Jimmy and Derek: The tale of two incarcerations

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Jimmy (age 65) and Derek (age 45) are two incarcerated white men who have never met, but whose experiences with the criminal justice system raise many issues. Derek (Chauvin) was convicted of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter for the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. It was his first adult conviction. According to the Star Tribune article with a headline quoting a judge's words ("'You must be substantially punished,' July 8), Derek was also sentenced "to more than 20 years in prison for violating the civil rights of George Floyd and a Black Minneapolis teen, less than the term he is already serving on state murder charges for killing Floyd in 2020." Front-page news.

Jimmy (Colvin) was convicted of armed robbery for robbing a Shreveport, La., deli of $136 in 1982. He was armed with a non-firing Civil War replica gun; no shot was fired; nobody was injured. He was sentenced to serve a term of "80 years at hard labor without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence in the care, custody and control of the Louisiana Department of Corrections" and was sent to Angola prison. It was his first adult offense.

At his trial a psychiatrist testified that Jimmy was "anti-social" and said that all the leaders in the treatment of anti-socials say they "must go to jail." Jimmy's lawyer failed to object to that testimony as prejudicial, the jury found him guilty, and the judge, at the sentencing, said:

"We have not been made aware of any theory under which an early release from incarceration would help the defendant, because all the evidence clearly reveals that he has been and is institutionalized. He can only function in a structured environment. Further, as we had previously made clear, his dangerous nature is such that he must be removed from society for the protection of the public."

The institutionalization the judge referred to was his years in juvenile reformatories beginning when he was 13, picked up for joy-riding and sent to Louisiana Training Institute in Monroe, La. He escaped from LTI Monroe, was recaptured, resentenced and subsequently escaped from three other "training institutes," and he spent most of his adolescence in such places. So he had a juvenile record, but the robbery was his first adult offense and, as he later learned, his lawyer was under disbarment proceedings at the time and was later disbarred for incompetence.

I tell Jimmy's story in the wake of Derek's because he is not famous, because he is one of the millions of incarcerated — and forgotten — men, women and children. Some like Derek, committed heinous acts. Hotfoot Jimmy did escape again, in 1986 from Angola, and he and his accomplice carjacked three women and robbed a bank. He was recaptured after 19 days on the run, sentenced for those crimes (in which nobody was hurt), given a federal sentence which he completed in 2016, and was sent back to Louisiana to complete the 80-year sentence.

Derek is currently being housed under a form of solitary confinement called "administrative segregation" at Oak Park Heights Prison, where Jimmy was also held under his federal sentence. When I told Jimmy where Derek was, he wrote: "[D]espite confinement to a cell and a recreation room, he has it better than I do here. He has a cell and a TV and can watch what he wants. I have a loud and crowded dorm."

Jimmy is in a dorm with 75 other men, most over 60 — the old guys unit at Rayburn Correctional Center in Angie, La. Several of the men are in wheelchairs or use walkers. Jimmy is still ambulatory and in reasonable health in spite of his diet and lack of significant exercise for the last 39 years. And he has rehabilitated himself. I met him when he enrolled in a writing class I taught at Hamline University in St. Paul. During that time he completed an associate of arts degree, learned to paint as well as write, and had nearly completed his B.A. degree when Pell grants were withdrawn for incarcerated individuals.

He continues to read, write and paint on his own. Prisons in Louisiana are supposed to have art rooms, but there is no art room at Rayburn, so Jimmy has taught himself to "paint" with colored pencils mixed in olive oil and sends his paintings to friends and relatives.

Who will help him? I have contacted the Innocence Project, but he did rob that deli of $136. He has filed many appeals; currently he is appealing Louisiana's failure to credit him for time served in federal prisons. I think the most egregious aspect of his situation is the 80-year sentence for a crime in which nobody was injured, but he, who has learned the law, thinks his case about the state's failure to credit him for his federal time served is stronger and he pursues that. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't have an informed opinion, but the egregious 80-year sentence is so obviously unjust that I think it needs to be protested again — and again.

Back to Derek. He killed a man and is being "substantially punished" with "more than 20 years in prison." Jimmy has already served 40 years for that 1982 robbery, has no money to hire a lawyer, and every appeal he has filed pro se has been denied. Who will help him?

Kathleen Coskran, of Minneapolis, is a retired school principal working on a book about criminal justice systems. She's at kathleen.coskran@gmail.com.