OUT OF DARKNESS

OUT OF DARKNESS . . .

The door moaned as it slowly opened with a metal scraping sound on concrete, as if it had been closed for a hundred years. I stepped into the blackness of denial and despair.

Anthony visibly trembled as if he had seen two metal hands closing together and forming an impenetrable bond. He looked across the metal table with eyes like the black holes of space, reflecting nothing. I heard the door moving to close, my body rigid in anticipation of the blacksmith's hammer hitting the anvil. Boom!

I smiled and extended my hand to touch his hand, the simple affirmation of another human being. Anthony's hand was limp and wet with sweat.

No shimmer of hope leaked into the blackness of this window-less cell, in a gray-granite building of concrete and metal.

Anthony looked as cold and isolated as a snow-covered cemetery.

It was a Monday--trial was Tuesday. If convicted, the sentence would be at least twenty-five years and possibly life.

"So how does my case look?  My homies say that we can walk out of here, as soon as the Judge rules on the Motions."

"Anthony, that is not reality, accept it-- the defense motions have no merit. If you go to trial, any 'life raft'--plea offer for a reduced sentence will be outside your reach, and you will legally drown."

Anthony and three of his friends were charged with six counts of armed robbery. He was a young black man; age eighteen, six- feet tall, with a smooth, light complexion shrouded in a bright orange jump-suit a high security risk.

Anthony and his three friends had planned to "hit some licks on Los Chicos DelVecino"--rob some neighborhood kids"-Mexicans.

Poor Mexicans are the flowers for every robber bee that wants to fly in and consume the limited supply of dinero nectar that is currently on the financial flowers. Every "scent" of each flower is withdrawn.

Anthony and his three friends from a community further North, planned their attack on the small huddled masses of financial flowers, found in poor communities, that could be picked at night, when the flowers open to cool off from the afternoon sun.

Anthony faced a moral question: "What does it gain a man to admit his guilt without lashing out like a loose fire-hose, swinging wildly, spraying 'your fault, your fault, your fault,' at the victims, the justice system, the prosecutor, the judge, and the defense attorney?"

The moral answer provides salvation: A person serving a prison sentence, after admitting to the court, his family, the victims, and himself that he is guilty, has regained his dignity and reached the moral high-ground of remorse, where the devil of deception is defeated.

If Anthony pleads guilty, he will not waste his time, his energy, or his resources with frivolous appeals initiated by jailhouse lawyers who seek his commissary money, cigarettes, and other benefits for their guarantee that freedom is at hand because: the defense attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel, the court made errors in instructions to the jury, and the prosecutor allowed perjured testimony.

This offer by a convict is so obviously absurd and unattainable that in the free world it would be laughed at and scorned as fraud. Nevertheless, to a defendant in the blackness of the nether world where death could result from a careless remark or because of inadvertent eye contact with one of hell's lost souls, any appeal is worth taking to overturn society's myopic view of incarceration and its failure to provide freedom or rehabilitation for the unjustly convicted and sentenced.

It was the Tuesday --the trial. The prosecution plea offer: twelve years, with credit for the fourteen months already served in the County jail, even after yesterday, when the Judge denied all defense motions.

Anthony's grandfather,Gregory, was in his seventies, an unassuming man, with a smooth confident voice that demanded attention whenever he spoke.

Anthony had refused the plea--too severe--even though he had committed the robberies charged, and more.

Inside a room off the courtroom, the size of a small public bathroom stall, Anthony's grandfather and I talked to Anthony over a telephone, while looking through the ever-present reinforced plate-glass window.

I was now the sub-melody to Gregory's prominent melody of love and encouragement, with his over-riding message of morality, justice, and self-worth.
I was not willing to agree that there was a red-carpet pathway out of jail for an armed robber so Anthony tuned me out.

Gregory spoke in a low, steady voice. "Anthony, we love you, even after you have made mistakes. However, you are part of a Christian family. Harming any person or taking their property is not acceptable. You must make a decision that will determine your path for the rest of your life. If you are sentenced to twenty-five years, today is the last time I will see you outside of prison."

Anthony slammed down the phone and put his hands over his face. The hair on the back of his neck stood like the nails of a fakir's bed. "I cannot do this! The homies say we can win at trial."

"Anthony," said Gregory. "Decide who you are: A moral person-- who has made bad decisions and is willing to accept his guilt or the self-absorbed, remorseless coward, who believes that he has some sort of entitlement in life. You have robbed many people, threatening them with guns. You knew it was wrong and illegal. If you do not become a man today, you will drift through life as the ghost of our beloved grandson, never regaining the ethos of humanity, which is being offered to you now.

Remember, son, the answer is in the Book of Proverbs, chapter 23, verse 7, where it states: 'As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is!'"

Anthony was quietly crying, the picture of conflict and angst. He looked up, slammed down the telephone and walked away. We waited.

Anthony returned and picked up the phone, and said, "Yeh, I do it!"

The plea was entered; Anthony was sentenced a metamorphosis from darkness to enlightenment.

"Make no mistake about it---enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretense. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true. " ADYASHANTI