if I, a 63-year-old retired prosecutor, was having an affair with this younger man, who with his many tattoos including the ones on his shaved head and neck, looked every bit the gangster he once was.

After I attended Joseph’s parole hearing in 2017, and after he was finally released in 2019, I pursued a friendship with him that would transform my cynical view—as a career prosecutor—that people can never change.

Still, the tattoos—I have told him many times before that he is scary looking and asked why he doesn’t remove his tats or grow out his hair. I can be candid with him like that—we never shy away from the truth.

“Excuse me,” Joseph said to the waitress. She looked at us and I could see that she, like the soccer mother, was trying to make out what we two mismatched peeps were doing together.

“Would you mind taking a picture of the two of us please?” he asked.

“Sure,” she took my cell phone and snapped a picture of us with his arm around me. “Would you believe it? She was my prosecuting attorney!” he said proudly.

She smiled, but I was sure that she didn’t understand how remarkable this lunch date was, that I was the prosecutor who argued to throw away the key to this man’s life 20 years ago in a courtroom, and here he was with the tacos I insisted he order.

To chase and have a friendship with someone I had prosecuted was unprecedented and even dangerous.

After a jury convicted him of attempted murder with premeditation, I argued at his sentencing that Joseph was a killer, even if he had not succeeded in this instance. I told the judge to put him away for life, based on the very personal nature of multiple stabbings—more personal than a gunshot.

He, multiple times, plunged a knife in and out of another human’s body with the arguable intent to kill. I told the court his late-stage tears should be disregarded based on the callousness of the act and the vulnerability of the victim.

“There’s not a single shred of evidence to show he has been or will be a benefit to society in any way.”

The court agreed when I said the attack was brutal and he should be sent away for life. As the bailiffs escorted him away to prison, he looked at his mother who sat crying, and I looked away and packed up to start another trial.

I didn’t think about him for 20 years—until I saw him again at a parole hearing. By then, he had debriefed from gangs and was asking to get out of prison.

Joseph took a bite of his taco and pulled a face. “You don’t like them?” I asked. He shrugged and shook his head. “I’m Mexican Karen. This is not a taco.” I didn’t want to be butt hurt about it, but I was. I should’ve known better than to take him to some chi-chi Mediterranean restaurant and order a taco with feta cheese. We both laughed.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed soccer mom, and her posse talking while staring at us—or was it my imagination? She looked away when I met her eye.

I felt defensive of Joseph. Why should she judge him? Or me? Why did I judge him and myself? Why did I care?

I shifted myself back to Joseph asking him what he was most proud of and what was he most ashamed of. We don’t do much small talk and I love asking him hard questions. He always gives thoughtful answers. Much like those I watched him give a parole board when he was facing his opportunity to be released.

At the time of his trial, I was 38 years old, and he was only 19. When he was asking for parole, he was 38, and I now had children who were the same age as Joseph at the time of his crime. I knew how easily kids can make poor decisions.

But after an almost 30-year career as a prosecutor, I had rarely, if ever, seen anyone change—I was doubtful. Besides, my parents were both Holocaust survivors and they taught me people were basically bad. My skepticism about human nature was my inheritance.

At that parole hearing, when he walked into the hearing room after 20 years, our eyes were trained on one another. Even though the parole board would decide Joseph’s destiny, it felt like he was talking to me, not them. It seemed like we were the only two people in the room.

Later, he told me: “When I saw you, I knew I was screwed. When your DA shows up at your parole hearing there’s no way I’ll get out.”

But I saw something very different. As he sat there telling the story of his life, I saw a man who had come to terms with the mistakes he made, something I had rarely seen from any man, let alone one in a jail cell.

There was something electrically charged in the room that day: We were trying to talk to one another, even though we were admonished by the parole board not to speak to one another directly. The connection was palpable. We both wanted to share.

There’s something about reconnecting with somebody who you knew when you were very young, convincing them that you are not the same person you used to be.

Often, family and friends cannot accept change in us and aren’t willing to even allow us to transform. People like to keep us stuck in our prior selves. If we change, everyone around us must also shift. Change is uncomfortable. Change is the only predictable thing about life. Discomfort is the only reason to ever change.

