By Isabelle Senechal and Rose LaForest
Medill Reports
As a teenager, Marshan Allen was sentenced to die in prison. Today, he is an accomplished criminal justice advocate and law school student who is fighting for the rights of those still behind bars.
TRANSCRIPT:
MARSHAN ALLEN: I was incarcerated, and I was convicted of felony murder when I was 15 years old and served almost — I was sentenced to mandatory life without parole in prison and served almost 25 years in prison before I was released in 2016.
I think one of the things that made me want to become a lawyer was because of my experience with my attorneys that I had.
When I started advocating for myself in prison, I realized that I really understood it and that there was a lot of people around me who didn’t get, who didn’t have attorneys, and that I could help. I started helping them. A lot of people are not as fortunate as I am. I’ve been very fortunate to have people who fight for me and find ways to get access to education. But it’s not the typical story.
My name is Marshan Allen. I think the thing that really hurt me or broke my heart was knowing that the only sentence that was available was life without the possibility of parole. And so I think all this time I had been holding up hope that like the judge had — he’s a judge, he has the power to do something. You don’t have to send me to prison for the rest of my life. But he was mandated by law to sentence me to life without parole. The same year I was supposed to graduate from high school, I was entering prison with a life sentence.
It wasn’t until my brother had died, which was in ’97, he crashed on his motorcycle, that I really realized that I needed to like do something for myself, fight for myself. If I’m going to spend the rest of my life in prison, it’s going to be my fault because I tried and failed, not because I put my trust in a lawyer who was indifferent to my situation.
This was like our headquarters, like all the family events were here, like my grandmother would barbecue. She had these big barbecue grills in the backyard, and she would barbecue grill for the neighborhood. It was just always full of action. So I always wanted to come to my grandmother’s house, never wanted to leave. It was just one of those places where you come and just see a lot of things going on.
I grew up on the Southeast Side of Chicago in a neighborhood called East Chatham. My family had lived there since the ’60s. My brother moved in with my grandmother so that he can be closer to the school. I had uncles who were involved in drug dealing. They were members of gangs. And they had actually influenced my brother during his freshman year of high school to start selling drugs. And my brother influenced me as well. This one day, three people — my brother thought they were his friends, but they decided to rob him. When the drugs wasn’t returned, my brother said he was gonna, he wanted to send two of friends to take the drugs and money back. And he asked me to steal a car. And so I stole a van. I didn’t think I was going with them, but the morning of, one of his friends was like, “Come on!” And so I had followed them in my car, got in the van with them, went to the apartment where the people lived at and went up to the door with them. And this guy, he had the shotgun, he shot twice through the door. It happened fast, like it was like back-to-back shots. But I started running down the stairs, back to the van. One of his friends came down, and he jumped in the van. We drove off. My brother had a police radar, and we were listening to it. And that’s when we found out that the people had died.
TEXT: Illinois’ Law of Accountability allows the state to arrest, charge and convict “accessories” or “passive participants” in a crime. Because he stole the getaway car in a double murder case, Marshan was convicted and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
MARSHAN ALLEN: I haven’t been here probably since that day. I’m looking at how like my life has changed because of this incident. I’m thinking about Shani and Jerome, the two people who died, like what would their lives have been like if their lives hadn’t been cut so short. But it’s just a lot of loss. … I’m so sorry.
TAMALA ALLEN: This is like last minute.
MARSHAN ALLEN: Those are turkey chops. We have never heard of—we don’t eat pork chops. But we saw these at the grocery store and were like, let’s try them.
TAMALA ALLEN: My name is Tamala Allen. I was working at Walgreens actually. And I loved it. I excelled. I was actually an assistant store manager, soon to become a store manager. But after 14 years with them, it was like, oh my goodness, this is not speaking to me. I’m not feeling that same sense of fulfillment that I felt before. You make a decision. And so, lo and behold, I found my purpose when I met my husband, Marshan. Marshan was working at Starbucks. One day, I had went into the Starbucks, and he said, “Hi, Tamala.” And my name is — people mess it up all the time. And I was like, covering up my name tag, like, “Did you remember my name or what?” And he was like, “No, I remembered your name.” And I was like, oh OK, that was sweet. And in our first conversation, we talked very open. He told me about his past and that he had spent some time in prison. I was very impressed with his conversation, you know, and being so open, right? And being so honest. I really honored, and I really respected that. I’m a mom that had a son who was in prison, right? And I know who my son was, who he is. And I know that just because he made some bad choices, he’s not a bad person, right? And so I felt like I owed him the opportunity to show me who he is, not about what someone else said about him or a mistake that he made as a child.
MARSHAN ALLEN: Luckily when I got to prison, there were some people there, some older people there that really didn’t like the idea that I was there. They would show me how to do research on cases, and I would do that and look up stuff and send it to my lawyer. My family put the money together, got me a typewriter, and from that day forward I just started spending my time in the law library. And so I started working on my case.
TEXT: Marshan’s post-conviction case was brought before the courts more than 16 times.
MARSHAN ALLEN: I went back and argued it on my own. I’m on pins and needles all over again. When I got to the judge, he — he gave me time served.
TEXT: Marshan was resentenced and released from prison in 2016.
MARSHAN ALLEN: Dec. 6, 2016. I was released. I walked out of prison for the very first time in almost 25 years.
TAMALA ALLEN: I knew that he was the man that I had prayed for, that I was waiting for, that I believed God had for me. We were gonna go to Vegas and get married. Somehow, [P. Scott] Justice Neville heard that we were getting married, and he said that he would love to marry us. Justice Neville was the justice that basically signed that allowed Marshan to come home. My son escorted me into the library. And when I went in there, there were faces that were familiar to me, but I honestly still don’t know who all showed up at my wedding because I was just focused on him, you know? It was everything that I imagined. I think it was everything that he wanted. It was beautiful.
MARSHAN ALLEN: I had earned an associate’s degree when I was incarcerated. I found out that Northeastern had a really good, nontraditional college program. Once I have the degree, that’s when I start thinking about law school again. My life now … it is, I have a lot going on right now: working; doing schoolwork; sometimes speaking engagements; I’m on the board for Restore Justice, the National Life Without Parole Leadership Council from the Human Rights Watch; doing research; sending emails to legislators, trying to schedule meetings; trying to draft language for bills. What I think needs to be changed about the criminal justice system is pretty much everything. I wish that we can just go back to the table and just rethink it all over again.
RENALDO HUDSON: Every prison I’ve ever been in, they’ve wouldn’t let me get cards from my lawyers. They just wouldn’t.
RACHEL WHITE-DOMAIN: I mean it’s an indignity. But I mean, on the list of indignities …
TAMALA ALLEN: Saying that a child is not deserving of a second chance is completely wrong because we — none of us are the same person that we were. I think we as adults in society should not hold children to the same standards that we do because we know their brain development is not where ours is. I think that across the board, when a child may have committed a crime, without a question of a doubt they should be eligible for parole.
MARSHAN ALLEN: Usually when the legislators are in session … All of our laws, all our facilities, whatever we build or whatever we try to do, at the root of it, it has to be respecting and protecting people’s humanity and dignity. It has to be. I think that if we can do that, it would be a total different system. Happy to be back to work.
Good morning. I thank you all for being here. Thank you, Congressmen Cárdenas, for being here as well. My name is Marshan Allen. I am the national policy director at Represent Justice.
TEXT: Marshan Allen is halfway through law school. He dreams of opening his own civil rights law firm one day. The Allens continue fighting for the rights of juveniles behind bars.
Isabelle Senechal and Rose LaForest are graduate students at Medill. You can follow Isabelle on X at @izzysenechal.
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