Zeke

[adams house cat]

Zeke wasn't a bad guy. Reckless, sure, and he could be as dumb as a sack of shit but there was no malice in him. His brother, on the other hand, was downright mean. He was doing life without for cutting another guy's throat during a gang fight.

Zeke kinda drifted into trouble. Nothing really major, just petty stuff. Possession, shoplifting and such. And always driving on a suspended license. Always. He would get probation and get revoked time and again and call from the jail.

"Mr. Currie?"

"Yeah."

"It's Ezekiel."

"I know. What's up Zeke?"

"I'm in the jail."

"Do tell. What's up now?"

"They're gonna revoke my probation."

"What for?"

"I only had two beers and..."

"For crying out loud Zeke. The conditions of probation say 'No booze'. They do not say 'Up to two beers.' You're wearing an ankle bracelet with an alcohol alarm which goes off if you use mouthwash. I warned you. Again."

"Can you help?"

"When we get the case we'll see what we can do. Sit tight."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"That's right. You're not."

This kept happening. That was Zeke.

It came to pass that Zeke owed $20 to the Magistrate's Court to clear up a fine and he didn't have it. Nothing surprising about that. What he should have done was come to the office and find me or any attorney. We could have walked him over to the Courthouse and gone in front of the wretched Wilma and asked for an extra week. Knowing that mean spirited old heifer she would have said no in which case the very worst they could do was send him to the jail. Over twenty bucks it would have been for a maximum of four hours. He would have been told to sit in the corner, keep out of the way, been given a cup of coffee and a bologna sandwich. Four hours later he would have been out.


Not Zeke. The night before he borrowed a gun and robbed a convenience store. He got $40. As he told me in the jail he got enough for a six pack, two packs of smokes and the twenty to clear his fine. It took them just an hour to arrest him.


I blew up at him. "Just how stupid are you? Why didn't you come to the office?"


"I was embarrassed."

"Embarrassed? You're going to prison for a minimum of nine years. There isn't a damn thing I can do."

"Nine years?"

"Nine years. It's the mandatory minimum for armed robbery."

Three weeks later he pleaded guilty. No choice really. He was on camera, after all. He was sentenced to nine years.

After Zeke was taken down the judge called me over. "I had no choice Les."

"I know Your Honor, but, nine years. For forty bucks."

"I know."

[Moonlight Shadow]

How many Zeke out there I wonder or more correctly inside.....

Thanks for the story AHC!

[ursus arctos]

The answer (as you no doubt know) is tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands.

Abuse of bail is one the great shames of the US justice system (and the list of such shames is long).

I've been working with the Fund featured in this article (founded by a former colleague) for several years.

Beautifully told, ahc

[Kevin S]

Thirded, that's a great (though not for Zeke) little story.

I was reading something about the unintended consequence of Three Strikes - that proper nutjob criminals will make sure their third felony is something really major, since they know they are going down for life no matter what. You wouldn't want to be the cop who has to arrest someone on their third strike, put it that way...

[adams house cat]

Thank you. Zeke was released after 5 years for good behavior. After I left the area. Amazing. Prison was the place he could keep out of trouble. He died after he had been out about year.

[linus]

As part of my volunteer work, I'm involved in the rehab and professional insertion process of a lifer who's been paroled after nearly 30 years in the can. Very nice fellow who should have probably been released a decade or two earlier. Like zeke, his last offense was an armed robbery as well. A big part of the rehab process involves mundane info like what an avocado is, and how to eat it. He's tried a hard unripe one and did not find it palatable. The food options back when he was free were a lot simpler.

He's got a lot of interesting stories. One of them was about his writing Swedish immigration about his wish to live there, his father being Swedish. He got a short letter back from the Swedish government saying "we don't want your kind over here!".

[adams house cat]

Yes linus. All too common. As a public defender you carry a load that private attorneys don't even contemplate. In New Mexico anyway. If a client is sentenced to rehab as a condition of probation or release you have to find the facility for them, set up interviews, see they get there, see they stay there. Finding a facility is not to difficult with the Navajos.They have a very good network of traditional facilities, supported by ceremonies of "healing and rebuilding the soul." The facilities for Anglos are often faith based and have draconian acceptance requirements and rules. With the Hispanics the problem was getting them to stay there. Also, they can be expensive. A Navajo wouldn't have to pay but the charitable institutions are horribly over subscribed and can have a 3 to 4 year waiting list. Your client will likely have finished his sentence long before then only to go back into the same old shit.

The three big social problems out there are alcohol, meth and, particularly among the Navajos, incest. Most gas stations will sell you a bottle of liquor,meth is cheap, plentiful and easy to make and on the more remote parts of the Navajo Nation incest and child sexual abuse is commonplace. If it's caught, of course, it's prosecuted by the Feds who have jurisdiction but it's finding it and then monitoring the offender. The Navajo Nation only passed a SORAN Act in 2008. Fitting back into a civilian life after long term incarceration is brutal and I admire the work that you are doing. God knows I saw enough of them go back.

I hadn't thought about Zeke for a long time. The first case I had with him I got his probation re-instated and he said "Thanks bro. If you ever need anybody hurt, just ask." I was quite taken aback but I don't think he would have done anything anyway. although he was big and scary enough. It wasn't in his nature.

[linus]

Interesting stuff Adams, and thanks for the props. Hope that Zeke can pull through. My buddy seems to have a lot better judgment, fairly bright guy who's eager to rebuild his life. I think he's going to be alright. Being a lifer, he will always have the parole system hanging over his head like a Damocles Sword, any slip up and he'd be back in detention, for good. He's in a mostly female reinsertion structure, a culture with which he's very unfamiliar having been confined to a very masculine, testosterone-charged environment for decades, so we've bonded over sports as he is a Pats fan, went out to watch the Eagles preseason game last Thursday in an alcohol-free environment.

There was a very good recent documentary from a local director about a first nation rehabilitation center in Quebec which sounds similar to the facilities in NM based on Navajo culture and spirituality that you describe above:

https://www.nfb.ca/film/waseskun_en/

[Patrick Thistle]

I feel sad for Zeke. It sounds like he just needed a couple of good mates to keep him out of trouble.

[adams house cat]

Zeke died in 2012. I no longer lived in the area so I don't know to much about it. I don't think it was crime related.

Zeke's mates were part of his trouble. He lived in Bloomfield, and a bad part of Bloomfield at that. He shared a trailer with his mother, two sisters and a developmentally disabled younger brother. The whole area was drug and gang infested with constant battles between Brown Pride and Los Lobos. Zeke was not, as far as I know, a gang member, but he knew them all and he had to go along with their activities to stay alive. He was a meth addict, as are so many around there, and, being a big guy, was often being called out to fight. That was pretty much where his trouble came from.