The Parole Board asked him about the tragic moment when he was a boy and was kidnapped by his mother’s drug associates and how that affected his trust in others. This tough gangster paused and looked directly at me and teared up.

His watered eyes bore into mine as if to ask me: “Do you see me? Is this okay?”

I felt myself well up. He had never been the victim in this story and yet, suddenly he was. Our eyes locked and I nodded to him to keep going.

At that parole hearing, I saw Joseph had reformed and regenerated himself. He wanted a second chance and despite my reservations, I was surprised to find out that I wanted him to have it. It would be two more years before he would be released and we would talk again.

I found him through his parole officer. I was invested in knowing he could make it. I had told him at the parole hearing I believed he would get out and could do big things. Could he? And how would this change all my beliefs that people never change?

If he did, I wanted to know more. I had been asking myself during the confinement of covid how my parents had found new lives after their confinement during the Nazi occupation.

There was something about Joseph’s metamorphosis that gave me hope that what we had been doing in the justice system was more than just shuffling people in and out of jail; a possibility for a better ending.

Joseph contacted me during the COVID lockdown, inviting me to a talk he was giving to the Board of Parole Supervision. As we rehearsed the talk on Facetime, we found ourselves getting into deeper conversations. Both of us were intrigued by the humanity we discovered slowly conversing with one another.

I went to watch Joseph speak at a college class. He brought his wife, Lupe, whom he had known since grade school and married in jail. Although he did the work to get out, she was his savior because she believed in him when he couldn’t believe in himself.

She drove three hours each week to see him in the jail. Her love saved his life.

When one student asked him what was one of the hardest things for you getting out of prison, he described learning to drive a car. His wife asked him: “When are you going to stop driving like you’re stealing it?”

He makes the students laugh. Then, his expression shifts, and he says: “Look, it’s not funny. I poke fun but crime is not at all amusing.”

Joseph told me recently that he feels frustrated because he wants to have a bigger life. He wants to effectuate more change. I have big dreams too, and it’s one of our points of connection. We both want to take suffering, generational and otherwise, and turn it into something meaningful for not just ourselves, but to touch the world.

When I retired, Joseph’s congratulations seemed more genuine than anyone in my office. He said he was there in trial with me and saw how fierce I was. He said: “You should be proud to have contributed so much to society.”

I cannot think of a more surprisingly supportive friend.

Joseph called me when he was invited to speak to the youth at Juvenile Hall about staying away from gangs and crime. He was filled with infectious excitement. “Even if I only reach one kid, that’s enough for me.”

After he shared that he keeps his tattoos for this type of scenario: His tattoos tell the tale of his life and give him the street credibility needed to reach the youngsters.

A few weeks ago, he told me he was finally leaving his job. He was offered his dream work for the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC) where he will work in the prison as a life coach.

ARC is a non-profit organization that serves as a support network for formerly incarcerated individuals. It aims to improve their outcomes and help them lead crime-free, gang-free, and drug-free lives, and to support successful reintegration into society through mentoring by leaders like Joseph has become.

He will teach others what he was taught.

“Won’t that be hard for you, like PTSD going back into the prisons?” I asked Joseph.

“Nope,” he said. “I’m tougher than that Karen. I’m so excited about this job, it’s what I want to do. To give back.”

In another conversation, I recall him saying: “I know you don’t believe in God.” We have been down this discussion rabbit hole many times. I’ve told him God was not there when the Nazis took my parent’s families to their graves.

My faith is scant. Joseph says his faith saved his life.

I tell him he saved his own life.

Joseph says: “Well if you look at our connection, there’s only one hand that could have been the to guide us to this point.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Our friendship is proof of something much bigger,” he says.

“Well, it is magical,” I admit.

He might have saved his life, but this friendship has changed my own.

Karen McKinney is working on a memoir about how being the daughter of Holocaust survivors informed her life and career. Licensed in three states, she practiced as both a public defender and a prosecutor. She is now also following her passion, writing.

All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

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